But naturally no one answered.  Prudence tried in vain to stay her mother, who loaded her with insults; but at last, in her rage, she succeeded in breaking the lock, and rushed into the room with her stick uplifted.  The cage was empty and the bird had flown.  She knelt on all fours to look under the bed and under the furniture, crying out all the time: 

“Thief, you shall die!”

But, as she was compelled to admit, there was no trace of the ravisher.  Then Prudence said to her, sobbing meanwhile: 

“And now, after this scandal, the P’ei family is let into the whole secret.  I entreat you to have pity on me and let me marry Yu-lang.  Otherwise, must I not die in order to redeem my shame?”

She fell on her knees, weeping and groaning.

“What you say is true,” answered her mother resuming some measure of calm.  “After this wonderful affair, no one will want you.”

However, a mother’s love cannot be altogether restrained.  She drew near to her daughter:  “My poor child!  All this is not your fault.  It is that rotten carrion of a Sun who has caused it.  But we cannot, of ourselves, break off the betrothal with P’ei.”

As Liu came up in the meantime, the matter had to be explained to him.  He was nearly half a day without being able to speak, and it may be surmised that his first words were to throw the blame on his wife: 

“The whole fault is yours!  By making me say I do not know what, you arranged all this.  Instead of altering the date as you should have done!  And to crown all, you insisted upon placing our daughter in his arms!  She has very well kept him company, has she not?”

His wife’s anger was not quite dead, and these remarks rekindled it.  Her voice rolled out like thunder: 

“You old tortoise!” she began....

But on this occasion he also was furious.  He advanced, threatening to strike her.  Prudence tried to come between them, and all three were nothing but a rolling, striking, shouting and weeping congeries.  The servants then ran to inform Virgin Diamond who rose from his bed and unsteadily ran.  His mother was moved with pity to see him, and his father also stopped his vituperation.  They both went out muttering.

Virgin Diamond then asked his sister the cause of all this, and why his young wife was no longer there.  She answered only with tears; but his mother, who had returned, told the whole story.

Virgin Diamond’s anger was so strong that his face became the color of the earth.  However, he contained himself, saying: 

“Let us not publish this family shame abroad.  If the news spreads, everybody will laugh at us.”

As a matter of course, their mischievous neighbor, Li, had heard their shouting and weeping.  He had quickly climbed on to his wall, but had been unable to understand what was happening.  Next morning he watched for the first of the women slaves who came out, and drew her into his house.  Fifty pieces of copper decided the girl to speak, and the delighted Li, letting her depart, ran to the house of P’ei, to whom he told all that he knew.