"It's my own stupidity," moaned the t'ai-t'ai. "I should never have allowed that old hag of a nurse to remain; I should have taught these two young demons to obey me when they were young. She put these conceited notions into their heads, taught them to lord it over us as though we were dust for their feet to trample. You must persuade the Great Man to hasten the wedding of his daughter; you must find some way. Ah, if I can only get her locked into her red chair and safe in my brother's house, I'll show them how to handle the vixen. She'll be a tamed daughter-in-law if they follow my advice! A stick—that's what the hussy needs, till she's glad to beat clothes at the pond and clean my brother's pipes."
"Very entertaining thoughts," Kuei-lien scoffed, "but not very helpful just now."
They were, in truth, far from helpful. Nancy had learned her lesson and quarantined her father from his too solicitous concubine with the coolness and resource of which she could thank Kuei-lien for teaching her the trick. She would not be enticed from her father's door, and day after day her excuse for this usurpation became greater because it was undeniable that she was nursing the exhausted man slowly back to strength.
At last the t'ai-t'ai had to intervene, an act she was most reluctant to do, preferring always, as a politic woman, to remain in the background. Nancy did not dare to stop her from an interview with her father and retired when she saw that the wife wished to be alone with her husband. For a long time the door remained shut. She could hear the t'ai-t'ai talking indistinguishable sentences in a low rapid voice. Occasionally a laugh was audible. As no immediate conclusion to this talk seemed likely, Nancy took the chance to fetch some clothes from her room. She was not gone many minutes. To her relief she found the door still shut, and the conversation still continuing. But after an hour the girl became restless. No answer was paid to her knock. She tried the door; it was bolted. Not till she had beaten upon the wooden panels for several minutes did anyone deign to take notice. The door was pulled ajar; the girl saw to her amazement the face of Kuei-lien.
"Your father is feeling better now," said the concubine, "and has sent for me to take your place. He wants you to rest."
"But I don't wish to rest," protested Nancy, "and, if my father gives orders, I take them from him, not from you."
Before Kuei-lien could stop her, she had pushed her way into the room. In the few minutes she had been gone, not only the concubine had been smuggled into the place, but the glasses, bottles, pipe, all the vicious instruments she had been so wakeful to keep out of her father's grasp. For the first time in her life she forgot her father's presence in her rage at the duplicity practised by the concubine.
"This is the way you look after a sick man, is it?" she cried. "Take these things away."
Kuei-lien did not move.
"Have you lost all respect for your father?" she asked in the correct tones of a schoolmistress chiding a naughty pupil. Then she turned to Herrick on his couch. "Now you see what she's like," she said, as if to justify some previous remarks. "Do you wonder that none of us can do anything with her when she tries to rule even her father with these haughty ways?"