Madame Elena was not prone to personal enthusiasms, and the signs that she gave of having distinguished Lydia from among her compeers, were all but imperceptible. Only Lydia’s ruthless clear-sightedness where her own interests were concerned enabled her to discern them.
She soon found that the two young ladies in the millinery were rather looked down upon by the show-room young ladies, who had, indeed, little opportunity for intercourse with them. Nevertheless, Lydia smiled sedulously at them when she said, “Good morning,” and never pretended deafness when one or the other of them asked her to “pass along the bread, please,” at dinner.
Consequently they were overheard to say to one another that Miss Raymond was the only lady in the place, so far as manners went.
Mrs. Entwhistle was somewhat of the same opinion, since Lydia was the only girl who never grumbled at helping her when Old Madam’s unexpected calls led to a sudden demand for afternoon tea.
There remained Miss Rosie Graham.
Lydia was perhaps more nearly afraid of her than she had ever been of any member of her own sex.
To a Cockney sharpness of tongue, Rosie added an almost uncanny power of insight into the minds of her neighbours, and it was commonly asserted amongst the girls that she could “thought-read.”
The “thought-reading,” Lydia decided, was a trick, based upon natural shrewdness and an almost infallible instinct for the detection of small affectations and insincerities, but it may reasonably be supposed that it added no sense of security to the circles of which Miss Graham was a member.
Lydia knew that Rosie was not, and never would be, popular, but she uneasily surmised in her a strength of character that might equal, if it did not surpass, her own. And the idea was disturbing to Lydia’s conception of her own allotted rôle in life, well to the forefront of the stage.
She was always charming to Miss Graham, in accordance with her invariable rule, but after three months at Madame Elena’s she was still vexedly aware that the medium by which the charm could be made efficacious had yet to be discovered.