with you presently and have my eyes toned down to your Macao standard." [Pg 12] Being so constant a visitor, Robert Adams had his own rooms at Dom Amaral's, where he found his bags unpacked and the clothes laid out by those deftest of servants, the Chinese. According to custom the dinner of Macao was served at the late hour of nine. Dom Luiz Diego de Amaral was one of the wealthiest Portuguese in the city, having, unlike most of his fellow citizens, investments abroad which brought[Pg 13] him a considerable income after the birth of Hong Kong killed Macao and left it a city of the past, of poverty and pride. Having in his youth married a Spanish woman who bore him one son, Pedro, he was left a widower before the age of twenty-five. [Pg 13] Some years after, being in Boston where he then had large shipping interests, he took a second wife, Priscilla Harvey, and returned to Macao. Madam de Amaral's only sister, wife of Captain Fernald had one child which was left an orphan at an early age by the drowning of both parents in Portsmouth harbour. This orphan, Priscilla Fernald, was taken to her aunt in China and became a member of the household of Dom Amaral. It was a strange transplanting for such a flower from the cold coast of Puritan New England to the tropical, Roman Catholic colony in the heart of heathendom. But the flower of so sturdy a stock remained true. It was long accepted by all, even by the maiden Priscilla, that young Amaral was to be her husband though nothing had been said on the subject. Later, the small circle of Macao society, of which poverty and pride were the ruling features, became too dull for the young girl and her foster parents took her often to Hong Kong where she met with those of the outer world. In that hospitable society of the "city of the fra[Pg 14]grant streams," where the dinner table seems to be the only rendezvous, save a garden party now and then, a Tarrantella dance or a Government House ball, the fair Priscilla met young Robert Adams, a native of her far away and almost unknown home. The acquaintance blossomed into friendship and ripened into love. The lover was accepted, and now a courtship of two years was in three weeks to see them married. There were many disappointed youths and envious of Robert Adams, but all took their misfortune as in the way of the world, except young Amaral, who, in silence, had watched the course of events and now hated the happy suitor with all the
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