We tell now how the palace maids, great and small, seeing that Yuying had fallen dead, ran in haste to the Hall of the Golden Bells and reported to the empresses of the Three Palaces, saying: 'The Princess our lady has fallen dead.'

News climbs. 金鑾殿, the Hall of the Golden Bells, is the palace's main audience chamber; 三宮, the 'Three Palaces,' is standing shorthand for the emperor's consorts. 中 in 宮院中 is the plain zhōng, 'within' — worth marking now, because the same character returns two lines later with a different reading and a much bigger job.

The empresses were greatly alarmed, and reported at once to Taizong.

One clause, one rung: maids to consorts, consorts to the emperor.

When Taizong heard it, he nodded and sighed, saying: 'This thing was truly foretold. I once asked the Ten Kings of the Underworld, "Are the old and the young at peace?" and they answered, "All are at peace, yet we fear the imperial sister's span will be cut short." Their word has proved true.'

Here is the thread promised a moment ago. 中 in 果中其言 is zhòng, not the locative zhōng: the sense is an arrow hitting the target, and what has hit the target is the Ten Kings' prophecy, which Taizong heard in Chapter 11. 壽促 (shòu cù) is a lifespan cut short. The nested quotation marks are doing real work — Taizong quoting the Kings — and the layering matters, because he is the only man in the garden who knows the prophecy exists.

The whole company of the palace came grieving, and all went to look beneath the blossoming trees, where they saw the Princess faintly drawing breath.

盡 is read jìn throughout this reader; where the 世德堂 text wants the jǐn sense it writes 儘 instead, as it does later in the chapter. 盡到 here is 'went, every last one of them.' 都 in 都來 is the collective dōu, 'all.'

The Tang king said: 'Weep not! Weep not! Do not startle her.' Then he came forward, raised her head with his own royal hand, and called out: 'Sister, awake, awake.'

御手, the royal hand, is the detail that carries the feeling — an emperor down on the grass lifting his sister's head. 甦醒 (sū xǐng) is to come round; 甦 is a variant way of writing 蘇.

The Princess suddenly turned over and cried: 'Husband, walk slower — wait a while for me.'

And the engine catches. The body is the princess's; the voice belongs to a Junzhou goodwife still calling after a husband who was walking too fast on the road up from the dead. 一等 is 'hang on a moment'; the 一 shifts to yì before the third tone of 等 (děng).

Taizong said: 'Sister, it is we who are here beside you.' The Princess lifted her head, opened wide her eyes, looked about her, and said: 'Who are you, that you dare lay hold of me?' Taizong said: 'We are your royal brother and your royal sister-in-law.'

The gap is now total: the woman in the princess's body has no idea who this man is. 皇兄 and 皇嫂 are the honorifics, 'royal elder brother' and 'royal sister-in-law' — titles she has had no occasion to use in her life.