to drink," she said, lifting the tiny egg-shell bowl
and handing it to me.

"Don't you have any milk or sugar?" I said, taking the hot basin in my
hand and holding it by a little rim at the bottom, the only place one
could hold it for the heat.

"No, anything else spoil it. You drink that and I make you another."

She threw away the first leaves, put a fresh pinch of tea in, filled
up the bowl and strained it off into another as before, then picked up
the second by the bottom rim, drained it, and repeated the process
with marvellous rapidity. I watched her, sipping my own.

"Do you like it?" she asked. "It is real gold-tipped Orange Pekoe.
Very good tea, indeed!"

I drank it. It had a wonderful flavour. I told her so and took another
cup, to her great delight.

The waiter came in, laid our supper on the table, put the champagne in
ice, and departed. I offered Suzee the wine, but she said she had all
the tea she could drink. She was willing to eat, however, and we sat
down to the table.

"I want you to tell me all about what happened at Sitka," I said. "How
did poor old Hop Lee die?"

"Oh, it was all such a dreadful thing, Treevor," she returned,
spreading out both hands, on the wrists of which heavy silver bangles
set with amethysts shone and tinkled. "He went down one day to Fort
Wrangle on business and when he came back one day after, he had a
fearful cough, and then he got very ill and went to bed, and I sat
beside him and he got worse and worse. Oh, so bad, and the doctor came
and he had very much medicine, and then his chest began to bleed, and
he coughed very much blood for days and days and weeks, and I nursed
him all that time, Treevor, all night long. I got no sleep at all; oh,
it was very, very bad."

I looked at her curiously. I could not somehow picture Suzee as the
devoted nurse passing sleepless nights and never absent from the
pillow of the suffering Hop Lee.

As I looked at her, I noticed the strange thickening of the features
and darkening of the skin I had noted before at Sitka, and knew the
blood was mounting into the face, though she could not blush, as the
English girl blushes, red.

"It is really true, Treevor," she said, in an aggrieved tone.

"I am not contradicting you," I replied calmly, "go on."

"At last he died," she continued, though in rather a sulky tone, "and
doctor said I might die too, I had made myself so ill, so thin with
waiting on him. My bones stuck out so," she p