And then the girl knew.
CHAPTER XXV
Sên King-lo did not know—yet. But Ivy knew.
Almost always the woman knows first—no matter how inexperienced she is, or how experienced he.
Ivy knew. And because she reeled a little under the shock—and all that it meant—she blundered into words that were the last she’d have spoken, if she and her tongue had known what they were doing.
“How odd! Your mother’s name was Ruby Sên.”
She knew what she’d said the moment she’d said it, and she flushed, face and neck, almost as crimson as a Chinese’s bride’s veil.
Even then the man did not know—neither his secret nor hers. But the first far-off glimmering of his own came to him then—like the shimmering scent of distant flowers or the tremble of music a long way away.
He saw Ivy’s confusion, the red on her face, and that her lips and hands trembled a little. But he mistook it to be only her vexation for a faux pas that the sensitive taste of so nice a girl exaggerated out of all proportion to the small thing it was.
“But no,” he reminded her with a light laugh, “it was not—it was Sên Ruby.”