Neither had this sentence been finished, when--Yodogima said not a word nor did she show any change of color, yet the blood seemed freezing in her veins--Hideyoshi threw down the message, exclaiming: "Tell them they know not what they say; an enemy is never 'defeated' till captured, decapitated, and discredited. Go." Evening wore away, and none remained to render the night's artfuller subtleties but Yodogomi and her now slaving protegé; servants and others less welcome, or more discerning, had found it convenient or expedient to busy themselves in more directions than one. Esyo, paling at the significance of that last message, no longer bandied discretion or consulted verity in the making up of her mind just what she should or would do. Ieyasu had been deceived and a sister betrayed--what mattered; she would set things right, at the cost of double-dealing--another? Still a third courier bounded into the open room in which they sat or lounged at will. Hideyoshi grew apprehensive as he read; and gripping the message, snarled: "Ieyasu retreats--" Without concluding also this sentence or changing his attitude, the puzzled daimyo, still blindly unconscious of his own predicament, but bitterly alive to the probability of Hidenaga's speedy annihilation, turned to Yodogima, shamefully betraying, as he had never done before, the inner hopelessness of a hotly contested, fiercely grinding will determination. Her head reeled--it seemed as if all were lost--but the body responded, revealing no trace of the terrible battle she fought: on higher grounds than he had conceived or Ieyasu felt--in consequence of dreaming, no less endangered by waiting. Forced and beaten, Hideyoshi could bear the suspense no longer. "Is it possible--are you--in fact--a stoic? You appear to be unmoved--unresolved--yet--Ieyasu by retreating has won--has proven himself--to be--a greater man than--no, no; I understand; know how it is to be tricked'! Yodogima, I have no fine speech to make or promises to render; to you, Ieyasu owes it that he lives: an humbler admirer, only that he can better respect.--Stay, you, courier; Hideyoshi goes." CHAPTER X Neither Hideyoshi, nor Yodogima, for the moment, took any pains to discover or to suspect the identity of that last message-bearer; though had either one observed at all only the dishevelled clothing he might have been induced to look underneath the mask, hiding too slenderly a timid, anxious face. It were enough for Yodogima to know that her lover had risen to first place in the estimation of an only rival: for Hideyoshi to realize once and for all that the price of Shibata's eldest daughter was to be something dearer than the lone bagatelle of a daimyo's willing or the baser invocations of a traditional heritage.