Page:A Wreath of Cloud.djvu/152

148 you!’ And indeed Ukon had seen for herself that even where his feelings were far less strong than in Yūgao’s case, there never came a time when Genji turned aside from those who had opened their hearts to him, or behaved as though his obligations towards them were at an end. However full might be the cup of his affections, he did not allow a drop to spill; and though Yūgao might not perhaps have been able to vie with so great a personage as Murasaki, yet it was certain that were she alive she would now be occupying one of the main apartments in the newly-finished house.

Such were the sad reflections that dwelt constantly in this solitary lady’s heart. She had never attempted to get into communication with the family of her late mistress, nor even to discover the present whereabouts of the child whom Yūgao had left behind at the house in the Fifth Ward; partly through fear of being questioned concerning her own part in the unhappy affair, partly because there seemed to be no object in doing so. Moreover, Genji had strictly forbidden her to mention the story to anybody, and though she had sometimes thought of writing to the people at the house, she felt that it would be disloyal to him to do so, and was entirely without news. She did, however, hear long afterwards a report that the husband of the nurse in whose care the child had been left was now working in a provincial Treasury and that his wife was with him. It seemed probable that they had also taken the child.

This was indeed the case. Tamakatsura was four years old when she made the journey to Tsukushi. The nurse, after months of vain endeavour to discover Yūgao’s whereabouts, during which she had trudged weary and weeping from quarter to quarter and house to house without finding