"Now it is ready 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."