“THE mistake—you will admit it was a mistake?—was to have countenanced such a match at all,” said the Lady Saito Ichigo.

Her husband’s manner was less sure, less unyielding than it had been in many days. Indeed, there was a slightly apologetic tone in his voice, and he avoided the angry eyes of his spouse. He too had seen the arrival of the Spider!

“Well, well, let us admit it, then, for the sake of peace. The marriage was a mistake. But consider, our son’s happiness—nay, his very life!—was at stake.”

He lowered his voice.

“I will tell you in confidence that which I had discovered. They had already made their plans to marry.”

“Pff!” Lady Saito waved the matter aside as unbelievable. “Will you tell me how they were to do this thing? Marriage, fortunately, is not such an easy matter without the consent of the parents. Moreover, the woman was under bonds to her keeper.”

“You forget there are other unions possible to lovers. You should know that many such start bravely on the long journey to the Meido when it is impossible to marry in this life.”

Lady Saito turned her face slowly toward her husband and fixed him with a piercing, bitter glare.

“That,” said Ichigo, gently, “was the union contemplated by our children.”

His wife drew in her breath in that peculiar, hissing fashion of the Japanese. Her beady little eyes glittered like fire.

“That was what she—the Spider woman—induced my son to do! You see, do you not, how completely she has seduced him—even from his duty to his parents and his ancestors?”

She beat out the minute blaze from her pipe, digging into it with her forefinger. Then, first coughing harshly to attract the attention of the young people, she called out loudly:

“Come hither, if you please! I say, come! You seem to forget you are no longer in the geisha-house. It is the voice of supreme authority which summons you now. A cup of tea, if you please—and water for my honorable feet!”

She repeated the demand twice, in a peremptory voice; and now she arose to her feet and advanced a step almost threateningly toward the young couple.

They had been smiling into each other’s eyes. They were oblivious of everything and every one in the room, for they were in that exalted and enraptured condition of first love which makes the individual seem almost stupid and obtuse to all save the loved one. Only dimly the words of their mother had reached them, and they stirred like children rudely awakened from some beautiful dream. The smile was still on the face of the girl as she turned toward her mother-in-law; but it slowly faded, leaving her pale, confused, and timorous. She met the malevolent gaze of the older woman, and began to tremble.

She tried to speak, and her hand reached out flutteringly toward her husband—a charming, helpless little gesture that warmed him to the soul. He inclosed the little reaching hand, and thus, hand in hand, they faced the enraged lady.

“Your manners, my good girl, are in keeping with the geisha-house. Is it the fashion there to ignore the voice of authority?”

The bride’s large, dark eyes had widened in innocent surprise. Only partially she seemed to comprehend the older woman’s attitude. She had been but a day in the house of the parents-in-law. No one as yet had taught her, the cherished, petted, adored star of the House of Slender Pines, that the position of a daughter-in-law is often as lowly as that of a servant. Not even by Matsuda had she ever been thus offensively addressed. She said, stammeringly:

“I—I—have not heard the voice of which you speak, august lady.”

A cruel smile curled the lips of her mother-in-law.

“Then it is time, my girl, that you kept your ears wide open.”

She sat down upon her heels abruptly by the hibachi.

“Tea is desirable for the honorable insides. Water for my feet, which are tired!”

The girl’s eyes turned inquiringly toward her husband. He had grown darkly red. For a moment he seemed about to speak protestingly to his mother; then in a whisper he murmured to his bride:

“It is your—duty!&rd............