Dr. Ray heard the unclean talk at her hotel and in several drawing-rooms; heard it and invited Mr. Sên to dinner. Miss Townsend heard it in her Rosehill fastness and crossed the purveyor off her visiting list—and, after doing that two or three times, heard it no more. Sir Charles Snow heard it all and urged Sên King-lo the oftener to his board and encouraged him even more cordially to Blanche and Dick’s nursery. Toys were costing Sên King-lo almost as much now as lilies-of-the-valley in December were. Snow and Sên never spoke to each other of the crawling gossip. But each knew that the other knew that they both knew; and they smiled into each other’s eyes now and then—but no plainer allusion passed between them, and Sên King-lo accepted Charles Snow’s loyalty and faith as a matter of course, and quite simply. The Chinese Minister heard of all that was said. It was he that told Sên; no other man could have dared—unless Snow had cared to or thought it worth while. The Chinese Minister told it in all its ugly grimness—but did not speak of Miss Gilbert—but his old eyes danced and his sides shook with mirth. Sên heard him gravely and made no comment beyond a cold smile and a slight indifferent gesture. As for Ivy she showed Mr. Sên a warmer, franker friendliness than she had before; and Sên understood and was grateful and was only able to refrain from telling her so because it was impossible to speak of such things to a girl. Then Emmeline Hamilton reloaded her dice and threw them again. She did it twice. A morning paper—not one of the best reputed—announced the engagement of Sên King-lo and Miss Hamilton. No names were mentioned, but the descriptions of “a prominent Chicago clergyman’s daughter and a socially conspicuous young Chinese diplomat” were too well and accurately done to be mistakable. Washington tittered. And the Chinese Minister’s sides shook again. So Sên King-lo had been playing with Miss Gilbert all the time—and Emmeline Hamilton had won! For she herself had advertised her infatuation too vividly and widely for any one at all _au fait_ with the capital’s social swimmers not to know of it—no matter what they had said a month ago. That was how most of the breakfast tables summed it up. But =a handful= of other individuals did not accept the situation so. Dr. Ray smiled sagely when her attention was called to the paragraph—the journal was not one which she herself read—and then the physician’s face grew grave. “Poor girl,” she said to herself—not referring to Ivy. The erudite Latin of an uncomfortable malady had crossed her thought. And she had heard Joseph Hamilton preach—once. She had not called it “preach”; she had called it “perform.” Sên King-lo—like all of his race, always an early riser—chanced in at the Club soon after breakfast, picked up the first sheet he saw, and caught, not his own name but the clearly pointed lines. It was not a journal taken in at the Chinese Legation.