Emmeline watched them out of sight—neither looked up at her window—and she turned back with a paler face as Kelly came into the room. He bowed, and then he coughed. The clouds of smoke from the many clustering joss-sticks had smote him, throat and nose. Emmeline motioned to him languorously. “Pray be seated, Mr. Kelly.” The lawyer threw a searching glance across the remarkable room and bowed his thanks. The inlaid stool did not attract him, and there was nothing else to sit on—if it was intended for seating purposes. That the cushions on the floor were so intended did not cross his mind—a shrewd and versatile mind, but adamantly New-Englandish. “I shall detain you but a moment, Madam,” he said, still standing. “My client, Mr. Sên King-lo——” “Oh, but you must sit down.” Emmeline rushed at him, and caught his arm in almost caressing fingers. Abraham Kelly bowed and backed and extracted his broadcloth dexterously. “Mr. Sên King-lo has seen with great distress and grave indignation the paragraph which you, I observe, also have seen.” He pointed a lean fore-finger at the blue-marked sheet on the nearest cocktail table. “He has instructed me to express to you his deepest concern that you, a lady whom he scarcely knows, should have been libeled so scurrilously in the intolerable journalistic falsehood.” Emmeline sighed sentimentally. “The base and unfounded insinuation will be withdrawn, contradicted and apologized for in tomorrow’s issue. I already have seen the editor and the proprietor and myself dictated the contradiction and the apology. But my client wishes me to express to you his indignation and regret. If we can find the original culprit, I am instructed to push the case to the severest limit our laws provide, unless—_unless_ you, Madam, would prefer, for obvious reasons, that the matter be dropped and we all rest satisfied with the withdrawal and apology. It is for you to decide.” “I should like to see Mr. Sên himself about it first,” Emmeline said sentimentally. “That I fear will be impossible now,” the lawyer replied regretfully. “Having put the matter in my hands, my client cannot speak on the matter except through me. We lawyers are sticklers, you know, and the Chinese are punctilious—and none more so than Mr. Sên King-lo.” “Nonsense!” Emmeline snapped. “I insist upon seeing Mr. Sên about it.” “Impossible,” the lawyer told her tersely. “I shall write to him,” Miss Hamilton insisted sulkily. “Mr. Sên himself and I will decide what we are going to do about it. I had a right to be consulted _before_ you went to the paper—not after. It’s as much my affair as Mr. Sên’s. And I don’t propose to be left out of it. I shall telephone the newspaper at once.” Kelly bowed. “And I shall write to King-lo,” she repeated hysterically. “And he will hand your note to me to answer,” the lawyer told her smoothly. “Show a woman’s letter—her personal letter—to _you_! He couldn’t!”