She stretched comfortably up on her pillows, and gathered a mass of the exquisite flowers up to her face. Her soft hair lay loose about her, clouding the cambric and torchon of her pretty nightgown, perfuming her hair and her dimpled chin. Like all women who care for clothes in the nicest way, care for the sense of soft fabric on soft skin, for the beauty of texture and tint and line, for the clothes for the sake of the reflection they give of a personal daintiness and taste, and not for what they “show,” Ivy, obliged to skimp, skimped on outer garments that others saw, rather than on those that only she and her mirror ever saw, those that touched her intimately. Being young and raw she often was ashamed of coat and skirt, or of dance frock less fresh and good than were those of other girls, but she would have felt a grosser shame to put coarse, roughly-trimmed calico against her skin, which being sensible and not blind, she knew deserved its first sheath of covering to be as nearly delicate as loom and needle could contrive. It was a very pretty nightgown. The bedclothes were both costly and beautiful. Emma Snow was house-proud. And she was too nice a woman, and too proud in the best sense, to house her husband’s girl cousin less well than she did herself. This—the girl’s own room—less crowded than Emma’s luxurious own, was not less well furnished or carefully appointed. It was a pretty picture—the room and the girl in the bed. She yawned happily and cuddled her lilies against her face. One spray slipped from her hand, and lay inside the lace of her gown. The morning sun came in rose through the window. And the rose in the girl’s brunette face answered it, coming and going at her musing thoughts, with the trick of rose ebb and flow that was so constant on her face, and was half its charm—rarely a blush, but always a beauty. Her soft, dark hair, all perfumed by the lilies’ sweetness, rippled over her pillows, and shadowed her throat. One hand nursed lilies-of-the-valley, and so did her cheek—one hand lay on the open confession-book, her filbert nails lying pink on a page of Chinese characters. Ivy Gilbert was a very pretty girl—more than pretty—face and body had considerable loveliness, but her hands were her paramount beauty, as hands always are, in every race, in the woman whose loveliness is Nature’s deliberate achievement, and not just happily accidental. Did lilies-of-the-valley grow too in China—the flowers she loved most? And their perfume was always an intoxicant to her. Did they grow in China? She’d ask Charles—or Mr. Sên. Mr. Sên who had not asked after her the day before yesterday. Why should he? How silly Emma was! “King-lo”—what a “given” name!