Cynthia was charmed. Here was common-sense. For the first time she felt herself at home. She appalled the classes by her loud encomiums, her delighted discovery of qualities that it was blasphemy to connect with Miss Hartill. For Cynthia, with the pitiful shrewdness that her cosmopolitan years had instilled, admired Clare for reasons that bewildered the worshippers. To them Clare moved through the school, apart, Olympian, a goddess, condescending delightfully. To Cynthia, accustomed to intrigue, she was obviously and admirably Macchiavellian. It amazed her that the English girls could not perceive Miss Hartill's cleverness, that they should adore her for qualities as foreign to her character as they were essentially insipid, and be indignant at understanding and discriminating praise. But Cynthia was above all philosophical. She shrugged her shoulders over the crazy crew, and reserved her comments for--Louise. For in Louise, incredible as Alwynne Durand, for instance, would have thought it, she did find a listener--an antagonist, easily pricked into amusing indignation, into white-hot denials--nevertheless, a listener. Indeed, it was the attitude of Cynthia to Clare Hartill rather than her personal attraction that was responsible for Louise's departure from her original and sincere attitude of indifference to the advances of the popular American. Louise was less in the foreground than she had been in the previous term. She had come back to school, less talkative, less brilliant, but working with a dogged persistence that had on Alwynne, at least, a depressing effect. But Alwynne, also, was seeing less of the girl. Cynthia Griffiths obstructed her view--Cynthia, taking one of her vociferous likings to a sufficiently unresponsive Louise. For the _rapprochement_ was scarcely a normal, schoolgirl intimacy. Cynthia Griffiths had been intrigued by Louise's personality. She had been quick to grasp the importance of the child's position--to guess her there by reason of her brains and temperament. Yet to Cynthia, judging life, as she did, chiefly by exterior appearances, Louise, insignificant, timid, shadowy, was an incessant denial of her nevertheless recognisable influence in school politics. In the language of Cynthia, she was a dark horse. Cynthia was charmed--school life was dull--the mildest of mysteries was better than none. She would devote herself to deciphering a new type. This little English kid had undoubted influence with girl and mistress alike. Cynthia had intercepted glances between her and Miss Hartill, and Miss Durand too, that spoke of mutual understanding. Perhaps it was money--half the school in her pay? Or secret influences of the most sinister? Hypnotism, maybe? Cynthia Griffiths, fed on dime novels and magazine literature, was not ten minutes concocting the hopefullest of mare's nests. She approached Louise between excitement and suspicion.