“Happily!” exclaimed Yang, with fervent indications of uncontrollable bitterness.  “Oh, my illustrious sire, at whose venerated feet this unworthy person now prostrates himself with well-merited marks of reverence and self-abasement, has the errand upon which an ignoble son entered—­the every memory of which now causes him the acutest agony of the lost, but which nevertheless he is pledged to Tung Fel by the Unutterable Oath to perform—­has this unnatural and eternally cursed thing escaped your versatile mind?”

“Tung Fel!” cried Ping Siang.  “Is, then, this blow also by the hand of that malicious and vindictive person?  Oh, what a cycle of events and interchanging lines of destiny do your words disclose!”

“Who, then, is Tung Fel, my revered Father?” demanded Yang.

“It is a matter which must be made clear from the beginning,” replied Ping Siang.  “At one time this person and Tung Fel were, by nature and endowments, united in the most amiable bonds of an inseparable friendship.  Presently Tung Fel signed the preliminary contract of a marriage with one who seemed to be endowed with every variety of enchanting and virtuous grace, but who was, nevertheless, as the unrolling of future events irresistibly discovered, a person of irregular character and undignified habits.  On the eve of the marriage ceremony this person was made known to her by the undoubtedly enraptured Tung Fel, whereupon he too fell into the snare of her engaging personality, and putting aside all thoughts of prudent restraint, made her more remunerative offers of marriage than Tung Fel could by any possible chance overbid.  In such a manner—­for after the nature of her kind riches were exceptionally attractive to her degraded imagination—­she became this person’s wife, and the mother of his only son.  In spite of these great honours, however, the undoubted perversity of her nature made her an easy accomplice to the duplicity of Tung Fel, who, by means of various disguises, found frequent opportunity of uttering in her presence numerous well-thought-out suggestions specially designed to lead her imagination towards an existence in which this person had no adequate representation.  Becoming at length terrified at the possibility of these unworthy emotions, obtruding themselves upon this person’s notice, the two in question fled together, taking with them the one who without any doubt is now before me.  Despite the most assiduous search and very tempting and profitable offers of reward, no information of a reliable nature could be obtained, and at length this dispirited and completely changed person gave up the pursuit as unavailing.  With his son and heir, upon whose future he had greatly hoped, all emotions of a generous and high-minded nature left him, and in a very short space of time he became the avaricious and deservedly unpopular individual against whose extortions the amiable and long-suffering ones of Ching-fow have for so many years protested mildly.  The sudden and not altogether unexpected fate which is now on the point of reaching him is altogether too lenient to be entirely adequate.”