They reached Ala towards two o'clock of the morning. The town had some
reputation in those days for its velvets and silks, and Wogan made no
doubt that somewhere he would procure a carriage to convey them the
necessary five miles into Venetian territory. The Prince of Baden was
still ahead of them, however. The inn of "The Golden Lion" had not a
single horse fit for their use in its stables. Wogan, however, obtained
there a few likely addresses and set out alone upon his search. He
returned in a couple of hours with a little two-wheeled cart drawn by a
pony, and sent word within that he was ready. Clementina herself with
her hood thrown back from her face came out to him at the door. An oil
lamp swung in the passage and lit up her face. Wogan could see that the
face was grave and anxious.
"Your Highness and Mrs. Misset can ride in the cart. It has no springs,
to be sure, and may shake to pieces like plaster. But if it carries you
five miles, it will serve. Misset and I can run by the side."
"But Lucy Misset must not go," said Clementina. "She is ill, and no
wonder. She must not take one step more to-night. There would be great
danger, and indeed she has endured enough for me." The gravity of the
girl's face, as much as her words, convinced Wogan that here was no
occasion for encouragement or resistance. He said with some
embarrassment,--
"Yet we cannot leave her here alone; and of us two men, her husband must
stay with her."
"Dare we wait till the morning?" asked Clementina. "Lucy may be
recovered then."
Wogan shook his head.
"The courier we stopped at Wellishmile was not the only man sent after
us. Of that we may be very sure. Here are we five miles from safety, and
while those five miles are still unbridged--Listen!"
Wogan leaned his head forward and held up his hand for silence. In the
still night they could hear far away the galloping of a horse. The sound
grew more distinct as they listened.
"The rider comes from Italy," said Clementina. "But he might have come
from Trent," cried Wogan. "We left Trent behind twelve hours ago, and
more. For twelve hours we crept and crawled along the road; these last
miles we have walked. Any moment the Emperor's troopers might come
riding after us. Ah, but we are not safe! I am afraid!"
Clementina turned sharply towards him as he spoke this unwonted
confession.
"You!" she exclaimed with a wondering laugh. Yet he had spoken the
truth. His face was twitching; his eyes had the look of a man scared out
of his wits.
"Yes, I am afraid," he said in a low, uneasy voice. "When I have all but
won through the danger, then comes my moment of fear. In the thick of
it, perils tread too close upon the heels of peril for a man to count
them up. Each minute claims your hands and eyes and brain,--claims you
and inspires you. But when the danger's less, and though less still
threatens; when you're just this side of safety's frontier and not
safe,--indeed, indeed, one should be afraid. A vain spirit of
confidence, and the tired head nods, and the blow falls on it from
nowhere. Oh, but I have seen examples times out of mind. I beg you, no
delay!"
The hoofs of the approaching horse sounded ever louder while Wogan
spoke; and as he ended, a man rode out from the street into the open
space before the inn. The gallop became a trot.
"He is riding to the door," said Wogan. "The light falls on your face;"
and he drew Clementina into the shadow of the wall. But at the same
moment the rider changed his mind. He swerved; it seemed too that he
used his spurs, for his horse bounded beneath him and galloped past the
inn. He disappeared into the darkness, and the sound of the horse
diminished. Wogan listened until they had died away.
"He rides into Austria!" said he. "He rides to Trent, to Brixen, to
Innspruck! And in haste. Let us go! I had even a fancy that I knew his
voice."
"From a single oath uttered in anger! Nay, you are all fears. For my
part, I was afraid that he had it in his mind to stay here at this inn
where my little woman lies. What if suspicion fall on her? What if those
troopers of the Emperor find her and guess the part she played!"
"You make her safe by seeking safety," returned Wogan. "You are the prey
the Emperor flies at. Once you are out of reach, his mere dignity must
hold him in from wreaking vengeance on your friends."
