He could not bring himself, next day, to join their party for tiffin at the Flowery Pagoda.  But in the midst of his brooding, Teppich and the fat Sturgeon assailed the nunnery gate with pot-valiant blows and shouts.  They had brought chairs, to carry him off; and being in no mood to fail, though panting and struggling, they packed him into a palanquin with many bottles of the best wine known to Fliegelman and Sons.  By a short cut through the streets—­where checkered sunshine, through the lattice roof, gave a muddy, subdued light as in a roiled aquarium—­the revelers passed the inland wall.  Here, in the shade, grooms awaited them with ponies; and scrambling into saddle, they trotted off through gaps in the bamboos, across a softly rolling country.  Tortuous foot-paths of vivid pink wound over brilliant green terraces of young paddy.  The pink crescents of new graves scarred the hillsides, already scalloped and crinkled with shelving abodes of the venerable dead.  Great hats of farmers stooping in the fields, gleamed in the sun like shields of brass.  Over knolls and through hollows the little cavalcade jogged steadily, till, mounting a gentle eminence, they wound through a grove of camphor and Flame-of-the-Forest.  Above the branches rose the faded lilac shaft of an ancient pagoda, ruinously adorned with young trees and wild shrubs clinging in the cornices.

At the foot of this aged fantasy in stone, people were laughing.  The three riders broke cover in time to see Mrs. Forrester, flushed and radiant, end some narrative with a droll pantomime.  She stood laughing, the life and centre of a delighted group.

“And Gilbert Forrester,” she cried, turning archly on her husband, “said that wasn’t funny!”

Gilly tugged his gray moustache, in high good-nature.  Chantel, Nesbit, and Kempner laughed uproariously, the padre and the dark-eyed Miss Drake quietly, Heywood more quietly, while even stout, uneasy Mrs. Earle smiled as in duty bound.  A squad of Chinese boys, busy with tiffin-baskets, found time to grin.  To this lively actress in the white gown they formed a sylvan audience under the gnarled boughs and the pagoda.

“Too late!” called the white-haired giant, indulgently, to the dismounting trio.  “Mr. Hackh, you should have come spurring.”

Rudolph advanced, pale, but with a calmness of which, afterward, he was justly proud.  The heroine of the moment turned toward him quickly, with a look more natural, more sincere, than she had ever given him.

“Is this Mr. Hackh?” she said graciously.  “I’ve heard so much about you!”

The young man himself was almost deceived.  Was there a German mail-boat?  Was there a club, from which he had stolen out while she wept, ignominiously, in that girl’s arms?  And then of a sudden he perceived, with a fatuous pleasure, how well she knew him, to know that he had never spoken.  His English, as he drew up a stool beside Miss Drake, was wild and ragged; but he found her an astonishing refuge.