Tedious, Nancy found them, for she was very much alone. She dodged close talk with her father, an attitude for which he was grateful, because neither he nor his daughter wished to touch again upon matters which in an incomplete, unspoken way they had left settled. The father stayed drowsily with his books, slept and dozed through the afternoons, realizing with taciturn dismay the fact that he was old and that his thoughts were empty of comfort. He tried some walking, but his heart complained. Undue exercise taxed his strength, sent the blood to his head. One thing he had set his will not to do: to give way to Kuei-lien's enchantment—not till his daughter was married. This was a promise he had made silently with himself, a little way of being fair to Nancy, and he stuck heroically to his agreement, although there were moments when the vacancy of the books over which he nodded made this ascetic life almost too tiresome to be borne.
"I don't understand you, Nancy," Kuei-lien said more than once, enjoying the comfortable sleepiness of the afternoons in Nancy's room. Her fear of the t'ai-t'ai had been growing less and her sympathy with the betrothed girl more. "I am not so blind as you think I am. This marriage is your making; I can see that, but I can't see why."
"One has to be married," was Nancy's usual defense, when the subject was forced upon her mind.
"Yes, but why this particular marriage, when your father has given you so many opportunities to get out of it? You are not one of us, Nancy, even though you believe you are. Your father would have liked it best if you had stayed with your foreign friends."
Kuei-lien, from her talks with the amah, knew more than the girl dreamed of the pressure the Ferrises had brought to keep their guest. In idle moments she could not help toying with the last year's plan.
"That is finished," said Nancy decidedly.
"If I had been your father's daughter," laughed the concubine, "I should have managed things much better. Your father would give every cent he has promised the t'ai-t'ai to be rid of this match. Why don't you fall sick or cut off your hair so that you have to become a nun? Then you would save everybody's face. Even the t'ai-t'ai would be satisfied, if she got her money—"
"She will get her money, whatever it is, in the way we have promised," announced the girl.
"I believe you are holding the old woman to her bargain just to spite her," vowed Kuei-lien. "You know her whole family is afraid of the daughter-in-law they are getting. If it weren't that they had been bribed by your dowry, they would just as soon marry their priceless son to a fox-spirit. They will think it a miracle if you don't bear him four-legged sons; it will be a miracle with such a donkey for their father! What are you going to do when you go to them? Are you going to play handmaid to your father-in-law's water pipe and sew out your eyes on underwear that is greasy from your mother-in-law's unwashed body?"
Against her own conscience Nancy was amused by the racy way Kuei-lien dealt with topics that were held to be sacred. She knew quite well that the parents of her husband were not proper game for these irreverent shots, yet she relished every impudent hit at their expense. It was one way of settling scores for the travail these unknown personages had given her. She was in a mood, as Kuei-lien perceived, to be spiteful. And she was curious to get every chance inkling of what her life was to be.