ABSTRACT
AS we have seen, David had not given up his post at the Legation, and to his relief had not yet been called upon to encounter Mr Feng in the course of his official duties. The young Englishman’s thoughts were never far from Red Hall and his little pupils, and for hours every day he racked his brains to contrive some means of seeing them again. However, his meditations led to nothing, and at last he had almost come to believe that his only hope lay in an appeal to the Minister himself. But that gentleman was just then absent on a visit to the Continent, and any intervention would have to await his return. Furthermore, David’s common sense told him that a mandarin of such high rank, no matter how kindly he might be, was bound to have decidedly old-fashioned opinions which would prevent him from looking with a favourable eye on interest of this kind manifested by a foreigner in Chinese women, especially when the women belonged to the household of a colleague. So the prospects seemed gloomy in the extreme, and sometimes he was inclined to despair altogether.
