on, but somehow or other I didn’t. Your brothers were on duty at the Palace last night. Just fancy…’ So he went on, speaking in an excited inconsequent manner which, even in his present quandary, Genji could not help contrasting with the gravity and good-sense of that other Minister, Aoi’s father, and he smiled to himself. Really if he had so much to say he had better come right inside and have done with it. Oborozuki, determined to screen her lover if she could, now crept to the edge of the bed and issued cautiously from between the curtains. Her face was so flushed and she looked so very ill at ease that her father was quite alarmed. ‘What have you been doing?’ he said, ‘you are not looking at all well. I am afraid we stopped the treatment too soon. These attacks are very troublesome to get rid of….’ As he spoke his eye suddenly fell upon a man’s pale violet-coloured belt that had got mixed up with her clothes, and at the same time he noticed a piece of paper with writing upon it lying near the bed. How did these things come to be in his daughter’s room? ‘Whose is this?’ he asked, pointing at the paper. ‘I think you had better give it to me; it may be something important. I shall probably know the writing.’ She looked where he was pointing. Yes, there was Genji’s paper lying conspicuously upon the floor. Were there no means of heading her father away from it? She could think of none and did not attempt to answer his question. It was evident that she was acutely embarrassed, and even though she was his own child he ought to have remembered that she was now a lady of some consequence, whose feelings, however reprehensible might be her conduct, he was bound in some measure to respect. Unfortunately there was not in his nature a particle either of moderation or restraint. He stooped to pick up the paper, and as he did so, without the slightest hesitation
