had dawned upon
her more than once that Rags regarded certain speeches and ways of
hers as "snobbish"--speeches and ways which to her had seemed
aristocratic. Neither Rags nor Eileen nor Lady Raygan had ever so much
as mentioned the word "snob" in connection with any member of the
Rolls family or their friends. But they had lightly let it drop in
connection with others, and Ena's extreme sensitiveness on the subject
her extreme desire to be everything that Raygan liked, made her quick
to put two and two together.

She began to see that many of her favourite tricks at home and
abroad--with servants, with her parents, with acquaintances, and the
public in general--were not proofs, in Raygan's eyes, that she was to
the manor born, rather the contrary, and that hurt. She was straining
to understand and observe the finest _nuances_. Never had it been more
difficult than to-day, during this visit she detested to the great
department store of Peter Rolls. If she had declined to come, that
would have been snobbish. If, having come, she refused the "glad hand"
to one of her father's shop girls whom Raygan chose to greet as an
equal--that, too, would be snobbish. And to be snobbish was, in
Raygan's language, to be "beastly vulgar."

If she were not snobbish--if she treated Miss Child with warm
cordiality, asked her a dozen questions, and listened kindly to the
answers, Petro would come with Eileen and find his long-lost friend.
Would Lord Raygan go so far in his dislike of snobbishness as to
welcome an assistant culled from his bride's father's shop as a
sister-in-law? Ena thought not. Besides, she was not sure yet that she
would ever be his bride, and any risk she took might turn the scale
against her, so uncertain seemed the balance. Just at present the
danger was that she might fall in the slippery space between two high
stools.

"Why, yes, of course, Lord Raygan," she said, able in the midst of
alarums to enjoy the repetition of his title, which made people stare.
"We'll stay in the elevator and talk to Miss Child, and go up again
when she has gone. Are you really working here in the store, Miss
Child, as--as--a---"

"Yes, I'm in the blouse department," Win replied, quite as anxious to
escape as Miss Rolls was anxious to blot her out. "I've been up to see
the superintendent on business, and now I'm hurrying back to work."

"You never wrote me," said Ena, thinking it was better to chatter than
let Lord Raygan talk, per