“You are very kind, Lady Snow,” Sên replied. “I will not be late.” But the invitation had pleased the Chinese man as little as it had the English girl. “Play to us, Ivy,” Sir Charles asked presently, not because talk was flagging—it wasn’t—but because he particularly liked his young cousin’s music. But Ivy would neither play nor sing. “You’ll have to put up with mine,” his wife told him. “When Ivy says she won’t, she won’t,” and went to the open piano. Emma Snow played brilliantly, far better than their cousin, if not so sweetly as Ivy did. Dress was not Lady Snow’s only talent. She had several, veiling them serenely under a radiant frou-frou of chiffons—that she did so, not, perhaps, the least of her talents. “Your turn,” she bade Sên as she rose. “I know you do. You do everything, don’t you, Mr. Sên?” “Not nearly,” he assured her. “Is Beethoven your favorite composer?” She had played the Moonlight Sonata. “Or what shall I play for you?” “No,” she answered. “I just happened to play Beethoven—at random. Play something you like best.” He chose Grieg. Ivy wondered if he had seen her favorite composer, as well as her favorite pastime. One was just above the other in the confession-book. She wished she’d never brought it downstairs. He had not. Sên King-lo had as little inclination to initiate a flirtation with Miss Gilbert as she had to with him—even, possibly, a little less. He deemed flirtations even more vulgar than she did—and he had no ambition to excite jealousy in Lucille, or in any one else, and no sore, young desire to prove himself, in spite of poverty and schoolroom bondage, no social failure. If he had seen, or known, that Grieg was Miss Gilbert’s favorite composer, he would not have played any music of Grieg’s. Grieg was Sên King-lo’s favorite composer. Soon after that he told them goodnight. He bowed to his hostess without offering to shake hands. But Lady Snow held out her hand to him, and then Miss Gilbert could but do the same. Sên King-lo took her hand in his deferentially, but more lightly, less lingering than she was accustomed to have men do. Yet—as he did—from some indefinable thing in his touch—it flashed across her thought that that slim Chinese hand might not after all give a feeble account of itself at fisticuffs. Sir Charles Snow went to the outer door with Sên. “The celestial dragon, smoothly as a swan, carry your honorable person on high!” Snow said. “May lotus flowers grow from the honorable bones of your distinguished ancestors!” Sên King-lo replied. “And may your honorable grave be soaked with the tears of an hundred sons.” “Heaven forbid!” Snow exclaimed. Then they both laughed and shook hands, and bade each other an English goodnight. “Well—cheerio. So glad you could come.” “Jolly glad I could. Thanks awfully. Cheerio.” The East and the West get within hailing distance, at least now and then. CHAPTER XII