that any one in your mistress’s position should deal too curtly with offers such as these. As for the rest, I assume that their rank is not such as to make acceptance conceivable, and there can therefore be no objection to your mistress meting out among them such varying degrees of kindness or severity as her fancy dictates.’
While this exposition was in progress at the far end of the room, Tamakatsura sat with her back towards the speakers, occasionally glancing across her shoulder with a turn of the head that showed off her delicate profile to great advantage. She was wearing a long close-fitting robe, pink plum-blossom colour without, and green within; her short mantle matched the flower of the white deutzia, then in full bloom. There was in her style of dress something which made it seem homely without being dowdy or unfashionable. If in her manners any trace of rusticity could still be found, it lay perhaps in a certain lack of self-assurance which she seemed to have retained as a last remnant of her country breeding. But in every other respect she had made ample use of the opportunites afforded her by life at the New Palace. The way she dressed her hair and her use of make-up showed that she observed those around her with an acute and intelligent eye. She had, in fact, since her arrival at Court, grown into a perfectly well turned-out and fashionable beauty, all ready to become, alas, not his own (reflected Genji with chagrin) but some fortunate young man’s immaculate bride. Ukon, too, was thinking, as she watched them, that Genji looked much more fit to be her lover than her father. Yes, they were surely made for one another; and Ukon doubted whether, however long he searched, Genji would find her a partner whose looks matched her so well. ‘Most of the letters that come,’ said the old lady, ‘I do not pass on at all. The three or four that you have been looking at, you will agree I could
