Bi Lian wept, "Nanny, you need not console me anymore. I have been married to him for a full three years. I have held nothing back from him except my heart and liver. Yet, he has not consummated the marriage with me even once. He even deliberately went to the north to manage some business there to avoid me. He's been gone for three years. Every time he comes back, he treats me as if I'm invisible. Do you know how people in the mansion gossip about me and mock me behind my back? Do you know how much it hurts? Nanny, my life is so bitter..."
The nanny cooed comfortingly, "Madam, you need not utter these dispiriting words. You're Old Madame's own niece, who in the household dares to be disrespectful to you? And if the young master doesn't wish to consummate the marriage with you, it's nothing serious. Old Madame gave him chambermaids and concubines, but he hasn't favored any of them either, has he? It's not just you. Why be melancholy?"