Wogan went into the inn, and calling Misset told him of his purpose. He
would drive her Highness to Peri, a little village ten miles from Ala,
but in Italy. At Peri, Mrs. Misset and her husband were to rejoin them
in the morning, and from Peri they could travel by slow stages to
Bologna. The tears flowed from Clementina's eyes when she took her
farewell of her little woman. Though her reason bowed to Wogan's
argument, she had a sense of cowardice in deserting so faithful a
friend. Mrs. Misset, however, joined in Wogan's prayer; and she mounted
into the trap and at Wogan's side drove out of the town by that street
along which the horseman had ridden.
Clementina was silent; her driver was no more talkative. They were alone
and together on the road to Italy. That embarrassment from which Wogan's
confession of fear had procured them some respite held them in a stiff
constraint. They were conscious of it as of a tide engulfing them.
Neither dared to speak, dreading what might come of speech. The most
careless question, the most indifferent comment, might, as it seemed to
both, be the spark to fire a mine. Neither had any confidence to say,
once they had begun to talk, whither the talk would lead; but they were
very much afraid, and they sat very still lest a movement of the one
should provoke a question in the other. She knew his secret, and he was
aware that she knew it. She could not have found it even then in her
heart to part willingly with her knowledge. She had thought over-much
upon it during the last day. She had withdrawn herself into it from the
company of her fellow-travellers, as into a private chamber; it was
familiar and near. Nor would Wogan have desired, now that she had the
knowledge, to deprive her of it, but he knew it instinctively for a
dangerous thing. He drove on in silence while the stars paled in the
heavens and a grey, pure light crept mistily up from the under edges of
the world, and the morning broke hard and empty and cheerless. Wogan
suddenly drew in the reins and stopped the cart.
"There is a high wall behind us. It stretches across the fields from
either side," said he. "It makes a gateway of the road."
Clementina turned. The wall was perhaps ten yards behind them.
"A gateway," said she, "through which we have passed."
"The gateway of Italy," answered Wogan; and he drew the lash once or
twice across the pony's back and so was silent. Clementina looked at his
set and cheerless face, cheerless as that chill morning, and she too was
silent. She looked back along the road which she had traversed through
snow and sunshine and clear nights of stars; she saw it winding out from
the gates of Innspruck over the mountains, above the foaming river, and
after a while she said very wistfully,--
"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."
"Are there any better?" answered Wogan.
So this was what Mr. Wogan's fine project had come to. He remembered
another morning when the light had welled over the hills, sunless and
clear and cold, on the road to Bologna,--the morning of the day when he
had first conceived the rescue of Clementina. And the rescue had been
effected, and here was Clementina safe out of Austria, and Wogan sure of
a deathless renown, of the accomplishment of an endeavour held absurd
and preposterous; and these two short sentences were their summary and
comment,--
"There are worse lives than a gipsy's."
"Are there any better?"
Both had at this supreme crisis of their fortunes but the one
thought,--that the only days through which they had really lived were
those last two days of flight, of hurry, of hope alternating with
despair, of light-hearted companionship, days never to be forgotten,
when each snatched meal was a picnic seasoned with laughter, days of
unharnessed freedom lived in the open air.
Clementina was the first to perceive that her behaviour fell below the
occasion. She was safe in Italy, journeying henceforward safely to her
betrothed. She spurred herself to understand it, she forced her lips to
sing aloud the Te Deum. Wogan looked at her in surprise as the first
notes were sung, and the woful appeal in her eyes compelled him to as
brave a show as he could make of joining in the hymn. But the words
faltered, the tune wavered, joyless and hollow in that empty morning.
"Drive on," said Clementina, suddenly; and she had a sense that she was
being driven into bondage,--she who had just been freed. Wogan drove on
towards Peri.
It was the morning of Sunday, the 30th of April; and as the little cart
drew near to this hamlet of thirty cottages, the travellers could hear
the single bell in the church belfry calling the villagers to Mass.
