The Living Present by Gertrude Atherton

I

Mlle. Javal, unlike Madame Balli, was not a member of the fashionable society of Paris, a _femme du monde_, or a reigning beauty. But in certain respects their cases were not dissimilar. Born into one of the innumerable sets-within-sets of the upper bourgeoisie, living on inherited wealth, seeing as little as possible of the world beyond her immediate circle of relatives and friends, as curiously indifferent to it as only a haughty French bourgeoisie can be, growing up in a large and comfortable home -- according to French ideas of comfort -- governing it, when the duty descended to her shoulders, with all the native and practised economy of the French woman, but until her mother's illness without a care, and even then without an extra contact, Mlle.