By mid-January the rumors that had smirched Sên’s name had died away and made room for others about some one else. Washington society has too many sensations to dawdle long over one—and too many great interests to quite lose its head over things that are in truth as uninteresting as they are vicious and petty.
Sên still rode and walked with Ivy, had long Anglo-Chinese conferences with Snow, still played with Dick and Blanche, sometimes carrying them off to have several hours of high-jinks in his own rooms. Sir Charles went there sometimes, and Emma Snow had had tea there with Sên King-lo twice and had lunched there once with Sên and Miss Julia: a very great and unmerited honor for Sên, Uncle Lysander thought. Kow Li had a different opinion which he kept to himself.
Ivy had not been invited. Mary Withrow and Lucille Smith wondered why. Emma Snow and Dr. Ray, who still was in Washington, thought they knew, but, like Kow Li, each kept her opinion strictly to herself.
A great English statesman was the lion of the January hour. His name was world-known, and he had married a minor royalty. He was staying with the Snows, and Lady Snow’s big drawing-room was insufficient for her callers.
Sir Charles and his wife had gone with the Duke to the White House an hour ago, and Sên King-lo and Ivy were looking at the confession her cousin’s guest had written just before dinner; the first contribution of that sort she had asked for since Sên’s.
“That reminds me,” she said, as he closed the book, and she took it from him and opened it again, turning the pages until she found his, “I’ve always meant to ask you or Charlie and always forgotten to do it—I’ve such a sieve of a head.” She laid her finger below the character that stood for a woman’s name. “Will you pronounce it for me?”
Sên spoke the Chinese word.
She made him repeat it and tried to say it after him.
“Oh, it would take me years! What an appalling language!” She laughed at him. “But I like your favorite name, Mr. Sên. I like its sound when you say it. I think it is beautiful.”
“The most beautiful word in the world to me,” Sên said—“the most beautiful name in the world. We Chinese are said to crave only sons. But as long as I can remember, my heart’s desire has been to have a daughter whose mother would let me give her that name.”