Wogan spoke but once to Clementina, and then only to point out a wooden
hut which stood picturesquely on a wooded bluff of Monte Lessini, high
up upon the left. A narrow gorge down which a torrent foamed led upwards
to the bluff, and the hut of which the windows were shuttered, and which
seemed at that distance to have been built with an unusual elegance, was
to Wogan's thinking a hunting-box. Clementina looked up at the bluff
indifferently and made no answer. She only spoke as Wogan drove past
the church-door, and the sound of the priest's voice came droning out to
them.
"Will you wait for me?" she asked. "I will not be long."
Wogan stopped the pony.
"You would give thanks?" said he. "I understand."
"I would pray for an honest heart wherewith to give honest thanks," said
Clementina, in a low voice; and she added hastily, "There is a life of
ceremonies, there is a life of cities before me. I have lived under the
skies these last two days."
She went into the church, shrouding her face in her hood, and kneeled
down before a rush chair close to the door. A sense of gratitude,
however, was not that morning to be got by any prayers, however earnest.
It was merely a distaste for ceremonies and observances, she strenuously
assured herself, that had grown upon her during these ten days. She
sought to get rid of that distaste, as she kneeled, by picturing in her
thoughts the Prince to whom she was betrothed. She recalled the
exploits, the virtues, which Wogan had ascribed to him; she stamped them
upon the picture. "It is the King," she said to herself; and the picture
answered her, "It is the King's servant." And, lo! the face of the
picture was the face of Charles Wogan. She covered her cheeks with her
hands in a burning rush of shame; she struck in her thoughts at the face
of that image with her clenched fists, to bruise, to annihilate it. "It
is the King! It is the King! It is the King!" she cried in her remorse,
but the image persisted. It still wore the likeness of Charles Wogan; it
still repeated, "No, it is the King's servant." There was more of the
primitive woman in this girl bred in the rugged country-side of Silesia
than even Wogan was aware of, and during the halts in their journey she
had learned from Mrs. Misset details which Wogan had been at pains to
conceal. It was Wogan who had conceived the idea of her rescue--in the
King's place. In the King's place, Wogan had come to Innspruck and
effected it. In the King's place, he had taken her by the hand and cleft
a way for her through her enemies. He was the man, the rescuer; she was
the woman, the rescued.
She became conscious of the futility of her attitude of prayer. She
raised her head and saw that a man kneeling close to the altar had
turned and was staring fixedly towards her. The man was the Prince of
Baden. Had he recognised her? She peered between her fingers; she
remarked that his gaze was puzzled; he was not then sure, though he
suspected. She waited until he turned his head again, and then she
silently rose to her feet and slipped out of the church. She found Wogan
waiting for her in some anxiety.
"Did he recognise you?" he asked.
"He was not sure," answered Clementina. "How did you know he was at
Mass?"
"A native I spoke with told me."
Clementina climbed up into the cart.
"The Prince is not a generous man," she said hesitatingly.
Wogan understood her. The Prince of Baden must not know that she had
come to Peri escorted by a single cavalier. He would talk bitterly, he
would make much of his good fortune in that he had not married the
Princess Clementina, he would pity the Chevalier de St. George,--there
was a fine tale there. Wogan could trace it across the tea-tables of
Europe, and hear the malicious inextinguishable laughter which winged it
on its way. He drove off quickly from the church door.
"He leaves Peri at nine," said Wogan. "He will have no time to make
inquiries. We have but to avoid the inn he stays at. There is a second
at the head of the village which we passed."
To this second inn Wogan drove, and was welcomed by a shrewish woman
whose sour face was warmed for once in a way into something like
enthusiasm.
"A lodging indeed you shall have," cried she, "and a better lodging than
the Prince of Baden can look back upon, though he pay never so dearly
for it. Poor man, he will have slept wakefully this night! Here, sir,
you will find honest board and an honest bed for yourself and your sweet
lady, and an honest bill to set you off in a sweet humour in the
morning."
