A letter written by Lady Eileen while at Sea Gull Manor to her cousin Pobbles had (so Pobbles confessed later) suddenly opened the lady’s eyes to her own true feelings.  She began to wonder if Rags had loved her “for herself,” after all.  And, anyhow, she didn’t want a girl like Ena Rolls to get him.  So she met the ship on which Lady Raygan, Rags, and Eileen returned to Ireland, in order to “make a dead set” at the man she had once discarded.  An engagement was the consequence, and in the first letter Rags wrote to thank his kind host and hostess on Long Island, he asked for congratulations.

It was the same day that Ena began to sneeze so dismally that the only place for her was bed.  And when she could leave its seclusion the next only place was Palm Beach.  She said she would die unless she could go to Palm Beach, so mother took her, and Peter took them both, not to speak of Ena’s maid.

He did not wish to play courier.  To turn his back on New York interfered seriously with his plans and half plans and hopes and half hopes.  But father would not go, and mother and Ena could not without a man.  Peter was the only one available at the moment, and it was April when Ena felt well enough to face the North again.  By this time the news of her engagement to the Marchese di Rivoli had been copied from all the principal papers into the little papers, and even the most confirmed cats must be acknowledging far and near that to lose an earl and gain a marquis is a step up in life.

It was, of course, not ideal that the Marchese di Rivoli had no remaining family estates of which his fiancee could talk, and there were creatures ready to swear not only that he had come to Palm Beach to pick up an heiress, but that the penniless princess who introduced him to Miss Rolls had received a commission.  Still there are always family estates in the market, and where a coronet is there is gossip also.  Only the cat tribe start or believe it, and even cats purr to a marchesa, lest they may want to visit Italy next year.

In the Turkish bath which was New York that July, Peter Rolls’s department store was one of the hot rooms.  Miss Rolls did not come over from Long Island to choose her trousseau there, as a badly informed newspaper announced that she would do.  She went to London and Paris instead, because it was cooler as well as smarter to put the Atlantic between her and “New York with the lid off.”  She ran over with the divorced Italian princess who had made her acquainted with the Marchese di Rivoli, and mother and Peter were released.

No doubt other big stores were as hot or hotter than Peter Rolls’s that July; but it seemed to Winifred Child that the Tropic of Cancer might have breezes which the Hands missed.  Those of the salespeople who did not look as if at any moment their eyes might come out and all their veins burst, were living advertisements for Somebody’s Anti-Anemia Mixture before the mixture was taken.  Win was of the latter type.  She had become so pale and thin that Sadie Kirk compared her to a celery stalk.  Sadie herself had, according to her own criticism, “shrunk and faded in the wash,” but the two girls had now few chances of “passing remarks” on each other’s appearance, for, though Sadie was still in Toys, Win had been put into Mantles.