Part 30

“Who is this?” repeated Sado-ko.

“You, sweet mistress,” said the maid,—“a most bewitching honorable likeness of your Highness.”

“You are sure?” asked Sado-ko, smiling strangely.

“As sure as that the night is night,” declared the maid, again regarding the picture.

“Maiden, does a princess wear flowers in her hair? See, there is the bara (rose) to either side on this girl’s head.”

Natsu-no started.

“No, no, exalted one.”

“Did ever princess wear such a gown as this, my maiden?”

“Oh, princess!” The woman appeared shaken with a sudden terror.

“Do not drop the picture, if you please,” said Sado-ko, “but look at it again. Observe the knotted fashion of the obi, Natsu-no. Quite in the style of a geisha, is it not?—or rather the poor imitation of some simple maid who would copy the style from the pleasure women.”

The maid dropped the picture as though a thing unclean. At that motion the princess still smiled, but more inscrutably.

“Oh, noble princess, what evil one did dare to put your Highness’s face upon such a picture? It is a national disgrace.”

Reflectively Sado-ko looked at the picture.

“Perhaps it was the gods, O Natsu-no,” she said, as silently she put the picture in her sleeve.

She arose, regarding her maid’s emotion.

“Come,” she ordered, “undress me for the night, good maiden, for I am very tired, and to-morrow—to-morrow we must go upon a journey.”

“To Tokyo,” said Natsu, “with the noble Prince Komatzu’s suite, and oh, sweet mistress, life will have a happier aspect when we leave this melancholy place.”

Lifting her hands to her head, Sado-ko withdrew the long jewelled pins. Her hair fell in midnight glory to her knees.

Kneeling by her, the maid tied her hair back, a very old-fashioned mode which the ladies in her grandmother’s youth were fond of following when retiring, and to which the Princess Sado-ko had faithfully adhered.

“Does the honorable cortège leave before noon?” asked the maid.

“Yes.”

“And all the kuge (court nobles) and the ladies, also, go?”

“Yes.”

“Then I must haste. The sky already lightens. The night is past. When will my mistress sleep?”

“There is much time for us to sleep to-morrow. We do not accompany Prince Komatzu’s train,” said Sado-ko in a low voice, as though she spoke half to herself.

The maid paused in her arrangement of her mistress’s couch, and, kneeling, stared at her.

“Noble princess, did you not just now speak of a journey?” she asked, with evident agitation.

“Yes,” said the princess, wearily; “to-morrow we also will make a journey, but—we go alone! Pray you, hurry with my bed, Natsu-no.”