“Outrage!” I cried, resentfully.
“An outrage against the most sacred institution of China—the harem.”
“Fiddlesticks!” said Archie. “Don’t be an ass, Mai Lo. You’ve traveled a little and you know you’re talking rot.”
“This is not America; it is Kai-Nong,” said the governor, grimly. “You have violated the sanctity of my family relations. You have disgraced Nor Ghai, the daughter of the princely and royal Kais. For this our laws have provided a relentless penalty—death!”
“It is so,” wailed the little Nor Ghai, bursting into tears. “You will die—you will all be sliced! And I knew it and warned you.”
Mai Lo lifted his hand and Mai Mou and Ko-Tua crept obediently toward him with bowed heads and passed out of the pavilion. I saw them push through a hedge and in a flash realized why Bryonia had not seen the approach of the governor. We were nearer to Mai Lo’s house than the palace, and there was probably a gate in the wall that had admitted the girls and the governor from a direction opposite to that in which we had ourselves come.
Nor Ghai had started to follow her companions, but Mai Lo uttered a harsh order in Chinese and she halted, standing like a statue.
The mandarin clapped his hands, and four of his gaudily dressed soldiers burst through the hedge and entered the pavilion, guarding its entrance, There was no other way for us to escape.
Mai Lo thoughtfully took a position behind his soldiers before he made his next move.
“If you will leave this place at once, without a moment’s delay, and travel straight to Shanghai,” he said, deliberately, “I will spare your lives. If not——”