"It is true," answered the girl, speaking quickly lest time to think alter her reply. She needed more than her old amah's reprieve, so suddenly given, so unbelievingly accepted, to hold her steady to the promise she had made; she needed new symptoms of the willful spirit which urged her to risk her life's happiness all on the prospect of change. The symptoms were not to be depended on; they might fail. She used them while they lasted, and said, "It is true."
"You mean you wish to be married, you would rather be married than to wait?"
"Yes."
Seldom had Herrick imagined his heart torn as by this terse reply. He took it as a mark of Nancy's immense ingratitude. Had he not been vexing himself cruelly over her future, picturing the sorrow, the loneliness and homesickness which even the best-laid plans must bring to pass, desperately trying to convince himself that he had done only right in betrothing the child; and now she was stretching out her hands for what seemed in her eyes to be only a glittering toy. He was saddened, disappointed. He had never thought Nancy could be so fickle. His vanity was hurt. He had never believed his daughter, the object of long-drawn-out concern and anguish, could so quickly, almost flippantly, resign the father who had loved her.
Her own self, as he remembered her from tender moments of a summer gone by, cried out against the words she had spoken. She had wanted, so she once said, to remain "like this forever—forever." Now she denied these words. She had no feeling, no affection. She was shallow, inconstant, humbugged by one whim to-day, by another gaudy whim to-morrow, no better than the tattling women round her. Well, it showed the folly of being anxious about the sorrows of other people, even of one's own children. "I am at least rid of this worry," thought the man in his anger.
"Just as you please," he said coldly. "If you wish to be married, married you shall be—and soon."
CHAPTER XX
Nancy now became the least important personage in the household. She was the centre, it was true, round which the preparations of the t'ai-t'ai were grouped, but she had discarded her personality when she surrendered this last right to hold her destiny an arm's length away. Now she was merely the prop on which to hang scarlet bridal garments. The old impersonal traditions of the past, which weighted and stiffened all that had to do with so human and pathetic an act as the sending a maiden out from the home of her father, hung heavily from her slight shoulders. The rite, promising so welcome a break into the monotony of the women's quarters, filled every mind, but there remained little thought or sympathy for the girl who was the cause of it all.
The t'ai-t'ai had given her husband no time to change his mind. She had sent the news at once to her brother, urging upon him haste in choosing the festive date. This the family of the bridegroom were prompt to do. They called in the fortune-tellers once more and, with their sage advice, settled upon a day, the twenty-fifth of the eighth moon, soon after the autumn festival, a date practical besides auspicious, because the bills for this expensive event need not be met till the New Year.