Had you broken it, how would her heart and face have been able to bear
the mortification?"

Lin Tai-yue shed tears and listened the while to her remonstrances. Yet
these words, which so corresponded with her own feelings, made it clear
to her that Pao-yue could not even compare with Hsi Jen and wounded her
heart so much more to the quick that she began to weep aloud. But the
moment she got so vexed she found it hard to keep down the potion of
boletus and the decoction, for counter-acting the effects of the sun,
she had taken only a few minutes back, and with a retch she brought
everything up. Tzu Chuean immediately pressed to her side and used her
handkerchief to stop her mouth with. But mouthful succeeded mouthful,
and in no time the handkerchief was soaked through and through.

Hsueeh Yen then approached in a hurry and tapped her on the back.

"You may, of course, give way to displeasure," Tzu Chuean argued; "but
you should, after all, take good care of yourself Miss. You had just
taken the medicines and felt the better for them; and here you now begin
vomitting again; and all because you've had a few words with our master
Secundus. But should your complaint break out afresh how will Mr. Pao
bear the blow?"

The moment Pao-yue caught this advice, which accorded so thoroughly with
his own ideas, he found how little Tai-yue could hold her own with Tzu
Chuean. And perceiving how flushed Tai-yue's face was, how her temples
were swollen, how, while sobbing, she panted; and how, while crying, she
was suffused with perspiration, and betrayed signs of extreme weakness,
he began, at the sight of her condition, to reproach himself. "I
shouldn't," he reflected, "have bandied words with her; for now that