Transcriber's Note:
Inconsistent hyphenation and spelling in the original document have been preserved. Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Appletons' Town and Country Library
No. 215
THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
DR. NIKOLA.
12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
"Crowded to the covers with the mysterious, the startling, and the supernatural."—New York Mail and Express.
"A novel containing a more ingenious, exciting, and absorbing romance has not appeared upon our book table this season."—Boston Courier.
A BID FOR FORTUNE.
12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
"Mr. Boothby never allows the interest of their doings to drop from first page to last: and he tells his tale in a pleasant, brisk fashion that carries the reader along, and is as convincing a vehicle as could be chosen for the relation of strange adventures such as befell the hero and his friends."—London Times.
THE MARRIAGE OF ESTHER.
12mo. Paper, 50 cents; cloth, $1.00.
"Abounds in dramatic situations, and is bright in dialogue, graphic in description, and subtle in character analysis."—Boston Advertiser.
"Crowded with incident yet perfectly natural throughout, the story is one of the most charming that its author has yet written."—New York World.
New York: D. APPLETON & CO., 72 Fifth Avenue.
THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL
BY GUY BOOTHBY
AUTHOR OF A BID FOR FORTUNE, DR. NIKOLA, THE MARRIAGE OF ESTHER, ETC.
NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 1897
Copyright, 1896 By D. Appleton and Company
CONTENTS.
THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL.
CHAPTER I.
HOW I COME TO HEAR OF THE BEAUTIFUL WHITE DEVIL.
The night was sweltering hot, even for Hong Kong. The town clock had just chimed a quarter-past ten, and though the actual sound of the striking had died away, the vibration of the bells lingered for nearly half a minute on the murky stillness of the air. In spite of the exertions of the punkah coolie, the billiard-room of the Occidental Hotel was like the furnace-doors of Sheol. Benwell, of the Chinese Revenue cutter Y-Chang, and Peckle, of the English cruiser Tartaric, stripped nearly to the buff, were laboriously engaged upon a hundred up; while Maloney, of the San Francisco mail-boat, and I, George De Normanville, looked on, and encouraged them with sarcasms and utterly irrational advice. Between times the subdued jabbering of a group of rickshaw coolies, across the pavement, percolated in to us, and mingled with the click of the billiard balls and the monotonous whining of the punkah rope; then the voice of a man in the verandah upstairs, singing to the accompaniment of a banjo, drifted down, and set us beating time with our heels upon the wooden floor.
The words of the song seemed strangely out of place in that heathen land, so many thousand miles removed from Costerdom. But the wail of the music had quite a different effect. The singer's voice was distinctly a good one, and he used it with considerable ability:
"She wears an artful bonnet, feathers stuck all on it, Covering a fringe all curled; She's just about the neatest, prettiest, and sweetest Donna in the wide, wide world. And she'll be Mrs. 'Awkins, Mrs. 'Enry 'Awkins, Got her for to name the day. We settled it last Monday, so to church on Sunday, Off we trots the donkey shay.
