"Take my advice, sister," said she, confidingly, "and submit to Ieyasu's rule. He is able and willing and Hideyori is only a child, and don't you whisper it, I believe he is madly in love with you still. Come, let's have peace; and after all I don't believe Ishida is a whit better Christian than Ieyasu; there isn't one of them, not a daimyo, converted or designing or otherwise, who would let go a single wife for the whole Christian paraphernalia--and I'm not so sure but they are right, after all. Let Hideyori acknowledge Ieyasu--Oyea advises it, and as sure as fate she is wise." Without attempting any answer to her harangue, Yodogima bade the sister welcome, inquiring discreetly as to the good fortune and better intentions of Oyea. "Oh, she is gaining somewhat in favor since Ieyasu is known to have taken her up; but, I am afraid Esyo shall spoil it all; nobody likes her; and, do you know, she displayed the affrontery to drive her father-in-law, the great Ieyasu, from Azuchi--I left her there, in the company of Ishida." Just then a servant came in, informing Yodogima that Maeda lay dying at his quarters, elsewhere within the castle enclosure. CHAPTER XXIV Momentarily, at the mention of Ieyasu's love, Yodogima brightened; something moved her to a kindlier remembrance of the man who had so often defeated his own intended purpose, seemingly with the sheerest kind of stupid neglect. That he had once loved her there could be no doubt, but the possibility of his having reencouraged that love now grew the remoter, in her estimation, with each attempted move on his part to set aside, as presumable, an established, developing progression. A regime, however, that invited, till fixed and consolidated, every upstart in the empire to try for individual ascendency--a privilege the taiko would not have denied any; he loved too well the pleasure of crushing them. Yodogima would have so marshaled her forces that none could disturb, but all might rise in one united, orderly and elastic trend toward a goal commonly beckoning back for the best that God had given man. She had tested this Ieyasu from a standpoint none other had been privileged, had found out long ago Oyea's temper, if not her purpose, and could not now, in face of the circumstances, bring herself to believe that she, a mother; Hideyori, her kind; the nation, at large; or an ideal, that she had conceived, could endure the vagaries of a man so attuned and advised as Ieyasu had proven himself, whatever the sentiment. "Ishida," she surmised, "will do only his part; every man is born unto some righteous purpose." The messenger awaited her pleasure. "Comfort Maeda with the intelligence that I shall come forthwith," replied the princess. Ishida met her at the door: "You are too late, Yodogima! Maeda is dead."