Ōno had already heard occasional reports of Shirakawa’s ways – how the governor had remarked that if Shirakawa was going to carry on as he did it would be better for his family if he kept a concubine or two at home; how he was going to become the patron of some geisha or other in Fukushima – but being, like the steward, a conventional man himself, the idea of a wife going to Tokyo and using her own judgment in finding a concubine to bring home astonished him. He wondered, in the first place, how a respectable woman like Shirakawa’s wife had ever set about finding a woman suitable as a concubine in a place as big as Tokyo. Could it be that a woman married to a man of great worldly ambition herself developed talents beyond the imagination of men such as himself?

Suddenly there were sounds of rickshaws drawing up before the entrance downstairs, followed by a confused murmur of men’s and women’s voices greeting newly arrived guests and the sound of footsteps hurrying along corridors.

‘Here they are, I think,’ said Ōno, who got hastily to his feet and made for the staircase at a trot.

It was one hour or so later that Shirakawa’s wife Tomo led forward a fresh, unspoiled-looking young girl with her hair drawn back in a bun and said:

‘This is Suga, who has come back with me to enter the family service.’

Earlier, Tomo and Etsuko had greeted Shirakawa briefly while Suga waited downstairs, then Tomo had sent Suga to have a bath with Etsuko. When she came back, she had seated her in front of the mirror-stand and combed out her sidelocks and bun for her. Suga’s hair after the bath gleamed like black lacquer; it was heavy and hard to comb, but Tomo found herself marveling anew at the dazzling fairness of the face without makeup that was framed by the glossy black locks. Since she had used her own judgment in selecting the girl and had given the mother a considerable sum of money in exchange, she must now convince her husband with his acute eye for feminine beauty that she had found a great bargain that should not have been missed, and she worked to make the beautiful Suga seem still more beautiful, watching with strangely mixed feelings as Etsuko romped innocently about them, peering at Suga in the mirror as though at a large doll and exclaiming:

‘I like hair ornaments, they’re pretty.’

‘I’m very inexperienced, sir, but I hope I shall give satisfaction.’