“If that is the case, I must try to improve my character.”
“Oh, I’m not blaming you at all, only telling you the way it strikes me. Perhaps I’m altogether wrong. Very likely I am, and anyhow I don’t suppose it does any good to talk of these things. By the way, how is your arm this morning?”
“It is all right, thank you. The captain’s liniment has been magical in its effect. It was very stupid of me to get my arm in such a condition, and there is less excuse because I used to be a first-rate cricket bowler; but somehow yesterday I got so interested in the game that I forgot about my muscles.”
“Is it true that the Empress has been murdered?”
“Yes, I had the news from the British Consul, and I have no doubt of its accuracy.”
“How perfectly awful to think that only the day before yesterday we saw her sitting there like a graven image; indeed she scarcely seemed alive even then. What in the world did they kill the poor woman for?”
“I do not know,” I replied, although I had strong suspicions regarding the cause of her fate. The next statement by Miss Hemster astonished me.
“Well, it served her right. A woman in that position should assert herself. She sat there like a Chinese doll that had gone to sleep. If she had made them stand around they would have had more respect for her. Any woman owes it to her sex to make the world respect her. Think of a sleepy creature like that holding the position of Empress, and yet making less than nothing of it.”
“You must remember, Miss Hemster, that the status of woman in Corea is vastly different from her position in the United States.”