clever, and she meant to try for one of the big scholarships. She would
get her forty pounds a year when the time came, and go to Holloway
College or some other college. She was not a lady by birth; she had not
a single instinct of a true lady within her; but she was intensely
ambitious. She did not care so much for beauty as for style; she made
style her idol. The look that Cassandra wore as she walked quietly
across the room, the set of her dress, the still more wonderful set of
her head as it was placed on her queenly young shoulders--these were the
things that burnt into Kate's soul and made her restless and
dissatisfied. She would willingly have given all her father's
wealth--and he was quite well-to-do for his class--- to have Cassandra's
face, Cassandra's voice, Cassandra's figure. Cassandra was not at all a
pretty girl, but her appearance appealed to all the wild ambitions in
Kate's soul. She had a jealous contempt of Ruth Craven, who, although a
foundation girl, managed to look like a lady; but her envy was centered
round Cassandra. As to the Irish girl, she had scarcely noticed her up
to the present.

Work went on that morning with much verve and vigor. It was a pleasant
morning: the windows were open; the schoolrooms were all well
ventilated; the teachers, the best of their kind, were stimulating in
their lectures and in their conversation. There was a look of business
and animation throughout the whole place: it was like a hive of bees. At
last the moment of recess arrived. Kate just raised her head, looked
over the shoulders of her companions, and saw Susy Hopkins darting
restlessly about, catching one girl by the sleeve, another by the arm,
whispering in the ear of a third, flinging her arm round the neck of a
fourth; and as she spoke to the girls they looked interested,
astonished, and cordial. They moved away to that lonely part of the
playground which was situated at the back of the Botanical Laboratory.