Reginald acquiesced—if he did—by discreet silence, and waited for his sister to do the thinking; a process more in her line than in his—as they both knew, though Reginald rarely referred to the fact. He had but two gifts, beauty of person and splendor of raiment. Emmeline Hamilton was versatile and not without brains. Her silliness was a pose—his a reality and an emptiness. She affected asceticism and languor. He affected nothing but his surprising English accent. Even it he found no small strain and fatigue. If she had been born a boy, she might have attained to as successful and profitable a mountebankry as their father’s. Success, except in an almost floral display of haberdashery, was not for Reginald de Courcy Hamilton. “You want to marry her?” “Yep.” He rarely wasted his English _en famille_. “You are determined? Perfectly? She hasn’t a cent.” “I’m nothing of the sort. She won’t have me.” “You’ve asked her?” He nodded. No use not giving her the whole lay of the land, if she was to work her wits on it to advantage. But he wasn’t going to dwell on that part of it. “When?” “What’s that to do with it?” “Probably everything. You answer; I’ll do the asking. When?” “Plenty of times,” he muttered viciously. “Since she’s seen so much of Sên King-lo?” “Sên King-lo be blowed! I tell you he has nothing to do with it.” “I tell you he has. Did you propose, the first time, since the last Rosehill garden party? It was there they met. Mary Withrow told me so. Was it after that that you proposed to Ivy Gilbert the first time?” Reginald growled and nodded. His vanity was writhing. But as far as it was in him to care for any one but himself, he cared for Ivy Gilbert—and cared for her somewhat surprisingly for one of his type and of his selfishness, since he wished to marry a penniless girl—which was precisely what he always had purposed never to do. He wanted Ivy. And, if Emmeline could help him to it, she’d have to have questions answered. He saw that. Emmeline lit a fresh cigarette and lay with her pale eyes darkly fixed on the ceiling—hatching her plan. “I have it! We must make him believe that she has jilted you.” “Thank you!” Gratitude could not have sounded more thankless. “If she could be made to believe that I was engaged to him, or had been——” “Look here, Em,” her brother broke in hotly, “I won’t listen to such disgusting rot. You engaged, even in fun, to a Chink! Don’t you dare say such a thing again, even to me!” Emmeline laughed thinly. There was little she did not dare do—Reg was the weaker vessel, quite without influence on the sister who, under a trailing, floppy affectation of languor, was an intensely vital young woman; and they both knew it. Their parents both consulted Emmeline frequently and usually followed her advice when they sought it. More than once she had had a strong finger in a sermon-pie of her father’s. “If I were engaged to Sên King-lo it wouldn’t be in fun,” she remarked with a hungry sigh.