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She had a taste, which would have seemed ludicrous to her mates, if they had not felt some awe of her, from a touch of genius and power, that never left her, for costume and fancy dresses; always some sash twisted about her, some drapery, something odd in the arrangement of her hair and dress; so that the methodical preceptress dared not let her go out without a careful scrutiny and remodelling, whose soberizing effects generally disappeared the moment she was in the free air.

But the plague of it was that the thought of the training brought with it the memory of the preceptress who had so ably carried out his orders.

The sage adviser, the firm preceptress, the model of the virtues of self-control—how would she have looked in the eyes of Vivien, even had the open, the triumphant victory come to pass?

Hence the unexceptionable credentials which had introduced her to Nutley, had made her Vivien's preceptress, Vivien's bulwark against fear and weakness, Vivien's shield—and destined to be a shield to successive young ladies after Vivien.

"We are to have a new preceptress," said Joan, the elder, "vice the old Starling, seconded for service elsewhere."