“An admirable resolve, but foolish! Have you no love for your parents?—for your family and home? Ah, forgive me, your parents and brothers are dead? I did not mean to cause you pain. But do you not see that in that case it is impossible for you to give yourself up to a life of devotion? Who then could carry on the family name?”
“But, your ladyship, I became the wife of Hachiya....”
“Yes, yes, but you were only betrothed! If you had married him really, the case would be different,—an engagement is nothing. No other woman would have considered it necessary to avenge his death. Your faithfulness has been demonstrated by your heroic deed. Your devotion will be handed down to posterity as a model for all wives to admire and emulate, but now that is over; other duties remain.”
“What would you have me do, my lady?”
“You must marry.”
“A second marriage!”
“No, a first; as you told me yourself you were never married to Hachiya, so who can blame you or call you a faithless wife if you contract a marriage with another man? Even Hachiya in the spirit world would approve of it.”
Katsuno thought over these words. It was true according to the ideas in which she had been brought up that it was her duty not to let her family name die out.
“You are right,” she said at length. “If I escape I will not refuse to marry.” But she sighed, for her heart was with Hachiya.