“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.
Miss Hamilton never had met him, but she knew of him—every one did, for he was a national asset—and she knew him by sight; for the stern and upright old man was an inveterate theater-goer, and rarely missed a first night, sitting through tragedy and comedy with equal grimness, and insisting, at the fall of every curtain, that there never had been and never would be but one playhouse of merit: the Boston Museum—never an artist to compare with Annie Clarke and Baron and Warren and Mrs. Vincent, and never a play to equal “The Angel of Midnight.”