Imperial Woman [antikvár]

1YehonalaIt was April in the city of Peking, the fourth month of the solar year of 1852, the third month of the moon year, the two hundred and eighth year of the Manchu, the great Ch'ing dynasty. Spring was late and the northern winds, carrying their load of fine yellow sand from the Gobi desert, blew cold as winter over the housetops. Sand drifted down into the streets, sand whirled in eddies and filtered through doors and windows. It silted into corners and lay upon tables and chairs and in the crevices of garments, it dried upon the faces of children when they wept, and in the wrinkles of old people.In the house of the Manchu Bannerman, Muyanga, in Pewter Lane, the sand was more than usually tiresome, for the windows did not fit tightly and the doors hung loose upon their wooden hinges. On this particular morning Orchid, his niece and the eldest child of his dead brother, was wakened by the noise of wind and creaking wood. She sat up in the large Chinese bed she shared with her younger sister and frowned when she saw the sand lying upon the red quilt like tinted snow. In a moment she crept out softly from the bedclothes, so that she might not awaken the sleeper. Under her bare feet she felt the sand on the floor and sighed. Only yesterday she had swept the house clean, and all was to be swept again as soon as the wind died.She was a handsome girl, this Orchid, seeming taller than she was because she was slender and held herself erect. Her features were strong but not coarse, her nose straight, her eyebrows clear, her mouth well shaped and not too small. Her great beauty lay in her eyes. They were long and large and exceedingly clear, the black and the white pure and sep-1wk,.