find out everything. Such a thing can't even be suggested. The only
thing I can do is to quietly slave away, that's all."

"You shouldn't work so hard," smiled Pao-ch'ai. "What do you say to my
doing a few things for you?"

"Are you in real earnest!" ventured Hsi Jen smiling. "Well, in that
case, it is indeed a piece of good fortune for me! I'll come over myself
in the evening."

But before she could conclude her reply, she of a sudden noticed an old
matron come up to her with precipitate step. "Where does the report come
from," she interposed, "that Miss Chin Ch'uan-erh has gone, for no rhyme
or reason, and committed suicide by jumping into the well?"

This bit of news startled Hsi Jen. "Which Chin Ch'uan-erh is it," she
speedily inquired.

"Where are two Chin Ch'uan-erhs to be found!" rejoined the old matron.
"It's the one in our Mistress,' Madame Wang's, apartments, who was the
other day sent away for something or other, I don't know what. On her
return home, she raised her groans to the skies and shed profuse tears,
but none of them worried their minds about her, until, who'd have
thought it, they could see nothing of her. A servant, however, went just
now to draw water and he says that 'while he was getting it from the
well in the south-east corner, he caught sight of a dead body, that he
hurriedly called men to his help, and that when they fished it out, they
unexpectedly found that it was she, but that though they bustled about
trying to bring her round, everything proved of no avail'"