Helena. Tom himself married one of them,
but was so great a favourite with the prince, that she still was
appointed maid of honour, and with Tom's consent was afterwards married
to an English duke.
Nothing can paint the agonies of our royal lover, when on his landing at
Dublin he was informed that princess Bob had quitted Ireland, and was
married to nobody knew whom. It was well for Tom that he was on Irish
ground. He would have been chopped as small as rice, for it is death in
China to mislead the heir of the crown through ignorance. To do it
knowingly is no crime, any more than in other countries.
As a prince of China cannot marry a woman that has been married before,
it was necessary for Mi Li to search the world for another lady equally
qualified with miss Bob, whom he forgot the moment he was told he must
marry somebody else, and fell equally in love with somebody else, though
be knew not with whom. In this suspence he dreamt, "_that he would find
his destined spouse, whose father had lost the dominions which never had
been his dominions, in a place where there was a bridge over no water, a
tomb where nobody ever was buried nor ever would be buried, ruins that
were more than they had ever been, a subterraneous passage in which
there were dogs with eyes of rubies and emeralds, and a more beautiful
menagerie of Chinese pheasants than any in his father's extensive
gardens_.
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