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      The governor had gained in the lieutenant what was for him a price-less jewel. He was still out of sorts. His wife might be a little more helpful, he complained.

But it was because of the man's callousness that all the trouble had arisen, that the daughter she so doted upon had fallen into disgrace. She would have nothing to do with him. The poor figure he had cut in Niou's presence had so filled her with contempt that she had no wish to wait upon him as a mother-in-law might be expected to. Still she was curious. She had not yet had a good look at him. It was high noon of a day when she knew he would be at his ease in the west wing. She hurried over and took up a position behind a screen. He was near the edge of the veranda, looking out at the garden. He had on a singlet of soft white brocade and a robe of

deep pink beaten to a rich glow on the fulling blocks. He did not seem so inferior after all. Indeed, he was rather handsome. Her daughter, leaning on an armrest beside him, was a mere child. They could hardly have competed with Niou and his Uji princess, and yet as he exchanged quips with the women he was not at all the colorless figure she had seen at Nijo~. Might it have been another lieutenant?

“The _hagi_ at Prince Niou's is especially good,” he was saying. “I wonder where he found the seeds. It comes in the usual shapes, but somehow it seems more graceful. I happened to be there just as he was going out the other day, and I didn't have a chance to break off a branch. He recited the poem about the fading _hagi_. * I just wish you could have seen him. You know the one.” And he recited it himself.

“The beast, the craven beast,” she muttered. “And what a cheap article he did look beside the prince. I wonder how he is as a poet.”

He did not seem to be wholly without accomplishments. She thought she would put him to the test.

This was the poem she sent out:

“Of the plighted _hagi_, the upper leaves seem quiet.

What will have caused a change in the underleaves?”

It seemed to make him feel a little guilty.

“Had I known it to be of the meadow of Miyagi,

With the fragile _hagi_ I would have kept my faith.+

“Perhaps we can discuss the matter sometime.”