Read it through once

Murasaki meanwhile lay on her couch, continually debating within herself whether this affair might not really have been going on for years past—perhaps ever since his return—without her having any suspicion of it. She went to the window. He was still dressed chiefly in grey; but the few touches of colour which his mourning permitted showed up all the more brightly, and as she watched his handsome figure moving against a background of glittering snow, the thought that she might be losing him, that soon, very soon perhaps, he would vanish never to return, was more than she could endure. His cortège consisted only of a few favourite outriders, to whom he said: ‘I am not feeling inclined just now to go about paying calls; indeed, you will have noticed that apart from a few necessary visits to Court, I have hardly left home at all. But my friends at the Momozono palace are passing through a very trying time. Her Highness has for years relied upon her brother’s aid and, now that he is taken from her, the least I can do is to help her occasionally with a little encouragement and advice....’ But his gentlemen were not so easily deceived and whispered among themselves as they rode along: ‘Come, come, that will not do. Unless he has very much changed his ways it is not to chatter with old ladies that his Highness sets out at this hour of a winter night. There is more here than meets the eye,’ and they shook their heads over his incurable frivolity.