While Carmina had been studying Miss Minerva, Miss Minerva had been studying Carmina.
Already, the same instinctive sense of rivalry had associated, on a common ground of feeling, the two most dissimilar women that ever breathed the breath of life.
"Does your cousin know much about birds ?" Miss Minerva began.
The opinion which declares that vanity is a failing peculiar to the sex is a slander on women.

All the world over, there are more vain men in it than vain women.

If Ovid had not been one of the exceptions to a general rule among men, or even if his experience of the natures of women had been a little less limited, he too might have discovered Miss Minerva's secret.

Even her capacity for self-control failed, at the moment when she took Carmina's place.

Those keen black eyes, so hard and cold when they looked at anyone else--flamed with an all-devouring sense of possession when they first rested on Ovid.