you are brother and sister, for here you leave every one else and go and
discuss your own private matters. Couldn't we too listen to a single
sentence of what you have to say?"

While she taunted them, T'an Ch'un and Pao-yue eventually drew near her
with smiling faces.

Pao-yue, however, failed to see Lin Tai-yue and he concluded that she had
dodged out of the way and gone elsewhere. "It would be better," he
muttered, after some thought, "that I should let two days elapse, and
give her temper time to evaporate before I go to her." But as he drooped
his head, his eye was attracted by a heap of touch-me-nots, pomegranate
blossom and various kinds of fallen flowers, which covered the ground
thick as tapestry, and he heaved a sigh. "It's because," he pondered,
"she's angry that she did not remove these flowers; but I'll take them
over to the place, and by and bye ask her about them."

As he argued to himself, he heard Pao-ch'ai bid them go out. "I'll join
you in a moment," Pao-yue replied; and waiting till his two cousins had
gone some distance, he bundled the flowers into his coat, and ascending
the hill, he crossed the stream, penetrated into the arbour, passed
through the avenues with flowers and wended his way straight for the
spot, where he had, on a previous occasion, interred the peach-blossoms
with the assistance of Lin Tai-yue. But scarcely had he reached the mound
containing the flowers, and before he had, as yet, rounded the brow of
the hill, than he caught, emanating from the off side, the sound of some
one sobbing, who while giving way to invective, wept in a most
heart-rending way.

"I wonder," soliloquised Pao-yue, "whose servant-girl this is, who has