"I am sorry for you," Nancy went on. "No luck will come out of this marriage." She looked at the huge gilt characters on the scarlet banners which lined the wall. "Hsi! Hsi! Hsi! Hsi!" she exclaimed, mocking their message of happiness. "Happiness everywhere, paper happiness. There is no happiness in your heart or mine, and you know it. Your own ancestors would cry out against the blasphemy. I would never have worshiped them to-day if I had known my father was dead. We have disgraced them. I thought your family were an honorable family, that they used to be officials, that they served the Emperor, yet they have shown themselves no better than small-livered coolies. Happiness!" she muttered again with intense passion. "What happiness can result from dishonoring the dead?"
Suddenly she forgot the awkward boy at her side. The aching freshness of her loss made her too miserable to defy him. She choked down a sob of despair, hiding her face in the gayly embroidered pillow.
"Oh, my father, my father, my father," she wailed, "why did you leave me, why did you leave me alone, why couldn't you stay with me! I want you!"
It was the first time her spirit had given way, the first time she had broken down through all the prolonged travail which had brought her so fearfully step by step to this unendurable moment. And as if to seize the advantage of her defeat, the door opened; her new parents appeared. They were white with anger at the tales of the eavesdroppers who had been listening to the events of the bridal chamber from outside and had heard Nancy upbraiding her irresolute master.
"You call yourself a man," scoffed the mother, seizing her son, "you a man, to be bullied by your wife on her bridal night, to let her devil of a tongue steal your courage? Small joy shall we have from such a yellow-mouthed milksop as you!"
She bundled him like a disobedient truant into bed, taunting him with her sarcasm, stinging him into hatred for the girl who had made him ridiculous, till he did not care whether he stifled her bruised body with his passion.
CHAPTER XXIX
News of Herrick's death reached Ronald Nasmith almost as quickly as it reached the family of the dead man. The t'ai-t'ai was anxious to settle the business of his estate and lost no time in sending Edward, who could speak English, as her ambassador.
Ronald was at home when the boy came. He brought him into his own study, for he knew, after one glance at his face, the errand upon which he had come.