Esyo stared balefully at the floor, and Ieyasu labored watchfully the trend of her reasoning; he would not force the issue at Ozaka, not just yet, and he knew that Yodogima would regard her sister's feelings. A cloud, also, had risen in the direction of Jokoin. The banishment of the Christians had roused her ire, particularly as Takiyama had been ordered into seclusion, and with both sisters, his own sons, the Christians, and Yodogima against him the small prospect at hand of squeezing out the house of Hideyoshi would be forever dissipated. "I am an old man, Esyo," said he, after a short reflection, "and would make Hidetada my successor; suppose I do it now; resign, and persuade his appointment instead, as shogun; would it be asking too much in that event, to expect your reasonable consent to this marriage?" Esyo deliberated. It had been her one ambition from the day she landed in Hideyoshi's camp, a victim if a meddler. Would she quit the pleasure of frustrating Yodogima, as she believed, to gain the eminence so long and craftily sought? The bare thought of needing to decide pained her; she would have snatched both, the gratification and the honor, but this Ieyasu, her father-in-law, the shogun, had never been pressed to extremes, while in a corner, and she faltered. "Upon one condition," concluded she, presently. "That seems fair," chanced he; "what is it?" "That you kill Hideyori." "Before, or after?" inquired the shogun, without so much as smiling. "Presumably you may think it as easily done," retorted she, the pride of blood, for the nonce, asserting some sort of peculiar sway. The Taira, however, had measured swords with the Minamoto centuries before Esyo inadvertently condescended to vouchsafe this one lonely thrill, and Ieyasu perhaps, therefore, sooner learned to attend the reckoning that awaited him, in this his final effort to dislodge an intrepid foe. Were the last fight to have been fought with a man, the battle-scarred Ieyasu had buckled on his armor, and gladly; but look as he might, heed whom he chose, Yodogima, a love of his and an offspring of theirs, rose up, out of the smoldering embers, to bid and to challenge. "My God! I cannot face her--oh, yes; I can; she is nothing to me--curse the Christians! I'll slay them--" "No you won't," threatened Jokoin, in her way, having entered shortly after Esyo's withdrawal, in the course of the hearer's meditation; "they've got powder to burn, of a right good quality--just in from Hirado, the foreigners' hold out--and a pound of it is worth a lot of valor--" "I'll double the price; tell your friends that Ieyasu is in the market for powder." "And a wife, as well. But you can't have Yodogima; she's given you the mit." "Silence, child; will you never use modesty; you are in the presence of the shogun?"