“So are you, Yodogima, and all the rest—everybody, dead or alive, born and unborn; only you don’t know it, and for that must suffer: they say, go to—well I can’t just recall the name, and it’s such a bad place I won’t startle you with mentioning it.”

“Please do not; I shouldn’t comprehend it—but what of Ieyasu? Why distracted?”

“Because of your advice, and Esyo’s treachery; she fibbed on both of you to the one, and tried to inspire the other wrongly: between the two of you he has taken a tumble—as I but a moment ago said you might find it advisable or convenient to do. The whole enemy is afraid of him, their reports are all a pack of lies, and nothing less than Hideyoshi’s presence can save Ieyasu’s doing about as he pleases, in these parts. Take courage, sister, and bet your boots on—the winner; I am going to return, for the fun, and if you wish shall give your love to—which one, Yodogima?”

Jokoin ran away, without giving her sister a chance to answer had she possessed the courage or the patience to do so; Yodogima loved too deeply, held life, that she knew, as against death, its natural consequence, too seriously revealed in the underlying humanities of an established conduct, to bandy truth for the sake of bolstering courage or lightening the burdens of an ordered continuity.

Oyea proved a better counsellor, more a comforter, and together they reconciled their returning, though weary it was, toward the castle whence they had departed so shortly, more hopeful, if less doubtful.

CHAPTER XI

The homegoing over, both Yodogima and Oyea settled down to a kind of preconceived expectancy. Their place continued as before, under the domination of a single master, the husband of the one and admirer of the other, assuming the attitude more of respecter than lover to either. Neither outranked the other, as yet; nor did their proposed spheres, from Hideyoshi’s way of thinking, in any manner conflict; nor were they at all inconsistent, as determined by custom or tradition from time immemorial, with good citizenship and right living: each cognizant of her duty, and mindful of the respect due to the head of the household as established and designed; no one jealous or hateful or inconsiderate of another, but thence possessed of the utmost confidence and respect for each other; they both set their hearts and energies to the accomplishment of one and the same end.

“Do you love Ieyasu, Yodogima?” queried Oyea, one soft, suggestive evening, as they two sat in the opened-up room, meditating, together, more than contemplating, the possible outcome of that conflict—then renewed and waging between the one’s lover, who had vowed to live only for her, and the other’s husband, whom she loved and hoped for quite as much.