For generations, Yumi’s family had served as chief retainers to a petty feudal lord known as Toda, but ever since the Meiji Restoration they had lived a life of poverty. Yumi had come to the Shirakawa home as a maid at the age of sixteen but had eventually become Shirakawa’s concubine in the same way as Suga before her, whereupon a considerable sum of money had almost certainly been handed over to her parents. In exchange, Yukitomo had had her name transferred to the Shirakawa family register as their adopted daughter, just as he had done with Suga. Yukitomo might well have intended this as a kind of pledge that he was not going to amuse himself with a respectable girl then abandon her after a short while, but it was a blot on the family register that a woman marked down as an adopted daughter should in fact be a concubine, and Tomo, moreover, disliked the suggestion of a cruel design to impose restraints in advance on Suga and Yumi in case they should ever be attracted to men other than Yukitomo himself.

Yumi’s elder sister Shin, whose husband had been adopted into their family but had since left her a widow, had come to call on them at the New Year and had suggested that Yumi should be released, asking Tomo in strict confidence to exert her influence. Since Shin had no children, the family line would die out unless something was done soon, she said. Yumi had been in service for nearly ten years by now, so she would like, provided the master agreed, to take her away, find her a husband, and raise one of the offspring as her own.

‘I ought to adopt a child, of course,’ she added, ‘but our family is in no position to do that, so I decided in the end it would be better to get her married.’

‘Does Yumi herself agree to this?’ Tomo had asked.

‘Well yes …’ The reply was vague, but Tomo could imagine more or less the kind of thing that Yumi had said to her sister.

The following afternoon, Tomo had asked Suga to help her get some furniture out of the storehouse. Yumi was preparing some Chinese ink in the living room for Yukitomo, who had writing to do, so it had been quite natural for Suga to answer the summons.