Sên King-lo called upon Lady Snow, called when she was at home, two days
after the night that Reginald Hamilton had caused Sir Charles’ right
foot to tingle and twitch under the dinner table.
And a week later Sên King-lo dined with the Snows. Again they, at
dinner, were a cosy party of four. Lady Snow had wished to make the
occasion a function, but Sir Charles had asked her to do nothing of the
sort. And he had asked Ivy to make a point of dining at home that night.
Neither woman thought of refusing to do as he asked. They both loved him
too well—and his requests were too infrequent to be resented or
callously disregarded. And Ivy was unaffectedly indifferent whether she
dined at home that night or not. If she had dined almost tête-à-tête
with Mr. Sên King-lo at Rosehill, she could do so at Emma’s. And that
Charles had spoken as he had of the Chinese had made more impression on
her than Miss Julia’s warm laudation of Mr. Sên had. Charles was a man.
He had lived in China. He reasoned and thought. Miss Julia was only a
woman, and felt more than she reasoned—“guessed” more than she knew.
“I shall make a ‘grand toilet,’ even if Charlie won’t let me make it a
grand dinner party,” Emma Snow told her cousin, as she gouged her spoon
into her breakfast grapefruit. “You can dress as much or as little as
you like, Ivy. Mr. Sên will scarcely expect an unmarried girl to be
gorgeous.”
“After several Washington seasons!” Sir Charles said dryly. “Dress as
much or as little as you like—both you girls—so long as you don’t
undress too much. That always puts a Chinese off—even one who knows
that with us it merely is virtue unabashed.”
“Don’t _you_ be indecent,” his wife cried sharply. “I’m sure my gowns
never are.”
“I don’t see that yellow thing you wore on Tuesday taking a prize at a
Quaker meeting-house,” her husband retorted quietly.
Emma dimpled. So Charlie had noticed a gown of hers for once!
“Wear something friendly looking, something home-like, as fine as you
like, but nothing of the fireworks order, to put a man off his food. And
_be_ friendly. That’s all I ask.”
The two women stared in surprise.
“Perhaps you’d like to look through my rags, and tell Justine which to
lay out for tonight?”
“It might not be a bad idea,” Snow replied.
“Well!” Lady Snow gasped. “Would you like me to have a few Chinese flags
in the drawing-room?” she demanded. “And the table decorated with red
fire-crackers?”
“I would not!” she was told. “For the love of Mike, be good tonight,
Em!”
“I wish I knew why you care so much,” she pouted.
“My dear,” he assured her, “you wouldn’t understand a word, if I told
you all about it. But I have my reasons, of course. I want Sên King-lo
to feel at home here. And I want him to come again.”
“Silly old politics!” the wife said scornfully. But her eyes danced.
Probably Charlie would let it be a big dinner-party next time.
“Precisely!” Sir Charles confirmed. “Silly old politics.”
It took Ivy Gilbert longer than usual to dress for dinner that night.
She had so few evening gowns that it took quite a time to decide which
she would wear. The white, she thought at first, because the
self-satisfied Asiatic had said how little he cared to see women wear
white. But no, that would pay him too much attention; and, after all,
she was not dressing for Sên King-lo, she was dressing for Charlie. The
green georgette was out of the question. It was very much the color of
that linen thing she’d worn at Miss Julia’s, and to repeat the color
he’d proclaimed Chinese might indeed seem to pay him too much attention.
It would have to be the gray or the red then. The gray was prettiest.
The red suited her best and was freshest.
She hurried her hair, and glanced at the clock. Heavens! how late it
was! That decided it. It would have to be the red. The gray took at
least fifteen minutes and the loan of Justine to get into properly. She
could dash into the red in no time at all—just over your head and it
went on by itself. She dashed into the red, caught up an ornament or two
that suited it—a couple of garnet bangles the children had given her on
her last birthday—and two inexpensive but picturesque hair ornaments,
and ran down the stairs, wishing she’d thought to find out what Emma had
decided to wear—not pink, she devoutly hoped. Emma wore pink oftener
than she did anything else, and this red thing of hers and any one of
Emma’s half-dozen pinks simply would squeal at each other—ran down the
stairs, and almost ran into the arms of Sên King-lo: a small social
catastrophe his presence of mind courteously avoided. But it had been a
very near thing.
They went into the drawing-room together; he quite at ease; a small
flame in each of her cheeks, brought there by an odd smile that had
crossed his face as he saw her in the well-lit hall.
The English girl did not know that the vivid red of her new evening gown
was the exact shade that every Chinese bride wears. And it was some
months later that Sên King-lo told her so.