the administration of the school appear blameless.... They could do that, she did not doubt, and so she must be content.... But in the day of her strength she would not have been content.... But she was old.... It was time for her to abdicate.... She must put her affairs in order, name her successor--Clare Hartill or the secretary, she supposed.... They knew her ways.... There was that bright girl who had faced her to-day with the little child in her arms ... what was her name? Daughter or niece of some old pupil of her own.... She could more easily have seen her in her seat than either of her vice-regents.... So young and strong and eager.... She had been like that once.... Now she was a weak old woman, and because of her weakness a little child lay dead in her house.... Yes, Martha might put her to bed.... Why not? She was very tired. Henrietta Vigers had also her anxieties. She had so long claimed the position of virtual head that there was no doubt in her own mind that other people would consider her as responsible as if she had been the actual one. She worried incessantly. Should she have had bars put up to those old-fashioned windows? She, who was responsible for all the household arrangements? Ought she not to have foreseen the danger and guarded against it? And there was the matter of the dressing-room mistress.... For the school machinery she had made herself even more pointedly responsible.... She should have arranged for some one to oversee the children.... But the dressing-room had been a temporary one and she had overlooked the necessity.... Yet if some one had been in the room the accident could impossibly have happened.... She felt that she would be lucky to escape public censure, that loss of prestige in the eyes at least of the head mistress was inevitable.