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Updated: June 29, 2025
"Everywhere," replied Lady Everington, "they are going to travel." "Then let them travel all over the world," he answered, "only not to Japan. That is their Bluebeard's cupboard; and into that they must not look."
Meanwhile Countess Saito had been in correspondence with Lady Everington in England. On one bright March morning, she came into Asako's room with a small flowerpot in her hands. "See, Asa Chan," she said in her strange hoarse voice, "the first flower of the New Year, the plum-blossom. It is the flower of hope and patience.
They were sitting on the terrace with the Casino behind them, overlooking the blue Mediterranean. A few yards farther on, a tall, young Englishman was chatting and laughing with a couple of girls too elaborately beautiful and too dazzlingly gowned for any world but the half-world. Suddenly he turned, and noticed Lady Everington.
She had always been surrounded by money; but it was only since she had lived with Lady Everington that she had begun to learn something about the thousand different ways of spending it, and all the lovely things for which it can be exchanged. So all her new things, whatever their source, seemed to her like presents, like unexpected enrichments.
It was the girl herself who had been the first to enlighten her. She came to her hostess's boudoir one evening before the labours of the night began. "Lady Georgie," she had said Lady Everington is Lady Georgie to all who know her even a little. "Il faut que je vous dise quelque chose." The girl's face glanced downward and sideways, as her habit was when embarrassed.
"They are too happy," Lady Everington said to Laking a few days later, "and they know nothing. I am afraid there will be trouble." "Oh, Lady Georgie," he replied, "I have never known you to be a prophetess of gloom. I would have thought the auspices were most fortunate." "They ought to quarrel more than they do," Lady Everington complained. "She ought to contradict him more than she does.
"Then," cried Asako, starting up, "you think I am not good enough for him. It's because I'm not English." She began to cry. In spite of her superficial hardness, Lady Everington has a very tender heart. She took the girl in her arms. "Dearest child," she said, raising the little, moist face to hers, "don't cry. In England we answer this great question ourselves.
"I think he wants to see you," said the Count; "My wife has received a letter from Lady Everington which says that he would like you very much to come back to him." The Count waited for this joyful news to produce its effect, and then he added, "Asa Chan, you are going to be a great English lady; but you will always remain a Japanese. In England, you will be a kind of ambassador for Japan.
When Asako spoke in French it meant that something grave was afoot. She was afraid that her unsteady English might muddle what she intended to say. Lady Everington knew that it must be another proposal; she had already dealt with three. "Eh bien, cette fois qui est-il?" she asked. "Le capitaine Geoffroi" answered Asako. Then her friend knew that it was serious.
Lady Everington has been criticised for stony-heartedness, for opportunism, and for selfish abuse of her husband's vast wealth. She has been likened to an experimental chemist, who mixes discordant elements together in order to watch the results, chilling them in ice or heating them over the fire, until the lives burst in fragments or the colour slowly fades out of them.
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