A curious double feeling possessed him in the split consciousness of which he was capable--he had the sensation of having come, in the suave afternoon garden, on overwhelming disaster, and at the same time he was enraged by the play of Fate that had given such a woman to Gerrit Ammidon and denied him, with his special appreciation of Oriental charm, the slightest satisfaction. A more general hatred of Gerrit tightened to a consuming resentment of the other's blind fortune. One thing was unmistakably borne upon him--in spite of the courtesy he was meeting it was clear that he could not hope to become a customary visitor at the Ammidons'. He was put definitely outside the community of interests in which Brevard easily entered. William Ammidon joined them, and something like astonishment at Dunsack's presence was visible on his complacent face. He remained, however, in a stubborn resistance to small adverse signs in the hope of gaining some additional facts about Taou Yuen. She had been, he learned, a widow and Gerrit had married her with her father-in-law's consent although the latter was a rich official. He wanted to ask a thousand questions, but he knew that even if the Ammidons were too dense to grasp his curiosity, Taou Yuen herself would comprehend his impoliteness. Nowhere else could be found the wisdom and poise of a Manchu lady. Jeremy Ammidon, in a lawn chair, a smoking cheroot in his fingers, asked him about affairs of Chinese government and commerce. As the old man talked he flushed darkly with quick indignation. "The English have made our political diplomats look like stuffed gulls!" he declared. "Look at their Orders in Council and the British Prize Courts," he proceeded, waving his cheroot; "stop an American vessel anywhere and pretend to find a deserting English sailor. With the Treaty of Ghent and cod-headed commissioners and a Congress that wouldn't know a ship from a bread barge the country's going to hell on greased ways! I've said it a thousand times and any man not a complete ass knows that you can't run a government without a strong head. Locofocos," he muttered.