Chinaman, though."

"Ay, there's the Chink," assented Ricardo rather absentmindedly.

He was debating in his mind the advisability of making a clean breast of
his knowledge of the girl's existence. Finally he concluded he wouldn't.
The enterprise was difficult enough without complicating it with an
upset to the sensibilities of the gentleman with whom he had the honour
of being associated. Let the discovery come of itself, he thought,
and then he could swear that he had known nothing of that offensive
presence.

He did not need to lie. He had only to hold his tongue.

"Yes," he muttered reflectively, "there's that Chink, certainly."

At bottom, he felt a certain ambiguous respect for his governor's
exaggerated dislike of women, as if that horror of feminine presence
were a sort of depraved morality; but still morality, since he counted
it as an advantage. It prevented many undesirable complications. He did
not pretend to understand it. He did not even try to investigate
this idiosyncrasy of his chief. All he knew was that he himself was
differently inclined, and that it did not make him any happier or safer.
He did not know how he would have acted if he had been knocking about
the world on his own. Luckily he was a subordinate, not a wage-slave but
a follower--which was a restraint. Yes! The other sort of disposition
simplified matters in general; it wasn't to be gainsaid. But it was
clear that it could also complicate them--as in this most important and,
in Ricardo's view, already sufficiently delicate case. And the worst of
it was that one could not tell exactly in what precise manner it would
act.

It was unnatural, he thought somewhat peevishly. How was one to reckon
up the unnatural? There were no rules for that. The faithful henchman
of plain Mr. Jones, foreseeing many difficulties of a material order,
decided to keep the girl out of the governor's knowledge, out of his
sight, too, for as long a time as it could be managed. That, alas,
seemed to be at most a matter of a few hours; whereas Ricardo feared
that to get the affair properly going would take some days. Once well
started, he was not afraid of his gentleman failing him. As is often the
case with lawless natures, Ricardo's faith in any given individual was
of a simple, unquestioning character. For man must have some support in
life.

Cross-legged, his head drooping a little and perfectly still, he might
have been meditating in a bonze-like attitude