Read it through once

She spoke in a very low, feeble voice. She was thirty-seven years old, but seemed much younger. The Emperor, as he looked at her, was overwhelmed by pity and regret. That just as she was reaching an age when she would need his care, she should, unknown to him, have passed through months of continual suffering, without once having recourse to those sacred expedients which alone might have saved her—this thought made the most painful impression upon him; and now, in a last attempt to rescue her from death, he set in motion every conceivable sort of ritual and spell. Genji too was dismayed at the discovery that for months past she had been worn out by constant pain, and now sought desperately to find some remedy for her condition. But it was apparent that the end was at hand; the Emperor’s visits became more and more frequent and many affecting scenes were witnessed. Fujitsubo was in great pain and seldom attempted to speak at any length. But lying there and looking back over the whole course of her career, she thought that while in the outward circumstances of life few women could have been more fortunate than herself, inwardly scarce one in all history had been more continually apprehensive and wretched. The young Emperor was of course still wholly ignorant of the secret of his birth. In not acquainting him with it she felt that she had failed in the discharge of an essential duty, and the one matter after her death in which she felt any interest was the repair of this omission.