5

The lieutenant was becoming impatient. Must they wait until the Eighth Month? But the governor's wife was beginning to have second thoughts. Perhaps she should have consulted her husband—and was she quite sure she could trust the man?

The intermediary stopped by one day.

“I have so many things to worry about,” said the mother, calling him aside. “It's a long time to wait, I know, and I wouldn't want to seem rude, putting off such an important gentleman. And of course everything _is_ decided. But she has no father to look after her, and I have had to do everything myself. I would hate to have him think I have mismanaged things. All the others have someone to look after them, and I don't worry a great deal about them. But this one—what will happen to her when I am gone? I have not set any conditions, because everyone says he is a gentleman of understanding. But sometimes a person _will_ wonder, you know. Might he have a change of heart and leave the poor girl for people to laugh at?”

The intermediary passed all of this on to the lieutenant. A look of consternation came over his face.

“You mean she's not the governor's daughter? The first I'd heard of it. You may say she's his stepdaughter and that's just as good, but I'd be lowering myself before the whole world. It won't do. Thank you for not looking into things before you came to me. Thank you very much indeed.”

“I swear I didn't know,” said the intermediary, guiltily. “Someone at my place told me what you had said. Seeing that she was the favorite, I naturally assumed she was his daughter. I didn't think to ask whether he had a stepdaughter. I hadn't heard anything even suggesting it. I _had_ heard that she was beautiful and well behaved, and that her mother couldn't do enough for her and was set on getting her a really good husband. You said you wanted a go-between. Well, I was your man, and I told you so—and how was I to guess that you didn't know all about her? I don't think you have any right to call me careless.”

He was a crafty man, and a good talker.

The lieutenant's reply was not very elegant. “It's not a family a man would want to marry into for what it is. I'm just doing what all the others do, and no one can blame me for it. I thought that if I could get the governor of Hitachi behind me I might overlook a few other details. He may think of her as no different from his own daughters, but people will say that it doesn't seem to matter to me what I get. The Minamoto councillor and the governor of Sanuki strut in and out of the house, and how would I feel, the last and smallest in the whole long line?” *