struggles is not by the notice of the rich and the mighty?

"My dear," she said, when Eve entered, "she is so charming, so natural;
she has promised to give a tea for me, and to present me to some of her
friends. I hope you like the boy--Fitz--Fritz--whatever his name is. It
would be so nice if you were to be friends."

"He _is_ nice," said Eve, "ever so nice--but _so_ dull."

"What did you talk about?" asked Mrs. Burton,

"Really," said Eve, aged seven, "I forget."




III

Mrs. Burton had made a failure of her own life.

She had married a man who subsequently had been so foolish as to lose
his money--or most of it.

Eve, who had ever a short memory, does not remember the catastrophe. She
was three at the time of it. She was in the nursery when the blow fell,
and presently her mother came in looking very distracted and wild, and
caught the little girl's face between her hands, and looked into it, and
turned it this way and that, and passed the little girl's beautiful
brown hair through her fingers, and then began to speak violently.