4

The Third Princess was a pretty little thing, still very young in her ways and very innocent. “How nice,” said the Suzaku emperor, “if we could find a good, dependable man to look after you. Someone who would see to your education too. There are so many things you need to know.”

He summoned her nurses and her more knowledgeable attendants for a conference about the initiation ceremonies. “It would be quite the best thing if someone could be persuaded to do for her what Genji did for Prince Hyo~bu's daughter. I can think of no one in active court service. His Majesty has the empress, and his other ladies are all so very well favored that I would fear for her in the competition and worry about her lack of adequate support. I really should have dropped a hint or two while Yu~giri was still single. He is young but extremely gifted, and he would seem to have a brilliant future.”

“But he is such a steady, proper young man. Through all those years he thought only of the girl who is now his wife, and nothing could pull him away from her. He will doubtless be even more unbudgeable now that they are married. I should think that the chances might be better with his father. It would seem that Genji still has the old acquisitive instincts and that he is always on the alert for ladies of really good pedigree. I am told that he still thinks of the former high priestess of Kamo and sometimes gets off a letter to her.”

“But that is exactly what worries me—his eagerness for the hunt.”

Yet it would seem that the Suzaku emperor's thoughts were running in much the same direction. There might be unpleasantness of some de-scription, since there were all those other ladies; but he could do worse than ask that Genji take in the Third Princess much as he might have brought home a daughter.

“I'm sure that everyone with a marriageable daughter has the same thought, that when all is said and done Genji would not be a bad son-inlaw. Life is short and a man wants to do what he can with it. If I had been born a woman I suspect I might have been drawn to him in a not too sisterly fashion. I used to think so when we were boys, and I have never been surprised at all when I have seen a lady losing her senses over him.”

It may have been that he was thinking of his own Oborozukiyo.