Julie looked back at her, troubled. “Oh, yes,” she said, “it aches all the time.”
“And have you done nothing about it?”
The girl looked embarrassed. “The doctors might want to open me up, to find out what is the matter. Besides, they charge what Father Hull calls American prices.”
“Better keep away from them,” Isabel agreed, turning away.
Barry’s guests, with their tea-cups in their hands, sauntered through the rooms, examining his collections. The object of greatest interest was a bright red chair gleaming like coals of fire, with in-set golden dragons.
“The throne of the East!” Ellis explained. “Red lacquer, glazed all over with poison, and as ancient as Solomon. Emperors have sat in it, and the devil himself; and because of it execution grounds have run red.”
Observing Isabel staring intently at the chair, Commissioner Caples playfully remarked: “Indeed and you’d look very pretty in it, my dear—with a tower of jewels on your head and a fringe of pearls hanging down over your eyes, so that nobody could have an inkling of what you were about. We’d have another splendid Dowager.”
The guests drifted out to the various engagements evening always brought. Sir John went to his room to read his letters.
Barry beckoned to Julie. “There is something I want to show you!” All afternoon there had been in his manner the intimation of showing his things especially to her.
She followed him into a room, where he pointed out a large framed picture of the Wall of China going over the mountains into Manchuria. Instantly there sprang before her mind the vision of it climbing in the evening light the steep foot-hills, up to the dark tops of the mountains, where its splendid watch towers rose like a crown against the sky.