The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-05-12
THE GIRL WHO WAS roo RICH.

] Nobody who hasn't gone through |
 knows how horrid it is to be rich. 1 mean very rich--so rich that people
 say: There goes the rich Miss Ellice.' ! Not pretty Miss Ellice" or nice Miss | Ellice," though it does seem to me tha
 I have some claim to both those de-
 scriptive adjectives, but always that l inevitable rich Miss Ellce.'
 | 1 was as nearly born an orphan as | anybody could be, for my mother died
 when I was a day old and my father few months later, leaving me with all those oppressive millions and nc blood relations q always hated that
 expression, ii sounds so murderous) to
 look after me, so 1 was made ward in chancery.
 My nurses used to toady to me, and
 as for the children l was allowed to
 know, several of them admitted re-
 garding me as q kind of natural curios- ity because l was 'an heiress.
 When l was 19 chaperon was en-
 gagged to live with me and travel about
 the world l had longed to travel, but
 I soon found out it was just as bad
 being abroad as at home.
 How the facts about me leaked out
 everywhere I don't know. I wanted to take a false name and have little
 peace, but my chaperon, who was bisbop's widow and rather rigid in her
 ideas, would not hear of passing under false pretenses" as she called it. If the truth were known l believe that Mrs. De Selwyn in her quiet way en- 1vi of t,.,,,p ,o1 ca we made wandering about Europe.
 People never failed to find us out at hotels Whispers and glances went round, and mothers and sons scraped acquaintance with us and were un- pleasantly maternal In England and France I was fairly mobbed with in- pecunous young noblemen and officers, and would have been amused if I hadn't been furious. In Germany it was much the same, and in Italy I nar- rowly escaped being kidnapped.
 When ] couldn't stand it any longer we went back. It was just at the be- ginning of the season, and Mrs. De Sel- wyn was determined that I should be presented. I was presented, and the inevitable consequences ensued. In the first month l had forty eight pro- posals. By the end of the season I had quite lost count, and I was sick of it all-deadly sick knowing too we'll that not one of the men who had asked me to marry them would have dreamed of doing it if it had not been for my 
 I could have been two Duchesses-I mean that two English Dukes were among the moths who burned their wings at the golden lamp, and there was even a lesser royalty-but it seems like boasting to enumerate them; whereas, in reality, with each proposal l had one more point of my vanity broken off, until finally had none left at all
 Things went on in this way, growing worse instead of better, for two years. I felt old and had lost my faith in the disinterestedness of men and women. I was not intended by nature to be syni- eal, but experience was thwarting na- .ure, and the people who made them | selves so charming must often have l lisliked me intensely, though all the | while I was starving for love-honest | owe without the suspicion of a mereen- | lry twist. i
 When I was q and free--as much as l girl can be free-to do as I chose. Mrs De Selwyn and I had a quarrel. t was silly quarrel about an equally lilly young man, my chaperon's nephew, whom she's been scheming for