“And why,” she asked, with a tremor she could not keep from her voice—“why does my honorable father make his home among this outcast people?”
“Because,” quickly came the passionate response, “your honorable father is an Eta, as is also my lady his daughter.”
Wistaria’s eyes, wide with shocked surprise, stared mutely up into her father’s face. What! she—the Lady Wistaria, the dainty, cultivated, carefully guarded and nurtured lady—an Eta girl! Her mind could not grasp, would not hold the thought.
“Listen,” said her father, slowly. “I was born in a city of the south, the seat of a daimio of eight hundred thousand koku. My father’s house stood within the outer fortifications surrounding this prince’s castle. I was trained in the school of the samurai. I grew up, honoring and swearing by this prince. When I became of age I entered his service. No love of man for woman was more persistent than my loyalty to his cause. Devotion to him was my highest ideal.
“My prince had a bitter rival and enemy. He was a good and powerful lord, though a Shogun favorite. This lord loved my sister and was loved by her. In an evil moment I listened to her entreaties, and forgot my allegiance to my prince in so far as to assist his rival to win and wed my sister, now the Lady of Catzu. Immediately I brought down upon my head the bitterest detestation of my own prince. I was assigned to the poorest and most degrading of posts, that of the spy and the suppressor of petty broils, and finally detailed to live in and protect a certain Eta settlement. So much of my time was thus forcibly spent among these people that I came to study, to understand, and finally to sympathize with them.
“I was young, as I have said, impressionable, and I had been trained in the school of chivalry. It fell to my lot to be the protector of an Eta maiden of such beauty of person and purity of soul that—”
He broke off in his recital, and, to clear his husky voice, raised with a shaking hand a tumbler of sake to his lips and swallowed it at a gulp. He began again, with passionate fierceness. His eyes glittered with inward fire.
“I married the maiden!”
With a sudden little sob, Wistaria moved closer to him and drew his hands up to her lips.
“My mother?” The words passed her lips as a quick, burning question.