Ruben and Ivy Sên

The servant who let him in one Tuesday in May knew that Whitmore had come to make Mrs. Sên an offer of marriage, and when the man let the peer out half an hour later, Jenkins ha...

The day that Ivy came to her, appealing for her help to overcome “Mother’s wicked obstinacy,” and broke down and wept out what until now she had never told any one, Lady Snow ca...

On the surface Mrs. Sên lived pleasantly and calmly, as scores of such Englishwomen do--London, Surrey, moderate travel, ample means, good health, “troops of friends,” not a wor...

Mrs. Sên intended to present Ivy at next season’s first Drawing-Room. It was about that the four women were talking earnestly over the strawberries and cream of tea in the garde...

They had not often seen Ivy so sweetly happy--not for several years. She was quietly gay all through dinner, and afterwards in the drawing-room, on the veranda and at billiards,...

Lord Whitmore could not have chosen a less auspicious moment to urge his suit again, though it is equally true that he could not, as far as results went, have chosen a better on...

Fewer girls create a sensation, when they make their presentation curtsey at Buckingham Palace, than are said to have done so. Too many pretty débutantes follow each other to th...

A Chinese girl--in China--very much more ill than Ivy Sên, would have rushed to the door, would have opened it for the mother with grateful words and bending gesture of welcome....

The letter began queerly, Curtis thought, and he believed he had never seen the handwriting before; but you couldn’t be too sure of that--so many girls wrote to a fellow; and no...

The curio shop was in one of the narrow heterogeneous streets near the British Museum that run their short length north of Oxford Street and are stopped abruptly by wise old din...

When Ruben refused the gift of the most beautiful horse animal--there never was question or thought of payment between Ruben and Kow Li; there could not be--the disappointment o...

They were not talking now and had not been for some time. They had had a long, happy, restful day together--Ivy was on the river with the Blakes--and they had thrashed out a goo...

Out of harness now, Snow still was a busy man, and this was an unusual hour for him to pay even an informal cousinly call. Mrs. Sên wondered what had brought him and Ruben said...

As Ruben turned out of Bond Street into Piccadilly and down it towards home he had no intention of going into Burlington House. He could not remember that he had ever gone into...

Ruben Sên let himself in with his latchkey, threw his hat and gloves on the hall table, and strolled to the little morning-room which usually was his downstairs “den” when he wa...

If she were in England it might delay his journeying into China. Most probably she was, since an English artist had painted her for the London Academy. If she were, he would kno...

They three stood together on the great boat’s deck until “All off for the shore!” had been cried twice; Ruben in his English traveling gear, radiant-faced and eager-eyed, Snow t...

Ho-nan was his objective; but he wished to seem less a stranger in the Sên-land than he could hope to seem just yet, and he felt, as both Snow and Kow Li had counseled, that he...

When Mrs. Sên’s letter reached the Sêns in Ho-nan it filled them with consternation. Sên C’hian Fan read it twice and then again before he summoned all the family--more than a h...

Chinese as he was, and still more Chinese as he liked to believe himself, there was considerable Englishman in Ruben Sên--Sên Ruben. Had there been none, he could not have fitte...

Li Ch’un is a movable feast, and the Sêns and all their vassal villages were celebrating it several moons later than it is most often held. The month of the Double Cherry had al...

At first he thought that some other was taking by chance this same path as he; but he thought it odd that even one of all that countryside had kept apart from the jubilant anxio...

La-yuên the concubine had not overpraised it; Ya Tin had not overpromised it when she had said to Sên King-lo at their parting, “I will raise a _pai-fang_ for thy pardon of our...

On a garden bench in Surrey, the seat on which her father had died in her mother’s arms--but the girl did not know that--Ivy Sên sat leaning against her lover. His arms were abo...

The Sêns were not cat worshipers, but a royal-born Sên woman had been, and the clan revered her memory, and clung to her old custom religiously--and half in prank. They washed t...

He was not glad that Ruben had come, but he could hold no bitterness to the boy who, garbed so, slept so at the foot of a father’s altar, who wore the signet of the Sêns on his...

La-yuên had taken no part in Wash-the-Cats, nor had watched it. Such things were nothing to her now. Only the Feast of Lanterns lured her now, of all China’s fairyland, jeweled...

Very slowly, but quite surely, Ruben won them--won even Sên Jo Hiêsen and the servitor who had begged to be sent to Hong Kong to assassinate the English intruder. Of them all, o...

_why_ he did. But for me it is the only path; the road my feet must walk and keep to while my mother lives. I beg all the gods that my exile may be long; but if my mother goes b...

He took no notice of Sên Ruben, unless an added frown of displeasure at not having instant speech alone with C’hian Fan, and he returned C’hian’s greeting as quickly and curtly...

But neither Jo Hiêsen nor Sên Ruben went a-warring. Several of C’hian Fan’s predictions were fulfilled, before either graybeard or stripling had quite decided which of the sever...

If No Fee was a resource and a pal, she was a good deal of a nuisance, too, at times. She not only wanted her own way always--Ruben had known many girls and others who were not...

