But the great joy of her father in welcoming his children made Nancy ashamed of these treacherous thoughts. She read in his face his own sacrifice, the self-control which had kept him from forgetting his loneliness of a fortnight by exploiting his passion for the concubine. His restraint had been more than human. Only his love for his daughter, the wish not to mar her last days by any shadow of unhappiness, had held the man back from the delectable oblivion in Kuei-lien's beauty. He had spent many hours in his study, had written characters and read dry books and taken Li-an for long prattling walks, all the time wondering what Nancy was doing, hoping that she would not return, that she would yield to the persuasions he had foreseen, yet counting off one by one the days of her visit and dreading the one first act of disloyalty which might keep her with the friends and lover from the West.
When the chairs were announced he did not know which was uppermost, sorrow or joy, as he hastened to greet the wanderers. It was not his fault that Nancy had come back. The chance had been hers to escape. It was not his fault that they must fulfill the bond they had made. It was fate. One cannot fight against the ordinances of fate. He could only make the most of Nancy's last days at home.
But Kuei-lien and Li-an saved the return from being desolate. They were so full of questions that they awoke echoes of laughter in the household. They embarked Edward upon long tales and they set even the woebegone amah bragging till she forgot the dreariness of being back again in recounting the glories of the Ferris establishment, glories, she let her hearers distinctly understand, such as she had been bred to appreciate. When she descanted upon the cleanliness of the Ferris family, the unashamed use of soap and water, the delicacy which did not tolerate dust and cobwebs even in corners where they could not be seen, the splendor of the dinner table set with linen and silver and shining glasses, the manners and dress of the children, the bathrooms, the bedrooms, the kitchen, the pantry, it was only a step to her memories of Nancy's mother and of stories she got new zest, fresh energy, to tell for the hundredth time.
Nancy also lost part of her sadness in satisfying Kuei-lien's curiosity about everything that had happened during her stay—about everything except the things which mattered. She was clearer than her fulsome old nurse in describing the picnics and games and swimming parties and rebuilding before Kuei-lien's eyes every last detail of the costumes she had worn. Clothes intrigued the concubine; they were a harmless topic for Nancy to enlarge upon, indeed, kept her mind from graver regrets, so that Kuei-lien became quite enchanted by extraordinary surmises as to why the foreigner wasted good embroidery on her chemise and hid satin ribbons where they could not be seen, and cumbered herself, even at home, with the superfluity of a skirt.
As a practical demonstration, Nancy consented to wear a dress which Helen and Elizabeth between them had given her.
"It's our gift of remembrance," Helen had said.
"And who knows if the time won't come when you will want to give up being Chinese," added Elizabeth. "You will always have this ready."
Kuei-lien and Li-an led Nancy out, made her walk up and down the path behind the temple, while they clapped and laughed their applause at her unwonted appearance. So excited were they that they never heard Herrick approach, did not even guess his presence till he had stood for some minutes dumbly watching his daughter. When they saw him they turned suddenly quiet. Herrick gave a little helpless toss of his head, then he called Nancy to his room.
"Sit down," he said, looking wonderingly at this stranger of a daughter whom he felt—so curiously changed was she by her Western garments—he had never known before.
"I have been wondering," he began rather deliberately, "why you asked to be married earlier. The more I think of it, the less I understand it. What were you hiding from me?"