When she spoke of the extravagance of the Dowager Empress, it was the first time since they had begun to talk together that Zivana’s voice showed any emotion.
“In the country people are starving,” she said. “They are over-taxed and it is hard for the ordinary Chinese to obtain any form of justice.”
“How do you know all this this?” Stanton Ware asked.
“I have travelled a great deal,” she answered him coldly, as if she resented his asking a personal question, and she went on,
“It is estimated that the annual upkeep of the f*******n City is six and a half million pounds a year! And there are six thousand people living within its high walls.”
“How can they spend so much?” Stanton Ware questioned.
“What has upset the people of the country more than anything is the way the Dowager Empress
