Yuki felt the reproach. She could have laughed aloud at the irony of it.
Mrs. Todd walked in what she supposed a stately fashion across the room. Her feet pressed into the soft matting as into a stiff dough, leaving behind her a track of shallow indentations.
At parting Gwendolen whispered in her friend's ear, "I understood. Your father has been watching all along. I will make things clear to the other."
When the panelled gate was closed once more, and the little bell cold after long reverberation, Yuki felt a great physical shudder. Her nerves demanded of her the respite of tears, but still she held herself in check. The luxury of weeping and the hidden letter alike must wait until a night hour when the rest of the house was asleep.
She went out into the sunshine of the garden, well within sight of the house. She tried not to think, or to allow forebodings. Against the old plum-tree she leaned, catching idly the white drifting petals. Each might have been a separate poem, so freighted is Japanese lore with fancies and exquisite imagery drawn from this favorite flower. The transience of life, its sweetness, fidelity to natural law, wifehood and womanly tenderness, rebirth, immortality,—all these thoughts and more came to her softly as the petals came. Through each mood, like the clang and clash of brass through low melody, recurred the vision of Pierre—of his yellow hair beneath the old plum-tree. But with the petals fell uncounted moments, heaped less tangibly into hours. So passed the day and succeeding days.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The short interval between the Todds' visit and Prince Haganè's banquet was wrought, within the confines of the Onda home, of small, shifting particles of disquiet, discontent, despondency,—a sort of mist that kept the spirit dark and chill.
Tetsujo found difficulty in meeting his daughter's gaze; though, when her face was averted, he looked long, and moodily enough. He had spoken to her more than once, always in forced, crisp speech, chopping his words into inches and weighing each separate cube. Through this mechanical means he informed her that she was to attend Prince Haganè's banquet without fail, and ride there in a double jinrikisha with him, her father. Iriya and the servants were permitted to resume normal relations with the culprit. Externally things went into their old domestic grooves.