The new building was not the only cause of difference. The Lady Principal, with her advanced ideas on women’s examinations, her desire to help teachers, to increase the number of the pupils, seemed to some members of the Council to be pushing the work into other fields than those for which it was intended when first the Proprietary College for Ladies was founded. ‘Local interest,’ a term not ominous of good in the ears of great educators, demanded a good day-school for the daughters of gentlemen, and nothing more. Some felt that, in the pursuit of mathematical and scientific attainments for which special teachers and classrooms were required, accomplishments such as drawing and painting would be neglected. Some, who had watched the growth of the infant College, and looked upon it almost as their own, interfered in small ways, as in the arrangements of seats and rooms. The gossip mentioned already was at its height during the first year in the new College, and Miss Beale thought that it might have been prevented or much minimised had all connected followed her counsel of perfection by being superior to town talk. More than all she felt the need of a larger outlook. The Council should in her view include some members whose personal acquaintance with the College and the needs of the town would give them a special interest in it; but she desired to unite with these men and women of intellectual power and large views whose experience would rank them among educationists. And for the management of the boarding-houses, which were now becoming each year a more important element in the College life, opinion which could be untouched by local prejudices was needed. Some of the anxieties of this time were expressed by Miss Beale in a paper which she may have thought of reading to the Council. It began thus:— ‘Until we moved into the new College a year ago, I had been singularly free from interference. The lesson learned when Miss Procter resigned and our College was nearly wrecked, had not been forgotten. Besides, we were poor, so there was little to quarrel about. With the removal to Bays Hill our real difficulties began. I had drawn the ground-plan with the greatest regard to economy of space. I was told the porch must not be used for entrance, and I was obliged to show we could not do without it.... Then I was asked to do with two instead of four or five lecture-rooms, and so on. I was obliged to prepare elaborate documents with ground-plans, etc., ere I could get leave to use the space provided, and without which the College could not be carried on.’