"It would not be good for me not to see him."
"Very well, have your own way," consented the doctor, humoring her stubbornness, "but don't go wasting your strength with too many words."
He went to the door and called Ronald, who had been waiting in a room outside. Nancy, standing at the opposite side of the bed, looked at the newcomer. She had not expected him. Her face flushed with embarrassment. She dared not lift her eyes again, but tried quietly to withdraw from the room.
"No, you must stay," said the t'ai-t'ai, who had observed her confusion with a swift glance. "I may need you to explain what I wish to say."
Then she turned her attention to Ronald, giving him a long exacting stare. It was evident she did not quite know how to appraise him. She was not used to foreigners, for Nancy, although she spoke of her theoretically as a Westerner, in the intimacy of her affection she always regarded as Chinese. So she faltered for a moment at her first sight of Ronald, vaguely disappointed, till she saw that he was transparently honest and kind and that he loved Nancy; then she took refuge in Timothy Herrick's judgment,—who, after all, was better able than he to judge a man of his own race?—and thought, with an inward chuckle, that if the gods themselves had come to claim Nancy she would not have deemed the wisest and the handsomest of them good enough.
She looked again at Nancy's blushing face.
"Ha, my child tenderly displays the reflection of the sun," she quoted, in a voice too low for any but Nancy to hear, and laughed contentedly to see the girl blush even more. "Never mind, never mind, tut, tut, tut, tut, it is good to be young. I won't ask you to translate for me."
This office she imposed upon the doctor.
"Tell him," she said, "that Nancy is free to go. I am the head of this family and I have given my permission, and I have the promise of her stepmother for the rest of them, and I have her own promise that she will go. This marriage was a mistake. We disobeyed heaven when we made it. I have learned some things I did not know before—he ought to understand what I mean—and I cannot die with peace in my heart until I have set this mistake right. Is that clear?"
It was entirely clear.