"Nay, my good woman," interrupted Wogan, hastily. "This is no sweet lady
of mine, nor are we like to stay until the morrow. The truth is, we are
a party of four, but our carriage snapped its axle some miles back. The
young lady's uncle and aunt are following us, and we wait only for their
arrival."
Wogan examined the inn and thought the disposition of it very
convenient. It made three sides of a courtyard open to the road. On the
right and the bottom were farm-buildings and a stable; the inn was the
wing upon the left hand. The guest rooms, of which there were four, were
all situated upon the first floor and looked out upon a little thicket
of fir-trees at the back of the wing. They were approached by a
staircase, which ran up with a couple of turns from the courtyard itself
and on the outside of the house-wall. Wogan was very pleased with that
staircase; it was narrow. He was pleased, too, because there were no
other travellers in the inn. He went back to the landlady.
"It is very likely," said he, "that my friends when they come will,
after all, choose to stay here for the night. I will hire all the rooms
upon the first floor."
The landlady was no less pleased than Mr. Wogan. She had a thought that
they were a runaway couple and served them breakfast in a little parlour
up the stairs with many sly and confusing allusions. She became
confused, however, when after breakfast Clementina withdrew to bed, and
Wogan sauntered out into the high-road, where he sat himself down on a
bank to watch for Captain Misset. All day he sat resolutely with his
back towards the inn. The landlady inferred that here were lovers
quarrelling, and she was yet more convinced of it when she entered the
parlour in the afternoon to lay the table for dinner and saw Clementina
standing wistfully at the window with her eyes upon that unmoving back.
Wogan meanwhile for all his vigilance watched the road but ill.
Merchants, pedlars, friars, and gentlemen travelling for their pleasure
passed down the road into Italy. Mr. Wogan saw them not, or saw them
with unseeing eyes. His eyes were turned inwards, and he gazed at a
picture that his heart held of a room in that inn behind him, where
after all her dangers and fatigues a woman slept in peace. Towards
evening fewer travellers passed by, but there came one party of six
well-mounted men whose leader suddenly bowed his head down upon his
horse's neck as he rode past. Wogan had preached a sermon on the
carelessness which comes with danger's diminutions, but he was very
tired. The head was nodding; the blow might fall from nowhere, and he
not know.
At nightfall he returned and mounted to the parlour, where Clementina
awaited him.
"There is no sign of Captain Misset," said he.
Wogan was puzzled by the way in which Clementina received the news. For
a moment he thought that her eyes lightened, and that she was glad; then
it seemed to him that her eyes clouded and suddenly as if with pain. Nor
was her voice a guide to him, for she spoke her simple question without
significance,--
"Must we wait, then, till the morning?"
"There is a chance that they may come before the morning. I will watch
on the top stair, and if they come I will make bold to wake your
Highness."
Their hostess upon this brought their supper into the room, and Wogan
became at once aware of a change in her demeanour. She no longer
embarrassed them with her patronage, nor did she continue her sly
allusions to the escapades of lovers. On the contrary, she was of an
extreme deference. Under the deference, too, Wogan seemed to remark a
certain excitement.
"Have you other lodgers to-night?" he asked carelessly.
"No, sir," said she. "Travellers are taken by a big house and a bustle
of servants. They stay at the Vapore Inn when they stay at Peri, and to
their cost."
As soon as she had left the room Wogan asked of Clementina,--
"When did her manner change?"
"I had not remarked the change till now," replied Clementina.
Wogan became uneasy. He went down into the courtyard, and found it
empty. There was a light in the kitchen, and he entered the room. The
landlady was having her supper in company with her few servants, and
there were one or two peasants from the village. Wogan chatted with them
for a few minutes and came out again much relieved of his fears. He
thought, however, it might be as well to see that his pony was ready for
an emergency. He crossed silently to the stable, which he found dark as
the courtyard. The door was latched, but not locked. He opened it and
went in. The building was long, with many stalls ranged side by side.
