“Can you trust me, Yodogima?”

“I do.”

“Then go; and, depend upon it, I shall recover you; your good sense convinces me of an abiding sincerity.”

Ieyasu again slunk off into the wilderness, and Yodogima, his love pledged anew, softly climbed back into the chair, without so much as attracting a concerned witness. To constancy there had been added assurance, and thence the heart waxed light and the mind clear—the will had sooner halted at no bounds.

“He shall have me, and I will know no other; poor, weak, insignificant woman that I am,” resolved she, as the bettos at first slowly, then more rapidly, stretched forward to recover the small ground lost.

At Azuchi, to Yodogima’s surprise—agreeable as it was—and Hideyoshi’s chagrin, there developed at once much confusion and not a little bickering. Most of the three hundred or thereabout female court and household attendants already there took the matter of an additional three, though respectively young and knowing and pretty, with something of indifference; arrayed against curiosity, of course; but there happened to be one among them, the lord daimyo’s lawful wife and always best helpmeet, Oyea, who looked upon the introduction of three such princesses—whose character and former standing she had had, already, abundant opportunity as well as occasion to know and understand—with something more than ordinary concern if not outright suspicion.

This Oyea happened to be, as she herself well knew, the second wife of the rapidly rising Hideyoshi; the first one had been set aside early for no other reason than personal felicitation; and though Oyea had proven constantly his best adviser as well as most companionable personage she now held, perhaps not altogether without cause, some reasonable doubt about the future. Her husband had won his spurs, such as they were, with no other appreciable aid than her own good counsel, and now stood in a position to do pretty much as he pleased, political or otherwise, especially socially. His lordship was getting more restless, seeking new fields to conquer. She judged him rightly; had failed to render him an heir; and was she really, after all, to lose him, or his love?

Neither Jokoin nor Esyo caused her so much as a heart pang; the one frivolous, the other intrusive, could be of no other use to her husband than to serve some political necessity or trading convenience—in fact were forthwith adopted by him for those express purposes. But Yodogima! Here came a victim who stood in the light of a possible intruder.

“Take her away,” commanded Oyea, understanding her liege lord from the beginning and deigning to set her foot down only as she knew how and why.

“You wouldn’t have me turn the princess, Shibata’s daughter, out, would you? Come; let us be more charitable; the reason need not deter you, in the least; Oyea denies not to others traits she herself most admires.”