20

Seeing his bride for the first time in daylight, Niou was pleased. She was of moderate height and attractive proportions, her face was well molded, and her hair flowed in a heavy cascade over her shoulders. It was a proud, noble face, the skin almost too delicate, the eyes such as to make a rival feel somehow defective. Not a flaw detracted from her beauty, he could say quite without reservation. He might have feared a certain immaturity, but, in her early twenties, she was no longer a child. A flower at its best, product of the most careful nurturing, so adequate an object of attention as to make a father forget that he had other duties. But of course there was a different kind of beauty, a more winsome kind, and here the honors had to go to Niou's lady at Nijo~. Rokunokimi was not forward, but she did not fail to make herself understood. And so, in sum, the new wife had much to recommend her, and her more apparent charms seemed to have intelligence and cultivation behind them. In her retinue were thirty carefully chosen young women and six little girls, all of more than ordinary comeliness. Each could indeed have been described as a real beauty, and not one showed less than the best taste in dress and grooming. Yu~giri knew that he had a demanding son-in-law to please, and his ingenuity in seeing that every detail was the best of its kind was astonishing (appalling, some might have said). Not even when his oldest daughter, by Kumoinokari herself, had become the bride of the crown prince had he taken such pains —evidence, no doubt, of his hopes for this other prince.