Wogan's pony stood in the end stall opposite to the door. Wogan took
down the harness from the pegs and began to fix it ready on the pony. He
had just put the collar over its head when he heard a horse stamping in
one of the stalls at the other end of the stables. Now he had noticed in
the morning that there were only two horses in the building, and those
two were tied up in the stalls next to that which his pony occupied. He
walked along the range of stalls. The two horses were there, then came a
gap of empty stalls, and beyond the gap he counted six other horses.
Wogan became at once curious about those six other horses. They might of
course be farm-horses, but he wished to know. It was quite dark within
the building; he had only counted the horses by the noise of their
movements in their stalls, the rattle of their head-ropes, and the
pawing of their feet. He dared not light a lamp, but horses as a rule
knew him for a friend. He went into the stall of the first, petted it
for a moment and ran his hand down its legs. He repeated the process
with the second, and with so much investigation he was content. No
farm-horse that ever Wogan had seen had such a smooth sleek skin or
such fine legs as had those two over which he had passed his hands. "Now
where are the masters of those horses?" he asked himself. "Why do they
leave their cattle at this inn and not show themselves in the kitchen or
the courtyard? Why do they not ask for a couple of my rooms?" Wogan
stood in the dark and reflected. Then he stepped out of the door with
even more caution than he had used when entering by it. He stole
silently along to the shed where his trap was housed, and felt beneath
the seat. From beneath the seat he drew out a coil of rope, and a lamp.
The rope he wound about him under his coat. Then he went back to his
staircase and the parlour.
Clementina could read in his face that something was amiss, but she had
a great gift of silence. She waited for him to speak. Wogan unwound the
coil of rope from his body.
"Your Highness laughed at me for that I would not part with my rope. I
have a fear this night will prove my wisdom." And with that he began
deliberately to break up the chairs in the room. Clementina asked no
questions; she watched him take the rungs and bars of the chairs and
test their strength. Then he cut the coil of rope in half and tied loops
at intervals; into the loops he fitted the wooden rungs. Wogan worked
expeditiously for an hour without opening his mouth. In an hour he had
fashioned a rope-ladder. He went to the window which looked out on the
back of the wing, upon the little thicket of fir-trees. He opened the
window cautiously and dropped the ladder down the wall.
"Your Highness has courage," said he. "The ladder does not touch the
ground, but it will not be far to drop, should there be need."
The window of Clementina's bedroom was next to that of the parlour and
looked out in the same direction. Wogan fixed the rope-ladder securely
to the foot of the bed and drew the bed close to the window. He left the
lamp upon a chair and went back to the parlour and explained.
"Your Highness," he added, "there may be no cause for any alarm. On the
other hand, the Governor of Trent may have taken a leaf from my own
book. He may have it in mind to snatch your Highness out of Italy even
as I did out of Austria; and of a truth it would be the easier
undertaking. Here are we five miles from the border and in a small
tavern set apart from a small village, instead of in the thick of an
armed town."
"But we might start now," she said. "We might leave a message behind for
Mrs. Misset and wait for her in Verona."
"I had thought of that. But if my mere suspicion is the truth, the six
men will not be so far from their six horses that we could drive away
unnoticed by any one of them. Nor could we hope to outpace them and six
men upon an open road; indeed, I would sooner face them at the head of
my staircase here. And while I hold them back your Highness can creep
down that ladder."
"And hide in the thicket," she interrupted. "Yet--yet--that leaves you
alone. I could give you some help;" and her face coloured. "You were so
kind as to tell me I had courage. I could at the least load your
pistols."
"You would do that?" cried Wogan. "Aye, but you would, you would!"
For the first time that day he forgot to address her with the ceremony
of her title. All that day he had schooled his tongue to the use of it.
