“The most terrible holocaust in history until the World War,” King-lo added. “But slavery _had_ to be stamped out, Lo!” “It usually dies a natural death,” the husband insisted, “as it has in your own British Empire, and a far pleasanter death for all concerned, the slaves included. We have seen a pleasant and beneficent side of slavery in China, as I believe the South did——” “Miss Townsend has poisoned your mind!” his wife told him. “Not at all,” he denied. “Facts are facts—that’s all. And the war between the North and the South had nothing to do with slavery. That was an after-thought, dragged in for political purposes, necessary, perhaps, and certainly good strong propaganda.” “Sên King-lo! I don’t believe it!” Sên laughed. “You didn’t specialize in American history during your earnest scholastic career, did you? However, as your own uncrowned laureate has said several times, that’s another story.” “Yes—do get on about Miss Julia.” “Lee—young Theodore Lee—worked his way to South America somehow. He had but little luck there, but he saved enough to come home on a visit after some years, and he spent a month at Rosehill when Miss Julia was about sixteen.” “Who told you all that?” Ruby interrupted him again. “Dr. Ray—today at lunch. He went back to Brazil and had failure after failure there—just managed to live for year after year. But he stuck to it, one thing after another. He doesn’t seem to have had much of a business head, but he must have had plenty of grit. And his luck turned at last, nothing much, but it must have seemed a fortune to him. He struck oil about a year ago—alfalfa and rose-wood and ipecacuanha, I think.” “What a mixture!” “A good many fortunes are mixed,” Sên observed. “He turned his little pile into money and sailed from Buenos Ayres almost at once—presumably, as the sequel shows, to repeat his visit to Rosehill. But he died on the voyage. He was buried at sea. That is the story. He left Miss Julia all he had: nearly twenty thousand dollars, Dr. Ray says. She has bought new clothes now, Ivy!” “Black crêpe ones?” the girl said softly. Sên King-lo nodded. “And the rest,” he added, “or most of it, she’s spending in seeing the world.” Ruby Sên’s eyes filled with tears. “And the rest?”