“Sure? Of course I’m sure! I’ve seen it, haven’t I? I tell you, it _is_ Chinese. Nothing on earth would make me believe that it was Ivy’s child at all—if I didn’t know.” “Has she seen it—seen it as you have?” “She’s seen it, and I suppose she _saw_ it. She saw a speck of fluff or something on his coat when King-lo gave her a drink, and laughed at him for being untidy, and flicked it off.” “Did she seem to mind?” Snow asked. “Mind? Mind a speck of fluff? Oh, the baby! Mind the awful Chinese look of it? She didn’t seem to, but she must. And she’ll hate it! How she’ll hate it!” “I hope not,” Charles Snow said gently. “Of course she’ll hate it. I hate it now! And King-lo ‘minded’!” “How do you know?” Snow asked quickly. “Oh, I don’t know—but he did. How can I explain every single thing to you? You ought to know by yourself. I’m too upset to go on talking forever. He minded terribly, I tell you. He went to the window and stood looking for ages—at nothing. Even his back minded. He never stirred until Ivy called him back to her. He minds. I nearly dropped. Don’t _you_ mind, Charles?” “I’m not glad,” Sir Charles said gravely. “Well,” his wife conceded bitterly, “that’s something. Not glad! Wait till you see it, Charles Snow! ‘Finest race on earth!’ Well, perhaps they are, but—” She finished the sentence and began another, but the rest of her words were quite inarticulate through the thick smother of fresh sobbing. “Boy or girl?” The commonplace and very usual question seemed to steady her. “That’s the worst of it,” she answered desperately but clearly. “It’s a girl.” CHAPTER LIV Ruby Sên did not hate her Chinese baby. And because she did not King-lo loved her with an added love. Ruby loved her baby. It was _hers_—and Lo’s! Ruby Sên had a valiant soul, and something of Sên King-lo’s valor and sweetness had crept into hers. Mrs. Sên loved her wee daughter very much. Sên King-lo loved his baby girl almost as tenderly as he loved the mother he had never seen. Once, in the demanding day of early wifehood when Ruby had asked him, as wives foolishly will, pathetically must, if his love of her was his great love, he had told her simply, bravely, “No Chinese loves any one else as he does his mother.” They all grew to love her—except Emma Snow—she never did. They named their daughter “Ivy.” Sên King-lo would have it so. But her signature was written on her face—a Chinese signature. Lady Snow had been right in _that_. Little Sên Ivy was unmistakably Chinese. Both Sên himself and Sir Charles Snow knew that they never had seen a being that looked more typically or more intensely Chinese. She had not a trace of Europe on her; but almost from the first Sên King-lo suspected that she had almost no trait of China in her, that—except for that outer sheath of Chinese beauty—she was all a Western.