Yuen's extravagant appearance, there was a quality of being which made
impossible any blunt interrogation. She had a decidedly aloof manner. Her
mother, Sidsall recognized, and the older women they knew, had a trace of
this; but in the Manchu it was carried infinitely further, a most
autocratic disdain. Her feeling for the other shifted rapidly from
attitude to attitude.

She watched, she was certain, these same sensations come over her Aunt
Caroline Saltonstone, Mrs. Clifford and Mrs. Wibird, who called on Gerrit
Ammidon's wife that afternoon. They were sitting with their crinoline
widespread against their chairs, gazing with a concerted battery of
curiosity at Taou Yuen's shimmering figure in the drawing-room screened
against the sun. Mrs. Wibird, Sidsall thought--a woman of fat and faded
prettiness, with wine red splotches beneath her eyes, and a voice that
went on and on in the relating of various petty emotional
disturbances--must have resembled Olive as a girl. It was probable, then,
that Olive would look like her mother when in turn she was middle-aged.
Mrs. Clifford, unseasonably huddled in her perpetual shawl, more than
ever suggested a haggard marble in somberly rich clothes. Aunt Caroline
sat with complacent hands and loud inattentive speech. Taou Yuen smiled
at them placidly.

"Our men," said Mrs. Clifford, "went out to China for years. It never
occurred to them however to marry a Chinese woman; but I dare say they
didn't see the right sort."

"Most of the captains like China," Taou Yuen said. "They are so far away
from their families--" she made a brief philosophical gesture, and Madra
Clifford studied her with a narrowed gaze. "It would be the same," she
continued, "if Chinamen came to America." Mrs. Wibird shuddered. "A