She seized her stick, opened the door and ran forth. Her daughter, forgetting her shame, tried to prevent her; but the old woman pushed her away violently, so that she fell down. Prudence got up and ran after her. The attendants also ran. Now Yu-lang had very well understood that all was discovered when Liu's wife had dragged her daughter away. A moment later, the nurse hurried in. "O my Gods! And, ah unhappiness! All is well lost! Prudence is being questioned with the stick." It seemed to him that two knives were piercing his heart. He burst out into sobbing. But the nurse was already taking out his hair-pins and clothing him as a man. In a state of stupor he let himself be hurried to the main door and through the streets. A few moments later he was back at his parents' house. His father did not fail to say to him: "I told you to play the girl, not the man. Why have you committed acts of which Celestial Reason disapproves?" Yu-lang jostled thus by his father and his mother, no longer knew where he stood. Meanwhile the nurse objected: "But what can they say there? Our young Lord has only to keep himself hidden for a few days, and it will all pass over." But at Liu's house the nurse, as she went away, had unwittingly locked the door, and Liu's wife had come to it and was shaking it violently, stammering with rage and flourishing her stick. "Thief, whom may Heaven strike dead! O very vile rascal! For what did you take me? I am going to show you who I am! I will have your life! If you do not open the door, I shall break it open with a great case." 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: