I was, to arrange it for him. Now I
shall be obliged to confess the truth, and he will have a right to claim
me instead of my supposed sister."

"But," said Tu, "I have a prior right to that of Wei, for it was I who
found the arrow. And in this matter I shall be ready to outface him at
all hazards. But," he added, "Wei, I am sure, is not the man to take an
unfair advantage of you."

"Do you really think so?" asked Jasmine.

"Certainly I do," said Tu.

"Then--then--I shall be--very glad," said poor Jasmine, hesitatingly,
overcome with bashfulness, but full of joy.

At which gracious consent Tu recovered the hand which had been withdrawn
from his, and Jasmine sank again into the chair at his side.

"But, Tu, dear," she said, after a pause, "there is something else that
I must tell you before I can feel that my confessions are over."

"What! You have not engaged yourself to any one else, have you?" said
Tu, laughing.

"Yes, I have," she replied, with a smile; and she then gave her lover
a full and particular account of how Mr. King had proposed to her on
behalf of his cousin, and how she had accepted her.

"How could you frame your lips to utter such untruths?" said Tu, half
laughing and half in earnest.

"O Tu, falsehood is so easy and truth so difficult sometimes. But I feel
that I have been very, very wicked," said poor Jasmine, covering her
face with her hands.

"Well, you certainly have got yourself into a pretty hobble. So far as
I can make out, you are at the present moment engaged to one young lady
and two young men."

The situation, thus expressed, was so comical that Jasmine could
not refrain from laughing through her tears; but, after a somewhat
lengthened consultation with her lover, her face recovered its wonted
serenity, and round it hovered a halo of happiness which added light and
beauty to every feature. There is something particularly entrancing in
receiving the first confidences of a pure and loving soul. So Tu thought
on this occasion, and while Jasmine was pouring the most secret workings
of her inmost being into his ear, those lines of the poet of the Sung
dynasty came irresistibly into his mind:

'T is sweet to see the flowers woo the sun,
To watch the quaint wiles of the cooing dove,
But sweeter far to hear the dulcet tones
Of her one loves confessing her great love.

But there is an end to everything, even to the "Confucian Analects,"
a