She caught his hand with the one of hers that was not clutching the gold piece, and squeezed it quickly and let it go. Something in this must have touched and made appeal to the manly heart. For Fitz said, averting his beautiful eyes: "You're a funny little pill, aren't you?" The tiger sprang to the victoria step from loafing in front of a jeweller's window, and stiffened into a statue of himself. Madame was coming. "Take Evelyn to the lift, Fitz," said she. But first she kissed Evelyn, and said that she was going to send for her soon, for a spree with Fitz. They passed through the court-yard, Fitz carrying his hat like a gentleman and a man of the world, and into the dark passage that led to the famous elevator. "Your mother's smart," said Eve. "Can't you think of anything but how smart people are?" "When I'm grown up," she said, "and am smart myself I'll think of other things, I dare say." "Can you work the lift yourself? Hadn't I better take you up?" "Oh, no," she said, and held out her hand. They shook, she firmly, he with the flabby, diffident clasp of childhood and old age. "You're a funny kid," said Fitz. "You're rather a dear," said Eve. She entered the elevator, closed the door, and disappeared upward, at the pace of a very footsore and weary snail. Mrs. Burton was much cheered by Mrs. Williams's visit, as who that 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. "You sha'n't be shabby," she said. "I will make a great beauty of you. You've got the beauty. You shall ride in your carriage, even if I work my hands to the bone. They've bowled me over. But I'm not dead yet. Elizabeth Burton shall have her day. You wait. I'll make the world dance for you." Then she went into violent hysterics. There was a little money left. Mrs. Burton took Evelyn to Europe, and began to teach her the long litany of success: Money is God; We praise thee, etc.,