“Why, hello—­it’s the Lady in the Moon!” exclaimed Lord Raygan gayly, just when Win had begun to hope she might reach the ground-floor level without being discovered.

Involuntarily Ena turned with a slight start, recognized Win, pretended not to, and presented the back instead of the side of a wonderful hat.  An aigret jabbed viciously at the tall shop-girl’s eye, and Miss Rolls said hastily:  “What Lady in the Moon?  I don’t know whom you’re talking about, Lord Raygan.  But oh, here’s our floor!  This is where I want to get out.”

“Never mind, let’s stop in and come up again,” commanded Raygan in the masterful way which Ena loved for its British male brutality—­when it didn’t interfere with her wishes.  “It’s Miss—­oh, you know, from the Monarchic.  Don’t you remember her in the moon dress?  How do you do, Miss—­er—­er?  Who would have thought of meeting you here?”

They were crowded almost as closely together in the lift as sardines in a box, and it was impossible not to answer.

“How do you do?” responded Win desperately, and Miss Rolls, making the best of a bad dilemma, found it obligatory to recognize Miss Child.  If she had not done so Lord Raygan would have thought her snobbish, though it was not entirely from snobbishness that she had wished to escape the girl of the Monarchic.

Her heart was beating almost as hard as Win’s.  Her brother Peter and Lady Eileen were somewhere in the shop.  This was the day chosen for the sightseeing expedition insisted upon by Raygan.  Ena had hated the idea of it, hated having to be associated in Raygan’s eyes with the Hands.  She had felt a presentiment that something horrid would happen, but she hadn’t supposed it would be quite so horrid and upsetting as this.

A dozen times Petro had asked if she’d ever heard from Miss Child.  Only day before yesterday—­the silly fellow never seemed to forget!  And any moment now he and Eileen might come.  They had made a rendezvous at the jewellery department, not far from this row of elevators, on the ground floor.  Hang the girl!  How little delicacy she had shown in taking a place in Peter Rolls’s father’s store after that conversation on the ship!  And how was she to be got rid of in a desperate hurry without making Lord Raygan cross?

CHAPTER XV

THE LADY IN THE MOON

It was a difficult situation for Miss Rolls.  Dimly it 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.