Sên too smiled, even more coldly than Dr. Ray had, purloined the page and went leisurely off towards Judiciary Square, and, his business there done, walked a little more briskly to Massachusetts Avenue. He asked neither for Lady Snow nor for Sir Charles, but for Miss Gilbert. Would she ride? he asked, when she came down. She shook her head. “I wish I could. But it’s the verb ‘to be’ and the boundaries of the Sea of Marmora for me today.” “Turn them over, lock, stock and barrel—verb, sea, children and all—to Justine. It’s a perfect day, and I very much wish you’d come,” he urged. “It is a tempting day,” Ivy owned. “Do come.” “Oh—well,” she yielded, “they learn as much when I don’t teach them as when I do; and Justine shall hear them slaughter the verb ‘to be’ in French. Marmora can wait a day.” “It will wait, on all its four boundaries, for many a day, if I’m any judge of Dick and Ba,” Sên asserted. Ivy nodded and laughed. “Ring and order Wolf then, while I put on my habit, will you?” “Thank you,” Sên told her, as he opened the door. Usually Sên King-lo asked her where they should ride, but today he took the way. And Ivy wondered why he chose the streets he did, keeping some time to the residential streets and circles before he turned towards the country. “What are we doing, Mr. Sên?” she demanded, as they passed by the Sheridan house for the second time. “And why are we walking? Are you trying to see some one?” “No one, whom I do not see,” he answered lightly. “But one likes to be seen sometimes.” “You are going up and down the same streets,” she grumbled. “I am taking a short cut,” Sên told her gravely. And then he laughed. But after that the girl got her canter, and they lunched with Miss Julia—Dr. Ray chanced to be lunching also—and rode back in the crisp of the early sunset. They had no groom with them today, as now they sometimes did not. Miss Townsend scarcely approved of that—but she made no remark. It was Lady Snow’s business, not hers. And Miss Julia was no poacher. The two women stood at the door to see them go, and Elenore Ray noticed that they were unattended—and smiled. Girls often rode so in Chicago. But that was not why the Chicago physician smiled. And she had smiled too at lunch, when Ivy had twitted Sên upon the slow passing and repassing up and down the Washington streets he’d inflicted upon them before he’d let them take the long over-river roads for which she and their horses had longed. And again she demanded why. But Sên King-lo only had laughed. CHAPTER XXI Abraham Kelly was as shrewd and polished as he was hard: a lawyer such as only New England can produce. He liked the Chinese Minister, and his Chinese Excellency liked and trusted Kelly.