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178 had been a little country roughness, a shade of over-simplicity in her manner. Ukon could not imagine how the old nurse had achieved so remarkable a feat of education, and thanked her again and again for what she had done. Yūgao’s ways had till the last been timid, docile, almost child-like; but about her daughter there was not a trace of all this. Tamakatsura, despite her shyness, had an air of self-assurance, even of authority. ‘Perhaps,’ thought Ukon to herself, ‘Tsukushi is not by any means so barbarous a place as one is led to suppose.’ She began thinking of all the Tsukushi people she had known; each individual she could recall was more coarse-mannered and uneducated than the last. No; nurse’s achievement remained a mystery.

At dusk they all went back to the temple, where they stayed that night and most of the following day, absorbed in various spiritual exercises. A cold autumn wind was blowing from the valley, and at its cruel touch the miseries of the past rose up one by one before Shōni’s widow as she knelt shivering at the Main Altar. But all these sad memories vanished instantly at the thought that the child upon whom she had lavished her care would now take the place that was her birth-due. Ukon had told her about the careers of Tō no Chūjō’s other children. They seemed all of them to be remarkably prosperous, irrespective of the rank of their various mothers, and this filled the old lady with an additional sense of security.

At last the moment came to part. The two women exchanged addresses and set out upon their different ways: Ukon to a little house Genji had given her, not far away from his new palace; the others to their lodgings in the Ninth Ward. No sooner had they parted than Ukon was suddenly seized with a panic lest Tamakatsura should attempt to evade her, as Yūgao had fled from Chūjō in days