Sên Ruben gave a cry when they had passed the loquats. So smothered in wee white roses, in creeping columbines, and imperial wistaria that its thatched roof scarcely showed at a...

Sên Toon stood at the house door, waiting to lift his bride from her flowery-chair and carry her across the flaming threshold. Her cavalcade drew near. They were carrying her th...

Sên Ruben heard some one running after him up the Peach-tree Hill, turned and saw that it was Sên Toon, but scarcely recognized him. Toon took the tiny trickling brook with a me...

Knowing that the Pepper Month was coming faster than he realized among the queen-time of the roses, Sên Ruben went to the witch woman a day or two before the fish-fight. He woul...

No had had a deal to tell him of her great girl friend C’hi Yamei and it had not attracted Sên Ruben. C’hi Yamei was “emancipated.” Ruben was not sure that so-called emancipatio...

Two events of such moment electrified the never slothful household. Long before the Hour of the Hare there was more bustle and industry in the big house-core of Sênland than had...

Sên Ruben’s heart broke into song; sang an old Chinese love-tune, and his face flooded with a look--an old, old story--that girl-eyes far less world-wise and experienced than th...

Sên Ruben’s first move was to pay court to C’hi Ng Yelü, the father of C’hi Yamei, and to win his favor if he could. It is not much use to love a Chinese girl unless you can gai...

And Sênland was emptied when C’hi Yamei’s litter was carried through the homestead’s great gate. The litter’s silken curtains were close drawn but they stirred a little in the c...

Sên Ruben had not come here to worship or to keep filial vigil; he had come to be alone, had come to escape from the house in which he had heard the shattering news; come for sa...

Ruben was laughing gaily when they turned their horses out of Stream-side Lane into the wide gate of Ashacres. It had been a splendid scamper home since the sudden flakes had wa...

Snow wondered if Ruben would be more inclined to talk about China when they were alone than he had seemed inclined or even willing that afternoon in the hall. Always until now R...

Tom Gaylor’s wife was almost--but not quite--as much sought after in London as Ivy Sên had been. An unmarried heiress presents innumerable possibilities--a fascinating theme. “W...

“Not me! Too select!” Ivy’s voice was tart. “And we are not invited,” she added more pleasantly as Ruben opened the door. “Good-by, Mother. I’ll tell Lucien about the underskirt.”

An early guest or two were there already when Ruben reached the drawing-room. He had delayed himself longer than he had realized with Kow, and he had gone to the conservatory fo...

Miss C’hi changed their talk to lighter things then, feeling, as Ruben Sên suspected she did, that further comparison between them of woman’s welfare and comfort in East and in...

It was not the common fear--fear of physical pain, so often the cross of Western approaching motherhood--that racked Ivy Gaylor. She was too Chinese for that; in spite of hersel...

When they lingered together for a few moments after their guests were gone--as it was their custom to do, and usually for longer than they did to-night--Mrs. Sên did not mention...

Maturity sets the pace in China, and maturity takes a slow speed. And it is the fathers who canvass, accept or reject, bargain and rebargain, with infinite shrewdness and great...

But neither to C’hi nor to Yamei herself did Sên speak of his great desire. For his mother’s sake he would not, until her grieved anxiety over Ivy had passed.

“Oh--he played the man. I slipped down and warned him. And I told him what Ivy felt about it--told him straight out all the story of her own rebellion and misery. And he--yes, h...

Easter was late this year. The Park was gay with crocuses and snowdrops, and Kensington Gardens were gayer with snowdrops, crocuses and sturdy English babies. The Houses were si...

C’hi Yamei wore her Chinese robes to-day. Out of her own sleeping room she never did that in London--rarely even there, so entirely had her father imbued her with his own “when...

The girl was bending over his roses. She did not know he was there and her face was eloquent; C’hi Yamei whom he saw lovelier because she wore her Chinese garments.

If he had not found his mother at home when he went in, Sên would have gone to her the next morning after learning by ’phone whether he’d find her at Ivy’s in Dorset or at Ashac...

After as glorious a sunrise as England often sees, the day again turned to rain; not the soft veil of misty drizzle of yesterday, but a hard thudding downpour that persisted and...

Then he bobbed up as if his old body had been provided with very excellent springs, and began rummaging chests and wardrobes, almost forgetting and quite ignoring Sên Ruben’s pr...

He felt assured that his love would not be refused. He was contented to wait a few hours, even a few days, because so much delay was due to C’hi Yamei. Kow Li would make a perfe...

Mrs. Sên looked up with a sunny smile as he came into her room. The effort and strain it cost her to show a complacence she did not feel were so sharp and hard that they blinded...

One can suffer only so much at any one time over any one thing; it is one of the great mercies of human existence that each individual’s capacity for pain is strictly limited. I...

“I don’t want to go to the garden party, Tom. I’m sick of functions. London gets hotter and hotter--and dustier and grubbier--and all the people we know grow stupider and stupid...

The Gaylors jog on. Gaylor still chafes for a son--and knows that his wife will not again accept motherhood. But, understanding her scruple but little, not sympathizing with it...