least attention to this circumstance. But she unawares now heard Pao-yue
remark with a smile: "Cousin Pao, let me see that string of scented
beads of yours!"

By a strange coincidence, Pao-ch'ai wore the string of beads round her
left wrist so she had no alternative, when Pao-yue asked her for it, than
to take it off. Pao-ch'ai, however, was naturally inclined to
embonpoint, and it proved therefore no easy matter for her to get the
beads off; and while Pao-yue stood by watching her snow-white arm,
feelings of admiration were quickly stirred up in his heart. "Were this
arm attached to Miss Lin's person," he secretly pondered, "I might,
possibly have been able to caress it! But it is, as it happens, part and
parcel of her body; how I really do deplore this lack of good fortune."

Suddenly he bethought himself of the secret of gold and jade, and he
again scanned Pao-ch'ai's appearance. At the sight of her countenance,
resembling a silver bowl, her eyes limpid like water and almond-like in
shape, her lips crimson, though not rouged, her eyebrows jet-black,
though not pencilled, also of that fascination and grace which presented
such a contrast to Lin Tai-yue's style of beauty, he could not refrain
from falling into such a stupid reverie, that though Pao-ch'ai had got
the string of beads off her wrist, and was handing them to him, he
forgot all about them and made no effort to take them. Pao-ch'ai
realised that he was plunged in abstraction, and conscious of the
awkward position in which she was placed, she put down the string of
beads, and turning round was on the point of betaking herself away, when
she perceived Lin Tai-yue, standing on the door-step, laughing
significantly while biting a handkerchief she held in her mouth. "You
can't resist," Pao-ch'ai said, "a single puff of wind; and why do you
stand there and expose yourself to the very teeth of it?"