yesterday swore several oaths, and now would you really make me repeat
another one? But were the heavens to annihilate me and the earth to
extinguish me, what benefit would you derive?"

This rejoinder reminded Tai-yue of the drift of their conversation on the
previous day. And as indeed she had on this occasion framed in words
those sentiments, which should not have dropped from her lips, she
experienced both annoyance and shame, and she tremulously observed: "If
I entertain any deliberate intention to bring any harm upon you, may I
too be destroyed by heaven and exterminated by earth! But what's the use
of all this! I know very well that the allusion to marriage made
yesterday by Chang, the Taoist, fills you with dread lest he might
interfere with your choice. You are inwardly so irate that you come and
treat me as your malignant influence."

Pao-yue, the fact is, had ever since his youth developed a peculiar kind
of mean and silly propensity. Having moreover from tender infancy grown
up side by side with Tai-Yue, their hearts and their feelings were in
perfect harmony. More, he had recently come to know to a great extent
what was what, and had also filled his head with the contents of a
number of corrupt books and licentious stories. Of all the eminent and
beautiful girls that he had met too in the families of either distant or
close relatives or of friends, not one could reach the standard of Lin
Tai-yue. Hence it was that he commenced, from an early period of his
life, to foster sentiments of love for her; but as he could not very
well give utterance to them, he felt time and again sometimes elated,
sometimes vexed, and wont to exhaust every means to secretly subject her
heart to a test.

Lin Tai-yue happened, on the other hand, to possess in like manner a