No one, however, so much as mentioned religion in connection with the impending crisis; none professed to seek political mastery; social conditions were apparently satisfactory, but the war fever spread and the cry of everybody alike at once became, “Preserve the taiko’s government.”

The princess verily laughed, and Ieyasu, Buddhist incarnate, withdrew from the council and began concentrating his forces at Yedo. Ishida, professing Christianity, mobilized around Sawayama, and their respective forces stood nearly equal. Thence Yodogima, observant of every move, uninfluenced by their claims or their charges, gathering and neutralizing every malcontent, secure in her possessions and peaceably inclined, quietly looked on and the nation applauded.

“You are a dear, sweet child, Hideyori, and your mother just worships you, lives only for you and yours,” whispered she, half to herself and half to the snuggling, confiding boy; who had grown, already, into a fine, dapper little chap, with the form and dash of a Taira.

The mother, like others, no doubt admired her son, but over and above this motherly instinct there developed and ripened a determination to live in him, to attain by and through him an ideality in keeping with his lineage and their progression. Through her he had inherited the manlier traits: sobriety and the colder forces of an harmonious fellowship should come of a careful tutoring, such as none else than Harunaga could give; he, installed, as personal instructor, immediately Yodogima had compromised upon Kitagira’s appointment for guardian, would attend the pleasure only of a mother rightly judged, measure truly a child’s really inborn inheritance.

“How good it is to feel that one’s energies are not directed aimlessly,” cogitated she, drawing the child close in her arms. “I can now understand what it is to love intelligently. Yes, with precision. The primal instincts are only foundation stones upon which to rear a superstructure in keeping with our destiny. A mother’s love shorn of the father’s ambition resolves an anomaly. I must have verity.”

“Will you be to him as a father should be to a child? Can you lay aside personality, submerge self for the larger good, and make of this Hideyori what birth and occasion demand?” inquired the princess, of Harunaga, who at her invitation sat there, sullenly contemplating a situation that only he and she could at all fathom in its deeper strata.

“Discipline has been my due, and confidence is your better prospect; if you believe me more than human, then, and then only, can you trust me to do what the world refuses; encourage others, at my own expense,” replied he, his eyes softening, with a love broader than Ishida’s, more comprehensive than Hideyoshi’s ever had been.

The child gambolled upon the greensward. Embattlements here and there echoed the voice of security. All around were things made and transient, as at the inn where Hideyoshi had once shown himself to be a man. The significance of authority now forged and welded chords of deeper interest than the halo of righteousness had deigned to conjure absolute, and Yodogima looked afar over all these things in the full consciousness of having found a man whom she could trust. And she did trust him.

This man, invited and encouraged, had refused absolutely to take advantage, and looking back over the past how could she class him no higher than human? Manhood were more; it savored of paradise, and Yodogima paused there, if but to refresh the soul and inspire its flight toward a higher fate.

“No, Harunaga,” promised she, after a moment’s reflection, “I do not trust anybody mortal, nor have I confidence in any thing unrealized; but I understand you; and in knowledge, primarily, there lies a salvation. Be sponsor, that my child is your concern.”