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THE WEDDING OF A PRINCESS. 291
her parents: she could do nothing higher or more
fraught with happiness. She was to be a wife
woman's highest honor and a Japanese woman's
only aim. She was to marry a noble by name,
nature, and achievement, with health, family, wealth,
and honor. The house of Echizen was most illustrious
and closely related to the Tokugawa. Kiku
lived in a new world of anticipation and of vision,
the gate of which the Japanese call iro, and we,
love. At times, as she tried on for the twentieth
time her white silk robe and costly girdle, she fell
into a revery, half-sad and half-joyful. She thought
of leaving her mother to go back alone with no
daughter, and then Kiku's bright eyes dimmed and
her bosom heaved. Then she thought of living in
her new home, in a new house, with new faces, new
responsibilities. What if her mother-in-law should
be severe or jealous? Kiku's cheeks paled. What
if Fujimaro, her husband, should achieve some great
exploit and she share his joy as did the honorable
women of old? What if his present position should
give her occasional access to the highest ladies in the
land, the female courtiers of the castle in Yedo?
Her eyes flashed. What if Fujimaro, in the near
future, should become lord of Echizen ? No ! that
was impossible until gray hairs came and they were
old.
The wedding night had come, seeming
to descend
out of the starry heavens from the gods. Marriages
rarely take place in the daytime in Japan. The solemn
and joyful hour of evening, usually about nine