She fell down beside the bed and hid her face in her hands.
"I am not your sun, child," said the old woman softly; "you must not grieve for me. Of course I must die, but I shall take these words of yours with me; I shall not need any other sacrifice. They will burn money and houses and servants and weep on my grave till the sand has scoured the name from my stone, but I shall pay no attention to any of these; I shall always hear your words and smell them like burning sandalwood."
But Nancy would not be comforted. She jumped up again and faced the doctor with glowering eyes.
"You will not let her die, will you?" she demanded.
"Come, come, child, keep up your courage," said the doctor in his steadiest tones, "we won't talk of dying yet. You do your part and I will do mine."
He diverted her attention with many precautions about the care of the patient and about keeping the room free from intruders, while all the time the old t'ai-t'ai listened with a smile on her lips as though she deemed they were taking many needless pains.
"I have seen the girl you were looking for," he told Ronald, when he had come home again, "and you can set your heart at rest about one thing; she has not been ill-treated by the old t'ai-t'ai she is serving. I don't know what her relations with the rest of the family may be; I can guess that they have not been happy. But as to her feelings for the old t'ai-t'ai—well, I have been beside many deathbeds and I have never seen such an outburst of grief and love."
He detailed the scene exactly as it had happened before his eyes. Ronald was puzzled. He had heard such evil things about Nancy's aged mistress, such harsh pictures had been painted by Kuei-lien's vivid tongue, that he could not think of her as anything but an enemy.
"You say she told Nancy not to wait but to come to me?"
"That certainly was what I gathered. I have been twenty-five years in China; I don't often mistake words as clear as hers."