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"Asako dear," Countess Saito continued, "would you like to go to England?" Asako's heart leaped. "Oh yes!" she answered gladly. Her hostess sighed reproachfully. She had tried to make life so agreeable for her little visitor; yet from the tone of her voice it was clear that Japan would never be home for her.
"You really think that it is better to let immoral women stray about the streets without any attempt to control them and the crime and disease they cause?" "It's not that," said Geoffrey; "it seems to me horrible that women should be put up to sale and exposed in shop windows ticketed and priced." Count Saito smiled again and said: "I see that you are an idealist like so many Englishmen.
"Little Asa Chan," Count Saito said one day, beckoning his guest to sit down beside him in the sunlight on the terrace, "you will be happy to go back to England?" "Oh yes," said the girl. "It is a fine country, a noble country; and you will be happy to see your husband again?" Asako blushed and held down her head. "I don't think he is still my husband," she said, "but oh! I do want to see him so."
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.
In the year 1155, Yoshitomo's eldest son, Yoshihira,* was sent to Musashi to fight against his uncle, Yoshikata. The latter fell, and his son, Yoshinaka, a baby of two, was handed to Saito Sanemori to be executed; but the latter sent the child to Shinano, where it was brought up by Nakahara Kaneto, the husband of its nurse.
They are rather what you in England call nouveaux riches." "Really!" Her Ladyship was taken aback for a moment. "But you would never notice it with Asako, would you? I mean, she does not drop her Japanese aitches, and that sort of thing, does she?" "Oh no," Count Saito reassured her, "I do not think Mademoiselle Asako talks Japanese language, so she cannot drop her aitches."
Asako was being introduced by her hostess to the celebrated collection of dwarf trees, which had made the social fame of the Count's sojourn as Ambassador in Grosvenor Square. Countess Saito, like her husband, spoke excellent English; and her manner in greeting Asako was of London rather than of Tokyo. She took both her hands and shook them warmly.
Yet both Sir Ralph Cairns and Count Saito, the only two men that day who knew anything about the real conditions, had insisted that such a visit would be fatal. And who were these Fujinamis whom Count Saito knew, but did not know? Why had she, who was so socially careful, taken so much for granted just because Asako was a Japanese?
The Japanese Government at last came to see that something must be done. Count Hasegawa, the Governor-General and Mr. Yamagata, Director-General of Administration, were recalled and Admiral Baron Saito and Mr. Midzuno were appointed to succeed them. Numerous other changes in personnel were also made.
The building of this fort proved a very difficult task, but it was finally accomplished by a clever device on the part of Hideyoshi, who, a master of intrigue as well as of military strategy, subsequently won over to Nobunaga's cause many of the principal vassals of the Saito family, among them being Takenaka Shigeharu, who afterwards proved a most capable lieutenant to Hideyoshi.
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