Reginald was winded, a little. He was no great horseman, and he had been drinking—though not to excess. It was physical inconvenience and personal emotion that quivered and belched him far more than bourbon and bitters. “I’ll deal with you later, you yellow, opium-sodden chimpanzee,” he cried thickly, with an insulting motion of his whip. “Be off with you now! I’ll not allow you to ride with this lady. Don’t let me catch you so much as speaking to her again, you vermin-fed laundry whelp! Understand?” Sên smiled slightly, his eyes perfectly quiet, and turned to the girl beside him. “Please ride on a little, Miss Gilbert,” he asked easily. “I won’t be a moment.” “No,” Ivy told him. “I stay with you. Are you going to kill him?” “In _your_ presence? No, not even whip him—merely set him on his feet. Please go. I’ll be with you almost at once.” Ivy did not answer him. She had grown very white—but not with fear, not even with nervousness, Sên knew. She sat perfectly still, and she did not move or speak again. Reginald raised his whip, a little unsteadily. The Chinese man leisurely threw his reins over one arm, the loop of his crop over one finger, leaned lightly a little from his saddle, caught Reginald Hamilton by the arms, and swung him down to the ground—not roughly—setting him square on his feet. Sên gave the riderless horse an imperative but friendly tap on its flank with his crop, and it started off at a slow trot. Reginald stood stock-still; purple, spluttering, wordless. “I hope it’ll find its stable,” Sên said to Ivy lightly. “I daresay it will; they usually do. Shall we walk our horses on, Miss Gilbert?” They went on in silence, and after a few moments, because he saw how white and cold the girl’s face looked, Sên set a faster pace, and they kept it until, as they passed the Louise Home, Ivy slackened her reins and looked at him with a tinkle and gurgle of girlish laughter, which Sên King-lo, as Sir Charles did, always thought had a sound of China. He looked at her with a question in his smile. “I was thinking,” she told him—“I don’t think you’ll mind, we are good friends——” “The best of friends,” Sên King-lo said gravely, holding his hat in his hand as he spoke. “I was thinking of your hands, Mr. Sên, and of a silly thing I thought the first time we met—in the summer—at Miss Julia’s——” “I have not forgotten where I first saw you,” Sên said, with no hint or sound of hidden meaning. “Your hands—they are different—you know”—Ivy hesitated a little. “Chinese,” Sên said. “Yes,” the girl nodded, “and not very thick, and I wondered—that night at Miss Julia’s—how much use they’d be at fisticuffs. I know now, Mr. Sên.” She let the chamois loop on her riding-crop just fleck the hand on his horse’s bridle as she spoke, her eyes freemason friendly on him. Sên lay his hand on her pommel for a moment. “Chinese hands,” he told her, “that always will serve to take care of you when you allow me to be your escort.”