His head sank forward. Yuki twisted her slim hands into wisps. "In America all speak of these things, father. They think us immodest for other reasons, and foolishly sensitive in this. The schoolgirls talk—and the matrons. All theatres treat of it—and books are full of it. You sent me no warning—I could not know, of myself. Please, honorably, restrain anger against me."
"I must not be angry," muttered Tetsujo, who now gave every symptom of a rising storm of wrath. "I must be calm. But gods! this is a foul spectre to meet at the very outset! Am I to understand that this man—this person—spoke directly to you, and you listened without first receiving permission from your parents? He could have gone, at least, to my friend, and my country's representative, Baron Kanrio."
"Father, father," cried the girl, "you are becoming angry. I did not have the time to reflect. In America one does things first and thinks about them afterward. I am not sure that person ever has even met—our noble baron."
If she hoped to palliate by this last disclosure she was quickly undeceived. "The gamester—the oaf! Insolent fool! An impostor unknown even by sight to your natural guardian in a distant land! He must be an alien! No Japanese—not even a Yedo scavenger—could have been guilty of that misdeed!"
"But he spoke quite openly to my best American friends, the Todds," said Yuki, desperately. Tetsujo's rising excitement and anger lapped like flames about this new thought.
"And that Mr. Todd, now come to be minister in our very home,—did he encourage your filial impiety?"
"It was not so much Mr. Todd as Madame, his wife, and my schoolmate, Gwendolen," admitted Yuki, with a sinking heart.
"Ah, I might have known it," said Tetsujo. His relief was evident. "Only women! Mere cackling geese. America echoes to their shrill voices. That is of no consequence."
"In that country women are of much consequence, and everyone speaks openly of affairs of love and—marriage," persisted Yuki, who now clung half hopelessly to this one tangible point.
"And you yourself—ingrate—would willingly bestow yourself, without a word from me or your mother, upon a man who is a stranger, and whose conduct, heard from your partial lips, impresses me as characteristic of a fool and an outcast?"