Up to this she knew little or nothing of the world. Her father, a barrister, had died when she was young. Her mother had been dead since her childhood. She had spent seven years at a boarding school, during which time she had come home for the holidays to find her grandmother's position gradually declining, until from a fine house in Bloomsbury the old woman was reduced to poor lodgings in Grimsby Street, where the two had lived together since Edith left school, three years ago. The money left her by her father had been more than enough to pay the fees of the "select seminary for young ladies" where she had spent those seven years. While at school she had kept much apart from the other boarders, and had made no friends, for she knew all the girls she met at Miss Graham's had homes much better than she could hope to possess after her grandmother had been compelled to leave Russell Square. Edith did not care to take any of her school-fellows into the secret of their decaying fortunes. She was too proud to pretend to be their equal in wealth, and too sensitive to allow them to know how poor she was. She was the quietest, most silent, most reserved girl in all the school. The majority of those around her were the daughters of City men. Her father had been a barrister. He had never soiled his fingers with business. He had been a gentleman by the consecration of generations of forefathers who had never chaffered across a counter, never been in trade; and she was a lady. She did not despise those around her for their wealth or unfortunate origin. She simply kept herself to herself, and made no friends. She was kind and considerate to all, and polite almost to painfulness, but she would let no one near her. Her school-fellows said Edith Grace would be perfect, simply perfect, if she only had a heart. But, alas! the girl had a heart, and what is worse still, a heart very hard to possess in seeming peace in a young breast confronted with a decaying fortunes. Her school-fellows said she ought to be a queen. By this they meant that she was, by her appearance and manners, suited to statelinesses, and splendours, and pageants. They conceived a queen to be above the common nature of our kind. To be free from the aches and pains of feeling. To be superior to the bemeaning littlenesses of life. To be incapable of joy or suffering which does not involve the triumph or the ruin of a state.