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Updated: May 2, 2025
On the last day that she was able to be up she dressed herself in a gay mandarin's coat with a Chinese woman's trousers, and tried to do her dance for the benefit of a shocked and fascinated matron. Every morning she wore a new cap to set off the deepening shadow of dissolution. By the open fire the old woman embroidered ceaselessly. "She is making 'ow you call it? my shroud.
Seated in the Gorgeous Girl's dressing room she now presented excellent proof that the world was growing very old indeed, for her plump self was squeezed into a short purple affair made like a pinafore, her high-heeled bronze slippers causing her to totter like a mandarin's wife; and strings of coral beads and a gold lorgnette rose and fell with rhythmic motion as she sighed very properly over her niece's marriage.
Then there was an awkward pause, for our officers only knew a few words of Chinese, while the mandarin's party, although they had had Englishmen in their city for nearly a hundred years, could not speak a word of our tongue, and they had brought no interpreter. There was an awkward pause, broken by a high-pitched voice just outside the gorgeous-looking throng. "You wantee Ching?"
Other guards bearing sharp axes: some, weapons like scythes, only strait. Soldiers carrying three-edged halberds. Two porters, carrying a splendid coffer, containing the seal of his office. Two other men, beating each a gongh, which gives notice of the Mandarin's approach. Two officers, armed with staves, to keep off the croud.
He certainly looked ill, and he had grown thinner and whiter within the past month, and the lines in his waxlike face seemed to be deeper scored. The girl went up beside the bed and stood there a moment, after she had bent over and kissed her grandfather's cheek, stroking with her hand the absurdly gorgeous mandarin's jacket an imperial yellow one this time. "Isn't this new?" she asked.
Then, remembering her hostess, she turned to Jean, who still sat on the window-seat, her face flushed and her eyes dark with excitement, the blood-red mandarin's coat with its embroidery of blue and mauve and gold vivid against the dark curtains, and said, "Jean, this is Biddy!" Jean stood up and held out a shy hand. "And this is Jock and Mhor!"
The garden was ornamented with artificial rocks, studded with flowering shrubs, with great taste. There were two or three grottoes, in one of which was a joss; and an arbour of lilacs and laburnums, in full bloom, gave a charming appearance to the whole. Thanking the Chinaman for his civility, we went away, much pleased with the mandarin's country retreat.
I particularly observed in our travelling with his baggage, that though we received sufficient provisions both for ourselves and our horses from the country, as belonging to the mandarin, yet we were obliged to pay for everything we had, after the market price of the country, and the mandarin's steward collected it duly from us.
Having returned to my room at the hotel, I set down the mysterious parcel, surveying it with much disfavour. That it contained the hand of the Mandarin Quong I could not doubt, the hand which had been amputated by Dr. Matheson. Its appearance in that dramatic fashion confirmed Matheson's idea that the mandarin's injury had been received at the hands of Adderley.
He did it in his neatest manner; but the girl kept smiling, as if it were all a great joke, and yet she looked at him with some interest. Gaspar went into another room to put on his mandarin's dress and peaked shoes, which he thought would produce a great effect; but if she had only smiled before, now she fairly laughed.
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