They were not man and woman, though his heart would have it so; they
were princess and servant, and every minute he must remember it. But he
forgot it now. Delicate she was to look upon as any princess who had
ever adorned a court, delicate and fresh, rich-voiced and young, but
here was the rare woman flashing out like a light over stormy seas, the
spirit of her and her courage!
"You would load my pistols!" he repeated, his whole face alight. "To be
sure, you would do that. But I ask you, I think, for a higher courage. I
ask you to climb down that ladder, to run alone, taking shelter when
there's need, back to that narrow gorge we saw where the path leads
upwards to the bluff. There was a hut; two hours would take you to it,
and there you should be safe. I will keep the enemy back till you are
gone. If I can, when all is over here I'll follow you. If I do not come,
why, you must--"
"Ah, but you will come," said she, with a smile. "I have no fears but
that you will come;" and she added, "Else would you never persuade me
to go."
"Well, then, I will come. At all events, Captain Misset and his wife
will surely come down the road to-morrow. If I rap twice upon your door,
you will take that for my signal. But it is very likely I shall not rap
at all."
Wogan shivered as he spoke. It was not for the first time during that
conversation, and a little later, as they stood together in the passage
by the stair-head, Clementina twice remarked that he shivered again.
There was an oil lamp burning against the passage wall, and by its light
she could see that on that warm night of spring his face was pinched
with cold. He was in truth chilled to the bone through lack of sleep;
his eyes had the strained look of a man strung to the breaking point,
and at the sight of him the mother in her was touched.
"What if I watched to-night?" she said. "What if you slept?"
Wogan laughed the suggestion aside.
"I shall sleep very well," said he, "upon that top stair. I can count
upon waking, though only the lowest step tremble beneath a foot." This
he said, meaning not to sleep at all, as Clementina very well
understood. She leaned over the balustrade by Wogan's side and looked
upwards to the sky. The night was about them like a perfume of flowers.
A stream bubbled and sang over stones behind the inn. The courtyard
below was very silent. She laid a hand upon his sleeve and said again
in a pleading voice,--
"Let me watch to-night. There is no danger. You are racked by
sleeplessness, and phantoms born of it wear the face of truth to you. We
are safe; we are in Italy. The stars tell me so. Let me watch to-night."
And at once she was startled. He withdrew his arm so roughly that it
seemed he flung off his hand; he spoke in a voice so hoarse and rough
she did not know it for his. And indeed it was a different man who now
confronted her,--a man different from the dutiful servant who had
rescued her, different even from the man who had held her so tenderly in
his arms on the road to Ala.
"Go to your room," said he. "You must not stay here."
She stepped back in her surprise and faced him.
"Every minute," he cried in a sort of exasperation, "I bid myself
remember the great gulf between you and me; every minute you forget it.
I make a curtain of your rank, your title, and--let us be frank--your
destiny; I hang the curtain up between us, and with a gentle hand you
tear it down. At the end of it all I am flesh and blood. Why did I sit
the whole long dreary day out on the bank by the roadside there? To
watch? I could not describe to you one traveller out of them all who
passed. Why, then? Ask yourself! It was not that I might stand by your
side afterwards in the glamour of an Italian night with the stars
pulsing overhead like a smile upon your lips, and all the world
whispering! You must not stay here!"
His eyes burnt upon her; his hands shook; from head to foot he was hot
and fierce with passion, and in spite of herself she kindled to it. That
he loved she knew before, but his description of his city of dreams had
given to him in her thoughts a touch of fancifulness, had led her to
conceive of his love as something dreamlike, had somehow spiritualised
him to the hindrance of her grasp of him as flesh and blood. Thus, she
understood, she might well have seemed to be trifling with him, though
nothing was further from her thoughts. But now he was dangerous; love
had made him dangerous, and to her. She knew it, and in spite of herself
she gloried in the knowledge. Her heart leaped into her eyes and shone
there responsive, unafraid. The next moment she lowered her head. But he
had seen the unmistakable look in her eyes. Even as she stood with her
bowed head, he could not but feel that every fibre in her body thrilled;
he could not but know the transfigured expression of her face.
