"Married!"
"Yes, I've found a good husband for her. How could I rest easy with that responsibility on my mind? Let's hope, my dear sir, that when you're married you will have only sons. You'll have more sleep, less worry. It is too great a strain to have the future of growing daughters on one's mind."
"But when is she to be married?" asked Nasmith, trying to keep his voice level.
"That I can't say. Not for four years, I hope. You remember the terms you found too extravagant. If I find my strength failing, I shall hasten it. If anything should happen too suddenly, that is, if she should fail to be married before I die, then I shall have to ask you to hand over her marriage portion. But I shall leave no stone unturned to spare you such a disagreeable necessity."
"Then she is to marry a Chinese?" asked Nasmith, scarcely brave enough to hear the answer.
"She is engaged to a Chinese."
Nasmith did not pursue this topic further. There were too many thoughts to be uttered; he did not know which to select. The shame, the wrongfulness of the father's action choked him, but he remembered that he had been warned. He had refused his chance and felt honor-bound not to protest, now that Herrick had disposed of his daughter in a way which seemed to him so utterly appalling. He knew, also, how unavailing protests would be, how deaf the ears upon which they would fall. A betrothal in China was too binding, too sacred a compact to be dissolved by the persuasion of a moment. So he kept silent, preferring not to waste words.
Disappointment over Herrick's relentless execution of a threat he himself never had taken seriously made him all the more willing to accept this second trust the man had sought from him. He would be able to follow events in this weird family, still more to assume some responsibility for them; perhaps Nancy's tragic case was not hopeless—some stubborn cell of his brain would not be reconciled to accepting it as hopeless—he might yet, he must, have his part to play, his chance to intervene. In one breath he prayed that Herrick might live to be ninety and that Nancy's affianced bridegroom be struck down by all the plagues of the East.
"This time," he told Herrick, "I can help you. I shall be glad to act as your executor, but I hope the necessity of doing so may never arise—at least not for many years."
"Thank you," said Herrick gravely, "you have taken a great load off my mind. Now we must have witnesses, and the will, of course, must be left with you. It would never do to put it where others can tamper with it."