Ivy stiffened. “Do I what, Miss Hamilton?”
“You know that my brother cares for you.”
“We will not discuss that,” Ivy cut her short.
“And Sên King-lo is all the world to me.”
“Oh—hush,” Ivy cried, ashamed to her core that any girl could be so brazen—for such she considered the other’s avowal of feeling for a man with whom, as Ivy knew, her acquaintance was very slight. It did not shock her at all that Miss Hamilton had come to care for a Chinese—for she, Ivy herself, had ceased to think of Sên King-lo as of a race apart and debarred and even unconsciously thought of him as of one far less alien to her than most of the men she met here.
“He is,” Emmeline went desperately on, “and I don’t care who knows it——”
“That is evident,” Ivy Gilbert thought. But she said nothing.
“—and he’d have been engaged to me now, if it wasn’t for you.”
“That is preposterous,” Ivy interrupted indignantly.
“It is preposterous,” Emmeline agreed quickly; “for he does not care for you really, and I don’t believe that you care for him. If you do care for him, say so—” Ivy’s lip curled—“and then it will be a fair fight between you and me. But, if you don’t, won’t you give him back to me? I want him. Do you?”