"I had no thought to hurt you," she said, and her voice trembled, and it
was not with fear or any pain. Wogan took a step towards her and checked
himself. He spoke sharply between clenched teeth.
"Lock your door," said he.
The curtain between them was down. Wogan had patched and patched it
before; but it was torn down now, and they had seen each other without
so much as that patched semblance of a screen to veil their eyes.
Clementina did not answer him or raise her head. She went quietly into
her room. Wogan did not move until she had locked the door.
Then he disposed himself for the night. He sat down across the top step
of the stairs with his back propped against the passage wall. Facing him
was the door of Clementina's room, on his left hand the passage with the
oil lamp burning on a bracket, stretched to the house-wall; on his right
the stairs descended straight for some steps, then turned to the left
and ran down still within view to a point where again they turned
outwards into the courtyard. Wogan saw to the priming of his pistols and
laid them beside him. He looked out to his right over the low-roofed
buildings opposite, and saw the black mountains with their glimmering
crests, and just above one spur a star which flashed with a particular
brightness. He was very tired and very cold; he drew his cloak about
him; he leaned back against the wall and watched that star. So long as
he saw that, he was awake, and therefore he watched it. At what time
sleep overtook him he could never discover. It seemed to him always that
he did not even for a second lose sight of that star. Only it dilated,
it grew brighter, it dropped towards earth, and he was not in any way
surprised. He was merely pleased with it for behaving in so attractive
and natural a way. Then, however, the strange thing happened. When the
star was hung in the air between earth and sky and nearer to the earth,
it opened like a flower and disclosed in its bright heart the face of a
girl, which was yet brighter. And that girl's face, with the broad low
brows and the dark eyes and the smile which held all earth and much of
heaven, stooped and stooped out of fire through the cool dark towards
him until her lips touched his. It was then that he woke, quietly as was
his wont, without any start, without opening his eyes, and at once he
was aware of someone breathing.
He raised his eyelids imperceptibly and peered through his eyelashes. He
saw close beside him the lower part of a woman's frock, and it was the
frock which Clementina wore. One wild question set his heart leaping
within his breast. "Was there truth in the dream?" he asked himself; and
while he was yet formulating the question, Clementina's breathing was
suddenly arrested. It seemed to him, too, from the little that he saw
between his closed eyes, that she stiffened from head to foot. She stood
in that rigid attitude, very still. Something new had plainly occurred,
something that brought with it a shock of surprise. Wogan, without
moving his head or opening his eyes a fraction wider, looked down the
staircase and saw just above the edge of one of the steep stairs a face
watching them,--a face with bright, birdlike eyes and an indescribable
expression of cunning.
Wogan had need of all his self-control. He felt that his eyelids were
fluttering on his cheeks, that his breath had stopped even as
Clementina's had. For the face which he saw was one quite familiar to
him, though never familiar with that expression. It was the face of an
easy-going gentleman who made up for the lack of his wit by the
heartiness of his laugh, and to whom Wogan had been drawn because of his
simplicity. There was no simplicity in Henry Whittington's face now. It
remained above the edge of the step staring at them with a look of
crafty triumph, a very image of intrigue. Then it disappeared silently.
Wogan remembered the voice of the man who had spurred past the doorway
of the inn at Ala. He knew now why he had thought to recognise it. The
exclamation had been one of anger,--because he had seen Clementina and
himself in Italy? He had spurred onwards--towards Trent? There were
those six horses in the stables. Whittington's face had disappeared very
silently. "An honest man," thought Wogan, "does not take off his boots
before he mounts the stairs."
Clementina was still standing at his side. Without changing his attitude
he rapped with his knuckles gently twice upon the boards of the stair.
She turned towards him with a gasp of the breath. He rapped again twice,
fearful lest she should speak to him. She understood that he had given
her the signal to go. She turned on her heel and slipped back into her
room.