What Eve thought during the first few days of Holden's pipe-dream is not clearly known. She must have been greatly taken with him, or she would not have allowed him to interfere with her plans for personal advancement and aggrandizement, to make a monopoly of her society, and to run his head so violently into a stone wall. After the first few days, when she realized that she liked to be with him better than with any one she had ever known, she probably thought--or to that effect--"I'll just pretend a little--and have it to remember." But she found herself lying awake at night, wishing that he was rich; and later, not even wishing, just lying awake and suffering. She had made up her mind some time since to accept Darius O'Connell before the end of the season. He had a prodigious fortune, good habits, and a kind Irish way with him. And she still told herself that it must be O'Connell, and she lay awake and thought about Fitz and suffered. Mrs. Burton alone hadn't a kind thought or word for him. Her face hardened at the mere mention of his name, and sometimes, when she saw a certain expression that came oftener and oftener into Eve's face, that callous which served her for a heart turned harder than Nature had made it, and she saw all her schemes and all her long labors demolished like a house of cards. Even if Eve flung Fitz aside like an old glove, as inevitably she must, still Mrs. Burton's schemes would wear a tinge of failure. The girl had shown that the heart was not entirely educated out of her, and was frightening her mother. Even if things went no further, here was partial failure. She had intended to make an inevitably rising force of Eve, and here at the very outset were lassitude and a glance aside at false gods. Fitz was stubbornly resolved to win Eve on his merits or not to win her at all. He had but to tell her his real name, or his father's, to turn the balance of the hesitation and doubt; but that, he told himself, would never, never do. She must turn aside from her training, love him for himself, and believe, if only for a few hours, that she had thrown herself away upon poverty and mediocrity, and be happy in it; or else she must pass him by, and sweep on up the broad, cold stairway of her own and her mother's ambitions.