And Low Soong called from the bridge, “Chillee! Chillee!”
Women’s voices, deeper throated than Nang’s and Low’s, European voices, could be heard coming that way, and Basil said nervously, “Yes,” adding in English what Low had just said, “They are coming. I shall leave them when they are going—make some excuse, and I shall go and hide in the pagoda by the lake——”
“Oh, that pagoda—by the lake!” Nang Ping interjected softly, but her voice was grim.
“I shall see them pass, and when they have quite gone I will come back. Wait for me when they are gone. I must speak to you. Remember!” He moved away from her, and went and stood beside an old stone lantern, as if examining and admiring it for the first time.
“Low Soong!” Nang Ping said breathlessly, and Low hurried to her from the bridge and put her arms about her. And they stood so for a moment.
But the voices and the footsteps were close now, and Nang Ping released herself from Low’s comforting arms, and stood gracious and alone.
This was one of Florence Gregory’s young days—one of her very youngest. Still in her early forties, she looked a radiant twenty-five as she stood an instant on the bridge, and then came gayly down it. And her radiant English beauty—blue eyes, golden hair, cream and rose face—looked all the more radiant because of the delicate gray of her gown—a dress of artificial simplicity, Paris-made. It had not cost as much as Chinese Nang’s fantastic clothes had, but it had cost a great deal, and it was the more perishable.
Hilda Gregory, walking beside her mother, quite a pretty girl seen by herself, seemed in the mother’s wake rather than side by side, though far the more brightly clad, and was a dim afterglow of the matron’s glory—as Low Soong, for all her gay apparel and own high coloring, standing a little apart, seemed too of Nang Ping’s. And Florence Gregory looked as much Basil’s sister as Hilda, who was a few years his junior.
A Chinese serving woman followed the Gregory ladies. She was palpably Mrs. Gregory’s maid, and not Hilda’s; why, it is impossible to say, unless because the mother was unmistakably of the woman-type to which servants and dogs attach themselves, that claims them, and to which they belong. Hilda Gregory probably played tennis and golf better than her mother, and plied a more useful needle; but she buttoned her own boots as naturally as it came to the mother to lean well back at ease against down cushions and have her hair brushed by a servant. Ah Wong, the amah, carried a closed parasol, a costly European thing of lace and mother-o’-pearl, that would have suited Miss Gregory’s rose crêpe quite as well as it did Mrs. Gregory’s silver ninon; but the sturdy Chinese figure, plainly clad in dark blue cotton, was unmistakably in attendance on the mother.
There were six here now, not counting the Wu servants moving on the outskirts of the group, silent and busied. But Mrs. Gregory and Wu Nang Ping held the stage: English womanhood and Chinese something at their best.