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Page 20
He had had her educated after a fashion, and his love for her she
did not doubt. But her mother's blood spoke more strongly than
that part of her which was Chinese, and there was softness and a
delicious languor in her nature which her father did not seem to
understand, and of which he did not appear to approve.
She knew that he was wealthy. She knew that his ways were not
straight ways, although that part of his business to which he had
admitted her as an assistant, and an able one, was legitimate
enough, or so it seemed.
Consignments of goods arrived at strange hours of the night at
the establishment in Limehouse, and from this side of her
father's transactions she was barred. The big double doors
opening on the little courtyard would be opened by Ah Fu, and
packing cases of varying sizes be taken in. Sometimes the sounds
of these activities would reach her in her room in a distant part
of the house; but only in the morning would she recognize their
significance, when in the warehouse she would discover that some
new and choice pieces had arrived.
She wondered with what object her father accumulated wealth, and
hoped, against the promptings of her common sense, that he
designed to return East, there to seek a retirement amidst the
familiar and the beautiful things of the Orient which belonged to
Lala's dream of heaven.
Stories about her father often reached her ears. She knew that
he had held high rank in China before she had been born; but that
he had sacrificed his rights in some way had always been her
theory. She had been too young to understand the stories which
her mother had told her sometimes; but that there were traits in
the character of Huang Chow which it was not good for his
daughter to know she appreciated and accepted as a secret sorrow.
He allowed her all the freedom to which her education entitled
her. Her life was that of a European and not of an Oriental
woman. She loved him in a way, but also feared him. She feared
the dark and cruel side of his character, of which, at various
periods during their life together, she had had terrifying
glimpses.
She had decided that cruelty was his vice. In what way he
gratified it she had never learned, nor did she desire to do so.
There were periodical visits from the police, but she had learned
long ago that her father was too clever to place himself within
reach of the law.
However crooked one part of his business methods might be, his
dealings with his clients were straight enough, so that no one
had any object in betraying him; and the legality or otherwise of
his foreign relations evidently afforded no case against him upon
which the authorities could act, or upon which they cared to act.
In America it had been graft which had protected him. She had
learned this accidentally, but never knew whether he bought his
immunity in the same way in London.
Some of the rumours which reached her were terrifying. Latterly
she had met many strange glances in her comings and goings about
Limehouse. This peculiar atmosphere had always preceded the
break-up of every home which they had shared. She divined the
fact that in some way Huang Chow had outstayed his welcome in
Chinatown, London. Where their next resting-place would be she
could not imagine, but she prayed that it might be in some more
sunny clime.
She found herself to be thinking over much of John Hampden. His
bona fides were not above suspicion, but she could scarcely
expect to meet a really white man in such an environment.
Lala would have liked to think that he was white, but could not
force herself to do so. She would have liked to think that he
sought her company because she appealed to him personally; but
she had detected the fact that another motive underlay his
attentions. She wondered if he could be another of those moths
drawn by the light of that fabled wealth of her father.
It was curious, she reflected, that Huang Chow never checked--
indeed, openly countenanced--her friendship with the many chance
acquaintances she had made, even when her own instincts told her
that the men were crooked; so that, knowing the acumen of her
father, she was well aware that he must know it too.
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