心腹相託 A Thing Entrusted Between Hearts
此也是做夫妻一場，也有個心腹相託之意。如此不相託付，非外我而何？」妖王大笑陪禮道：「娘娘怪得是，怪得是。寶貝在此，今日就當付你收之。」便即揭衣取寶。此也是做夫妻一场，也有个心腹相托之意。如此不相托付，非外我而何？」妖王大笑陪礼道：「娘娘怪得是，怪得是。宝贝在此，今日就当付你收之。」便即揭衣取宝。
逐句解 Line by line
"This is what being husband and wife comes to, after all — that there should be something entrusted between hearts.
場 is cháng, and 夫妻一場 is the last of the chapter's four uses of that counting word. 心腹 is heart-and-belly — the same two characters the dead courier's tablet used of a trusted officer. The word for a confidential subordinate, applied to a marriage.
"If there is no such entrusting, what is it but keeping me outside?"
The third 外我, closing the speech on the word it opened with. The question is built on the literary frame 非 … 而何, with the thing denied sitting between the two halves: if it is not that, then what is it.
The fiend king laughed aloud and made his apology: "You are right to blame me, madam, quite right.
得 is the light de both times, tying 怪 to the judgement that the blame is just. He does not answer the argument at all; he concedes it twice.
"The treasure is here, and today I shall hand it over for you to keep."
當 is dāng, ought to or shall. Twelve characters, and years of withholding end inside them.
And he lifted his clothes at once to get the treasure out.
Six characters. 便即 is straight away, and there is no interval at all between the promise and the hand going to the waistband.
The speech ends where it began. Keeping me outside opened the complaint and closes it, and everything in between has been arranged to make the bells an instance of it — the custom of the old court, the poverty of the new one, the possibility that something is being hidden, and finally a definition of marriage as a thing held in trust.
The word she chooses for that trust is heart-and-belly. It is the phrase on the dead courier's identity tablet, where it meant a subordinate cleared for confidential work — and the man wearing that tablet is standing in the room watching her apply it to a marriage.
The demon's answer is not an answer. He laughs, agrees twice that he is at fault, and reaches for his own waistband. Six characters after the argument ends, the clothes are already coming up.