CHAPTER XXX.

Pao-ch'ai avails herself of the excuse afforded her by a fan to
administer a couple of raps.
While Ch'un Ling traces, in a absent frame of mind, the outlines of
the character Ch'iang, a looker-on appears on the scene.


Lin Tai-yue herself, for we will now resume our narrative, was also, ever
since her tiff with Pao-yue, full of self-condemnation, yet as she did
not see why she should run after him, she continued, day and night, as
despondent as she would have been had she lost some thing or other
belonging to her.

Tzu Chuean surmised her sentiments. "As regards what happened the other
day," she advised her, "you were, after all, Miss, a little too hasty;
for if others don't understand that temperament of Pao-yue's, have you
and I, surely, also no idea about it? Besides, haven't there been
already one or two rows on account of that very jade?"

"Ts'ui!" exclaimed Tai-yue. "Have you come, on behalf of others, to find
fault with me? But how ever was I hasty?"

"Why did you," smiled Tzu Chuean, "take the scissors and cut that tassel
when there was no good reason for it? So isn't Pao-yue less to blame than
yourself, Miss? I've always found his behaviour towards you, Miss,
without a fault. It's all that touchy disposition of yours, which makes
you so often perverse, that induces him to act as he does."

Lin Tai-yue had every wish to make some suitable reply, when she heard