his own friendship and protection. On the other hand, life on this part of the island with Tayū against one was a prospect not to be faced with equanimity. If the girl had failed to take in the world the place to which her rank entitled her, that was her father’s fault, not theirs. She ought to be grateful that such a man as this (after all, he was the principal person in the neighbourhood) should have taken such a fancy to her. In Tsukushi at any rate there was no prospect of doing better for her, and Tayū, angered by the refusal of his proffered patronage would certainly stick at nothing. … So they argued, doing their best to scare their mother into assent by stories of Tayū’s violence and implacability. Only the second brother, Bugo no Suke, stood out: ‘I know a good deal about this fellow,’ he said. ‘It’s too much of a shame. We simply cannot hand her over to him. … Somehow or other one of us ought to do what our father asked us to—take her back to Kyōto. There must be some way of managing it….’ Shōni’s two daughters stood by weeping. Their mother was utterly heart-broken. What had become now of all her plans for the girl’s happy future? Of what use had been all these years of isolation and subterfuge, if at the end Tamakatsura must be handed over to this coarse and unscrupulous barbarian?
It would indeed have astonished Tayū to know that any one in Hizen considered him in such a light as this. He had always regarded his attentions to women as favours bestowed; he flattered himself moreover that he knew as well as any man how to conduct a gallant correspondence, and his letters began to arrive thick and fast. They were written in a clean, bold hand on thick Chinese paper, heavily scented. It was evident indeed that he regarded himself as no mean calligrapher. His style of composition was not an agreeable one, being very tortuous and affected. Soon he made up his mind that the time had come for him to call
