"Do you mean you're thinking of leaving?" she asked. Louie, who had lifted her eyes for a moment, dropped them demurely again. "I mean," she replied, "that I didn't know whether _you_ were going to dismiss _me_ or not. You see, you may not want my--kind of student. I'd rather not be in any way considered as an exception," she added. Had Mrs. Lovenant-Smith known Louie better she would have known that she had now no intention whatever of leaving. As it was, there probably came into her head the thought that after all Louie was a Scarisbrick and a niece of Lord Moone. Ladies-in-charge of horticultural colleges do not fall foul of the Honourable Emily and Lord Moone. All at once her severity relaxed--but she hated Louie thenceforward that it must be so. She smiled a little, but the smile had a twitch in it. "I don't think we need go quite to that extreme, Miss Causton," she said. "All the same, I'm afraid the Rules are necessary." "I dare say," said Louie. "And so long as that is understood, that is the chief thing. In regard to candles in particular, in an old place like this there is always the danger of fire. In fact, I'm not at all sure that a fire drill ought not to be instituted. May I add that I quite appreciated the chivalrous way in which you tried to shield Miss Earle last night? Indeed, I wanted to say that quite as much as the other. I think that is all. Good-morning, Miss Causton." "Good-morning," said Louie, stalking out. As she crossed the Restoration hall, "'Kind of student'--good gracious!" she exclaimed again. "To talk to me as if I were Burnett Minor! 'Kind of student!'--I wonder it doesn't occur to her that somebody might have told me all about Miss Hastings and that gardener four years ago!--'Kind of student,' indeed!" Still without changing her clothes, she walked out past the orchards, up the hill, and sat looking down over the coombes to the sea. Leave Chesson's, now? Oh no, nothing was farther from her thoughts! She would stay, and why? Not because she had been treated as a junior, but because she had been taken, as it were, at her own word. She herself might be perversely and nonchalantly cynical about her mixed birth, but she did not intend to allow anybody else--Mrs. Lovenant-Smith or anybody--to show as much as a flicker of consciousness of it. "Kind of student"!--Oh no, that amusement was going to be Louie's own private preserve.