“You go to England perhaps.”

“You heard the doctor say that, I suppose.”

“All saying it,” she said.

“I hope you won’t go while I’m here, Lottie.”

She shook her head vigorously. “No leave,” she said.

“Well I’m glad of that,” I said.

“Chan Cho Lan say she may find union for me.”

“You mean marriage?”

She lowered her eyes and giggled.

“Well, Lottie,” I said, “that seems a good idea. Shall you like it?”

“If I have good joss, I like. Not easy to find rich man for me.” She looked sadly down at her feet.

“You mustn’t worry about them, Lottie. Your feet are much more beautiful as they are than they would be cramped and mutilated.”

She shook her head. “No high Chinese lady has peasant’s feet.”

I knew it was hopeless to try to convince her on that point.

She told me that she had been brought up and educated with the high-born ladies. She had helped to bandage their feet with wet bandages and to keep them bandaged until the toes shriveled and dropped off. She told me how the little girls of six used to cry with the pain when the bandages dried and tightened. But in time they walked like the swaying of the willow and good matches were made for them.

“I used to think, Lottie,” I said, “that you would be with me forever. That was selfish of me. Of course you want a life of your own.”

She looked at me with mournful eyes. “Life very sad sometime,” she said.

“Well, we’ll always be friends, won’t we? I shall come and see you when you marry. I shall give presents to your children.”

She giggled but I thought she was a little sad.

“Hard to find husband,” she said. “Only half Chinese and big feet.”

I drew her to me and kissed her.

“You are as one of the family, Lottie dear,” I said. “I think of you as my own daughter.”

“But not daughter,” she said, still sad.

She was merry though when we rode out in rickshaws to see the procession.

Jason sat with me and Joliffe and it was wonderful to see him jumping up and down with excitement. It seemed a long way from the night when I had feared he was going to die.

It was dark—the only time for such processions, for so much depended on the lighting. The sound of gongs mingled with the beat of drums. They sounded a warning note and always seemed ominous to me. There were lanterns, as always on such occasions, and they were of all colors, many of them with revolving figures inside.

Held aloft were flags on which were depicted dragons breathing fire. It was the dragons though which made up the procession. There were small ones and large ones—some held high like banners and others moving along on the ground. These were dragged along by men dressed as dragons and there were some men and women who made up other beasts—several of them to one dragon which appeared to breathe fire and shouted warnings as it trundled along.

The most attractive spectacle was that of two litters which were held high above the dragons and contained a girl apiece—two little creatures so lovely that it would have been difficult to match their beauty. They wore lotus flowers in their long black hair and one had a silk gown of delicate lilac color, the other was in pink.

Lottie called to me from the next rickshaw. “You see… you see.”

I nodded.

“The girls,” she told me, “are from Chan Cho Lan’s.”

I said to Joliffe: “Poor little things, what will their lives be?”

“Very pleasant, I imagine.”

“I believe they will be sold.”

“To a man who can afford to keep them and will give them the life of ease which they have been brought up to expect.”

“And when he is tired of them?”

“He will keep them. He will not let them want. That would be to lose face.”

“I’m sorry for them.”

Joliffe said: “When you are in a foreign country you must adjust your ideas to those of that country.”

“I still say poor children.”

I started. One of the participants in the procession had come very close.

It was a man in a red robe and over his face was a mask.

I felt my heart begin to beat uncomfortably. I had seen that costume before—or something so similar that it might be a replica.

As he looked up at me I shrank back into my seat.

Joliffe said: “It’s all right. Only part of the revelry.”

“What a hideous mask,” I said.

“Oh that,” said Joliffe. “They call it the Mask of Death.”


* * *

I had been well for some days. I had given up drinking tea since Jason’s illness. I was certain now that what damage had been done had come through the tea.

It was a horrible realization. What should I do? I asked myself. If someone was trying to poison me through the tea and that someone realized that I had discovered this, would not the medium be changed? Would they not try something else?

I was in acute danger. I must turn to somebody. To whom? To my husband?

I shivered. There were times when I laughed my suspicions to scorn. That was when I was with him. It was only when he was not there and I looked facts in the face that I said to myself: He had the motive.

How is it possible to love someone and fear him at the same time? How is it possible to be so intimate and not to know the innermost thoughts of the other? We were lovers; our passion had not abated; ours was an intensely physical relationship. Yet in my heart the haunting suspicion persisted. Someone is trying to harm me, to kill me perhaps, but first to render me helpless, useless, to undermine my health. So that when I die no one is very surprised. And if this was indeed Joliffe how could he play the lover so wholeheartedly, so sincerely and devotedly.

Perhaps our need of each other was a thing apart—complete in itself. Perhaps our bodily union was quite separate from that of our minds. Our attraction in the first place I suppose had been a physical one, for my part at least it had been what is called love at first sight and that happens before one knows the other as an individual. Had our love remained on that level all the time? Was it indeed a fact that I did not know Joliffe any more than he knew me? It must have been so for I could suspect him of unimaginable horror. And he… could he really be capable of it?

Sometimes these theories seemed quite absurd. But at others they were rational.

And now that I was feeling better they remained with me, in fact were intensified. I had told myself that it was because I was sick in body that my thoughts had been sick too. My fevered imagination had built up a situation which could not possibly exist.

But I was better and the stronger I grew the more convinced I was that I was in acute danger.

The old Jane was back in command. Jane with two feet on the ground—logical Jane who liked to look life straight between the eyes.

And what she saw was this: Someone is trying to harm you, perhaps to kill you. And the reason could only be because your death will give that one something that he wants.

Joliffe on your death becomes the arbiter of a great fortune. But Joliffe loves you, at least he says he does. He was not too scrupulous as to how he discovered trade secrets. Remember his prowling in Sylvester’s Treasure Room? He was married to Bella and told you nothing of this. Bella came back and you parted and then Bella died. He lied to you about the manner of her dying. You married him and changed Sylvester’s instructions that Adam should hold his fortune in trust for Jason. And then you began to be ill.

The case is black against him except for one thing: he is your husband and he loves you. He says he does a hundred times a week; he acts as though he does; at times there is a perfect accord between you and when he is not there life loses its savor.

It is not Joliffe. I won’t believe it is Joliffe. It isn’t possible.

It is someone else.

There is Adam. Adam, of the stern integrity. And what has he to gain? He does not know that the will has been changed and that it is Joliffe now who will take over. There would be no motive… if Adam knew. But Adam does not know.

How had you felt about Adam when you first knew him? There was something repellent about him. You disliked him. A cold man, you thought; but that changed. He wanted to marry you. He didn’t say so but you sensed it. And if it had not been that you had loved Joliffe would you have considered Adam?

And now you are considering Adam. He was in the house when Sylvester died. Joliffe was not. But Adam does not live in the house now. No, but he is a frequent caller. And how did Sylvester die? It all seemed natural then… an aging man who had had a bad accident and gradually faded away, going into a decline until he died. And Adam had been in the house. But I could not believe that Adam was a murderer.

Surely Adam would have guessed that I would not allow anyone but Jason’s own father to be his guardian. Yes, he certainly would; but he would also believe that Sylvester’s wishes that he should be in control of the business until Jason was of age should be respected.

And Joliffe? I had made my will. If I died Joliffe would be in control.

Whichever way I looked it came back to Joliffe.


* * *

Each day I awoke to a sense of impending danger. I wished that I could have confided in someone, but who was there?

Lottie was no help. I loved the girl but it was so difficult for us to understand each other. I wished that I had a woman friend. There was Elspeth Grantham but she was scarcely that and I knew she disapproved of Joliffe if for no other reason than that I had married him instead of Toby.