“Well, Jiro, just now you held my life in your hands. For the sake of a worthy cause I thank you for sparing me. A thrust in the loosened corsage below that rosette would have done for me.”
Jiro rose to his feet, but remained with his head respectfully bowed before the Prince.
Toro clapped him on his slight shoulder.
“In the days soon to come, when your life is sought by the foes of the cause, my lord, Jiro and I will protect you.”
When Toro, flushed with his strange success, sought the Lady Hollyhock, he found her wholly unresponsive.
“In faith, my lord,” she said, mockingly, “it was not right for you, a Catzu lord, to ride through the outposts of your hereditary enemy, simply for a glimpse of an unworthy and insignificant maiden.”
“Nay—” remonstrated Toro.
“To abandon your father’s house and hopes for a girl—that is not what the daughters of Nipon are taught.”
“My dearest lady—”
“To follow one’s conscience were an honor, but to forget all blindly, to betray your cause, to betray your house to win a wife. Think you she would have you after such perfidy? She would not be worth possessing did she favor you then.”