ot care much for the things
that she herself cared most for. The whole world of society, its
strifes, ambitions, triumphs, defeats, rewards, did not seem to Evelyn so
real or so important as that world in which she had lived with her
governess and her tutors. And, worse than this, the estimate she placed
upon the values of material things was shockingly inadequate to her
position.

That her father was a very great man was one of the earliest things
Evelyn began to know, exterior to herself. This was impressed upon her
by the deference paid to him not only at home but wherever they went, and
by the deference shown to her as his daughter. And she was proud of
this. He was not one of the great men whose careers she was familiar
with in literature, not a general or a statesman or an orator or a
scientist or a poet or a philanthropist she never thought of him in
connection with these heroes of her imagination--but he was certainly a
great power in the world. And she had for him a profound admiration,
which might have become affection if Mavick had ever taken the pains to
interest himself in the child's affairs. Her mother she loved, and
believed there could be no one in the world more sweet and graceful and
attractive, and as she grew up she yearned for more of the motherly
companionship, for something more than the odd moments of petting that
were given to her in the whirl of the life of a woman of the world. What
that life was, however, she had only the dimmest comprehension, and it
was only in the last two years, since she was sixteen, that she began to
understand it, and that mainly in contrast to her own guarded life. And
she was now able to see that her own secluded life had been unusual.

Not till long after this did she speak to any one of her experience as a
child, of the time when she became conscious that she was never alone,
and that she was only free to act within certain limits.

To McDonald, indeed, she had often shown her irritation, and it was only
the strong good sense of the governess that kept her from revolt. It was
not until very recently that it could be explained to her, without
putting her in terror hourly, why she must always be watched and guarded.

It had required all the tact and sophistry of her governess to make her
acquiesce in a system of education--so it was called-that had been
devised in order to give her the highest and purest development. That
the education was mainly left to McDonald