by AndiJF
"My dear, now they have seen you as a maid, no one here will ever believe
that you, an Oriental, are anything more than my servant, or that I, a white
woman wearing your elegant and expensive clothes, could not be your mistress.
Just look in any mirror if you doubt me. I think we’ve found our proper roles
in life at last!
Zhou Lusi, an educated but orphaned Chinese girl, met and fell in love with an
older English trader, James Cavendish. Eventually, they married, and Lusi took
the name Lucy Cavendish, but their happy life was shattered when the chaos of
the Boxer Rebellion erupted. James decided to leave China with Lucy, taking her
English maid Abigail with them. More tragedy struck when James died of a heart
attack on the voyage to England, and Lucy found herself alone in a foreign
land, speaking little English, with only her maid for support, but Abigail
secretly resented and schemed against her mistress.