than it was.

"His son, it appeared, had married and was accidentally drowned in the
Great Canal hardly a month after the ceremony. His widow belonged, then,
to the husband's family, and from that moment her father-in-law had had
nothing but bad luck. He had been robbed, his best stallion died, there
had been a flood in his tea which not only spoiled the crop but filled
the ground with silt--it was impossible to relate his calamities. He
consulted a necromancer at last and learned that it was all caused by the
presence of Taou Yuen.

"This, you see, made the difficulty, as it's a frightful disgrace to
return a married daughter to her own father's home, and Lu had grown very
fond of her. She was extremely clever and virtuous, he said. The other
thing was to kill her or force her to commit suicide. He told me very
calmly that he would like to avoid this.

"Then, in the linguist's most flowery manner, they went on with what Lu
Kikwang proposed. He had recognized that I was a man of 'superior
propriety' and he wondered if I would take Taou Yuen away to America with
me. Very secretly though--there would be an uproar if it were known that
a Manchu woman had been married to a foreigner. I could see her first in
his garden without her knowing anything about it.

"It's needless to tell you that I went with them that afternoon. A
meeting was arranged for the next day--" he broke off, sitting forward
with elbows on knees, gazing fixedly at his clasped hands.

"You make that very clear, Gerrit," his sister-in-law replied; "I now
understand the past almost as well as yourself; but it's the future I'm