“Sit on the floor, and pretend I’m three? No, thank you. Whatever are those?” she demanded—disapprovingly, Sên thought. “Chinese kites,” he told her dully. Almost a dozen were stacked in one corner—balloon-shaped bodies with bat-shaped wings. “Practising for next Easter?” she queried a little superciliously. “Where are your eggs?” “Oh—we’ll get the eggs; dozens and dozens of eggs,” Sên assured her. Blanche gave a gurgle of delight and assaulted Sên’s ear with a damp rosebud kiss. Ivy saw him wince. “It’s your own fault,” she told him. “Well, I’m off.” “Tum back to tea,” Blanche said generously. “Yes, cousin Ive—you must,” Dick added. “Mr. Sên is having his with us.” “You’ll have to excuse me, Dick,” Ivy refused. “Mr. Sên will pour beautifully, I’m sure.” “Dere’s doin’ to be muffens,” Blanche announced proudly. But Ivy stood firm. “Not even for crumpets! Ba. You are a hero, Mr. Sên.” And she left them. Sên bowed gravely and returned to the floor, and as she crossed the hall she heard the great top spin. The children squealed with delight, but Sên King-lo smothered a sigh. How desirable she’d looked there in the doorway—though even in his mind he did not consciously word it like that—the girl in her silvery steel-trimmed gown, violets at her breast, and in the picture hat that shaded her brunette face and was tied with violet ribbons under her dimpled, mutinous chin. He had never desired her more—and never had he desired her less—though it never yet had occurred to him that he, intensely Chinese, desired her at all: the girl who had no affection for children, no share in their fresh little pleasures, no tenderness for the baby-lives that were of her own near kindred. And Emma Snow, who noticed most things, and chattered and laughed over many, noticed—and said nothing about it—that for many days Sên King-lo sent no lilies-of-the-valley to Ivy. CHAPTER XX Emmeline Hamilton was silly—decadent even but she was far from stupid. She made her move at once now, but she made it deftly and unbiased or hampered by anything that Reginald had said or that he felt. Rumor began to scratch and tear at Sên King-lo, and it did not leave Ivy Gilbert quite unscotched—though, for a time, it left her unsmirched. It was winter now, and November winds rattled leafless branches at Arlington and on the hillside woods above old Fort Totten’s star-shaped embankments and cherished parapets. The Potomac crawled gray and sullen between ice-scummed shores. If gossip and scandal are rampant in the capital’s summer-time, in winter they flourish like upas trees and leap to maturity and detail like the Indian conjurer’s mango tree. Gossip likes the fireside glow, and scandal’s a greedy drinker of afternoon tea—likes its feet on the fender, and congenial cronies with light heads and easy chairs close drawn.