"If Miss Crane chooses to pay an extravagant price for her clothes, it is no business either of yours or of mine. She does her duty excellently well, and leaves absolutely no cause for complaint. Unfortunately, you are one of those people who do not need a cause. Your fault-finding capacities are endless and illimitable. Now either you accept Miss Crane as the very satisfactory person I consider her to be in her position, or I send her away without further ado, and you can attend to Dicky yourself." This was not at all to Mrs. Darrow's mind. In such circumstances she would be forced to get another governess, and the chances were, as she knew well, one vastly inferior to Miriam. Not that the boy's educational welfare weighed with her so much as the fact that she would have to pay for her out of her own pocket. Such a proceeding with her extremely finite income would entail personal sacrifices, for which she was in no way inclined. Therefore did she readily promise and vow that she would not again dig or delve into the past of Miriam Crane, and while declaring that she was altogether satisfactory as a teacher, hazarded the hope that if in time to come her suspicions should prove to have been well founded, Uncle Barton would not forget that she had warned him. All this the Squire took for what he considered it was worth, and left her without any effort to disguise the contempt he felt for her. So far as she was concerned he thought Miriam was safe, for the time being at all events. Self-interest was the securest of all possible dams to the verbal torrent of the irrepressible Julia. But that the widow lady still nurtured her feeling of enmity for Miriam was evident from the hundred and one petty ways in which she contrived to show her spite. And while Miriam, on her part, was altogether above taking notice of such trifles, she felt the sting of them nevertheless. So the days and weeks and months went by, without open rupture of any kind, though with much silent fortitude on the part of the unhappy governess. By this time she had no doubt as to the strength of her feeling for Gerald Arkel. She saw him continually, sometimes in the company of Hilda Marsh, often alone. Of this latter young lady, further opportunity seemed only to confirm her opinion. She was selfish, shallow, and altogether without heart. With the sharp swift instinct of a woman in her position, Hilda saw the real state of affairs, and despite all Miriam's endeavours to avoid the existence of any spirit of rivalry between them--such a position being to her undignified and wholly detestable--she found herself being more or less forced into it.