‘I think I told you that after many years, I have prevailed on our Council to take the whole risk of the boarding-houses,—the pecuniary risk is of course very great, and in case of war or sudden depression, I don’t exactly see how we should meet it, but one must have risks, and we find the moral risks of not taking pecuniary ones so great that we decided for the latter—and indeed we had to pay pretty considerable sums in law expenses and to get rid of unjust claims too. We could not _prove_ that these ladies had not lost money, if they said they had—and if they were bad managers they did perhaps lose—and an outcry was raised that we ruined poor ladies!’ But the difficulties to be encountered on the way to this consummation were by no means slight, and involved great personal anxiety and pain. It was especially hard to her that she should be known by her own pupils to be in opposition to any who had been set over them. It was hard to feel that many with their partial knowledge of facts must misunderstand her, or childishly attribute her actions to commonplace motives of jealousy and love of power. Some part of these difficulties became fully public in 1882, when the College was involved in a libel case, and a lawsuit which was settled by arbitration. Exoneration from all blame followed in both instances. In the arbitration case the judgment was delivered by Mr. Justice Charles, and placed in a sealed envelope with the injunction that either party might open it on payment of £350. The Council did not think it necessary to pay this money. Eventually those who had brought the action against the College did so, to find that the judgment had been pronounced against them on every count. It was a victory for the College and the Principal, but it had not been achieved without great toil and suffering on Miss Beale’s part. She dreaded the cross-examination with all the nervousness of a sensitive nature. Speaking of it afterwards, and of all it had cost her, she ever associated with the pain the remembrance of the immense help and sympathy she had received from her friend Mrs. James Owen, then a member of the Council, and would say, ‘Mrs. Owen said I should not be scorched in the fire.’ She was also upborne by the loyalty of her fellow-workers, both teachers and boarding-house mistresses, who signed a joint expression of their sympathy with her in her time of anxiety. Miss Buss gave more than words of sympathy, she was present herself in the arbitration-room when the case was tried. When it was over she wrote to her friend to this effect: ‘Yesterday I made the personal acquaintance of Miss ——. I fell in love with her because she is so intensely loyal to Cheltenham and to “dear Miss Beale.” I think if you could have heard her talk, unknown to her, you would have felt that the severe trial you have had to go through was more than compensated for by the love and loyalty it has called out to you and the College.’