gers coming about the house.
Indeed he was given plainly to understand that the sooner he left, the
better everyone would be pleased. This treatment was of course part of
a scheme devised by Pearl's parents to frustrate any plans that Chan
might have formed for seeing her. They were determined not to give
their daughter to a man so old as he must be, and therefore they
decided that an interview between the two must be prevented at all
hazards.

Chan was greatly distressed at the rebuff which he had received. Had
Willow after all made a mistake eighteen years ago when she gave him
the name of this town as the place where her new home was to be? He
had carefully written it down at her dictation, and it had been burned
into his brain all the years since. No, there could be no mistake on
that point. If there were any, then it was one that had been made
purposely by Yam-lo in order to deceive them both. That idea, however,
was unthinkable, and so there must be something else to account for his
not finding Willow as he had expected. He at once made enquiries at
the inn at which he was staying, and found that there was a daughter at
the very house to which he had gone, and that in almost every
particular the description he was given of her corresponded with his
beloved Willow.

In the meantime, poor Pearl was in a state of the greatest anxiety.
The eventful day on which she was to meet her lover had opened for her
with keen expectation of meeting him after their long and romantic
separation. She had never for one moment doubted that he would keep
his engagement with her. An instinct which she could not explain made
her feel certain that he was still alive, and that nothing in the world
would prevent him from meeting her, as had been agreed upon between
them at that eventful parting in the temple eighteen years before.

As the day wore on, however, and there were no signs of Chan, Pearl's
distress became exceedingly pitiful; and when night came and her mother
declared that nothing had been seen of him, she was so stricken with
despair that she lost all consciousness, and had to be carried to bed,
where she lay in a kind of trance from which, for some time, it seemed
impossible to arouse her.

When at last she did regain consciousness, her mother tried to comfort
her by saying that perhaps Chan was dead, or that he had forgotten her
in the long course of years, and that therefore she must not grieve too
much. "Y