The rules were strict. The papers were set and corrected by persons chosen by the trustees of the bequest. The scholarship was open to the school, but no girl over seventeen might enter: and though an unsuccessful candidate might compete a second time, she must gain a percentage of marks in the first attempt. Total failure debarred her from making a second. This last rule limited in effect, the entries to members of the Sixths and Fifths, for the scholarship was too valuable for a chance of it to be risked through insufficient training. The standard, too, was high, and the rules so strictly enforced that withheld the grant if it were not attained, that Miss Marsham was accustomed to make special arrangements for those competing. They were called the "Scholarship Class," and had certain privileges and a great amount of extra work. To most of them the particular privilege that compensated for six months' drudgery was the fact that they were almost entirely under Miss Hartill's supervision. She considered their training her special task and spared neither time nor pains. She loved the business. She understood the art of rousing their excitement, pitting ambition against ambition. She worked them like slaves, weeding out remorselessly the useless members. Theoretically all had the right to enter; but none remained against Miss Hartill's wishes. In spite of the work, the members of the Scholarship Class had an envied position in the school. Clare saw to that. Without attackable bias, she differentiated subtly between them and the majority. Each of the group was given to understand, without words, impalpably, yet very definitely, that if Miss Hartill, the inexorable, could have a preference, one had but to look in the glass to find it; and that to outstrip the rest of the class, to be listed an easy first, would be the most exquisite justification that preference could have. And as the type of girl who succumbed the most surely to Clare's witchcraft was also usually of the type to whom intellectual work was in itself attractive, it was not surprising if her favourite class were a hot-bed of emulation and enthusiasm--enthusiasm that was justified of its origin, for not even Henrietta Vigers denied that Clare contributed her full share to the earning of the scholarship, Miss Marsham, towards the end of the spring, was wont to declare, with her usual kindly concern, that she was thankful that the examination was not an annual affair.... Their good Miss Hartill was too anxious, too conscientious.... Miss Marsham must really forbid her to make herself ill. And, indeed, when the class was a large one, Clare was as reckless of her own strength as of that of her pupils, and suffered more from its expenditure. Where they were responsible, each for herself, Clare toiled early and late for them all. She fed them, moreover, from her own resources of energy, was entirely willing to devitalise herself on their behalf. The strain once over, she