Emmeline was puzzled when his card was brought to her, but after a moment she said, “Yes—I’ll see him.”
Perhaps Uncle Silas had died and had left her most of his money—most sensible of him, if he had, for she’d make better use of it than ever Reg would. Perhaps Uncle Silas had, and Mr. Kelly had come to tell her of her legacy. She’d wear deep mourning for her uncle, of course, if he’d left her a lot—half or more. She loved white, and white was Chinese mourning she knew. For, if Miss Hamilton knew less than nothing of China, it was not because she had not read feverishly a large number of books telling of that country and its people.
But surely her father or mother would have telegraphed, if old Uncle Silas was dead. No—she was afraid it couldn’t be that. Well, she’d said he could come up—and she might as well see him, no matter what it was.
She went to the window and arranged herself there in an Oriental languorous attitude.
She thought that the light from the window and the background of purple, dragon-embroidered curtains, with a candle-lantern of jangling glass beads hanging between them, suited her well.
And Emmeline was looking her best today. Excitement was tinging her thin face with almost a girlish and pretty rose, and her pale eyes were sparkling. She was hoping so much from the paragraph in the paper of which several copies—blue penciled—lay about the room conspicuously. The paragraph was in just as she’d wished. And out of one copy of the paper she’d cut it, and she was wearing it now in the jade locket over her heart! She was hoping everything from Sên King-lo’s chivalry! The Chinese were so chivalrous—all the best authorities said so, and a man who had spent a week in Shanghai had told her once that it was perfectly true, and even a Presbyterian missionary friend of her father’s to whom she had repeated it had made no reply.
At the sound of hoofs she turned her face to the window, to see, who was riding by; she didn’t ride herself, she thought it too mannish, and she didn’t enjoy it—but she always liked to watch men who rode. And though she never yet had seen him pass her window, there was always a chance that it might be. . . .
It was. And a bitter look rushed into her eyes. For Sên King-lo was speaking to Ivy Gilbert, and Ivy was laughing back at him—neither paying any undue attention to the horses they rode.
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.”