In the morning the doctor came again. He found no change in his patient, who still lay open-eyed on her bed, evidently thinking, though she did not talk. It hurt her too much to talk. She seemed content when the doctor assured her Ronald was still in Paoling and in no immediate hurry to go.
"You can bring him with you the next time you come," she said.
The doctor looked rather anxiously toward Nancy.
"You must take some rest yourself, my child," he said. "I can't have two sick people on my hands."
The old t'ai-t'ai seemed to understand what he was saying.
"Yes, tell her to sleep," she insisted; "she must sleep. I shall be all right. My daughter can look after me."
Reluctantly Nancy gave up her post to her stepmother. She was sure she could not sleep. There were too many problems on her mind. Yet such was her need of rest that her eyes closed from sheer heaviness and nothing more did she know till she awoke late in the afternoon, surprised to find the storm abated and clear, cold sunshine gleaming through the paper windows of her room. Hurriedly she dressed and opened the door. The t'ai-t'ai turned her eyes when the girl entered and greeted her with a faint smile.
"Death is a slow business," she said, with the coolest of voices. She seemed to talk with more ease. Nancy did not guess how she had taken advantage of her own absence to defy the doctor's orders and speak out her mind to her daughter.
"What are you going to do with this girl when I die?" she had begun.
"Do?" echoed Nancy's stepmother, "what should I do? I am not her husband. I am not her mother-in-law, am I? What should I do?"