If Miss Cursiter was the will and intelligence of St.Sidwell's, Rhoda Vivian was its subtle poetry and its soul.

And Miss Cursiter meant to keep her there; being a woman who made all sacrifices and demanded them.
So now, while Miss Cursiter stood explaining, ostensibly to the entire staff, the unique advantages of General Culture, it was to Rhoda Vivian as to a supreme audience that she addressed her deeper thought and her finer phrase.

If Miss Cursiter had not had to consult her notes now and again, she must have seen that Rhoda Vivian's mind was wandering, that the Classical Mistress was if anything more interested in her companions than in the noble utterances of the Head.

As her grey eyes swept the tiers of faces, they lingered on that corner where Miss Quincey seemed perpetually striving to suppress, consume, and utterly obliterate herself.

And each time she smiled, as she had smiled earlier in the day when first she saw Miss Quincey.
For Miss Quincey was there, far back in the ranks of the brilliant and efficient.