“Oh, my lady!”
“I have spoken.”
“But, dear aunt—”
“Will you condescend to tell me, girl, who is guardian, thou or I?”
With the Lady Evening Glory, “thou” was the end of discussion.
The following day, therefore, the returning cortège set out for Catzu. As fortune would have it, the Lady Evening Glory travelled in her own train, while her niece had also her personal retinue about her. Consequently the journey was joyous for the Lady Wistaria.
When first the cortège began to move through the city a strange little procession followed in its wake. It was made up of the love-sick suitors, who, having but once gazed upon the beauty of the Lady Wistaria, wished to serve and follow her to the end of the world. The following was quite large when the cortège started. A number dropped off as they reached the city limits, then gradually the hopeless and disappointed swains with drooping heads turned back to Yedo, there to dream of the vision of a day, but to dream hopelessly.
Wherever the Lady Wistaria’s personal train travelled there lay scattered upon the ground, and blowing in the air above and about her, tiny bits of white or delicately tinted and perfumed paper. They were, alas! the love-letters and poems penned by the ardent lovers, which the hard-hearted lady, tearing into infinitesimal bits, had saucily tossed to the winds. It was thus she tossed their love from her, she would have them believe.
Hopeless, and finally indignant, therefore, backward turned these erstwhile hopeful suitors.
Sir Genji, the big samurai, who had especial charge of Wistaria’s train, reported to her, with a smile of satisfaction, that she would suffer no further annoyance, as all save one of her suitors had finally retreated.