Clementina laughed happily and returned her kiss with no less sincerity,
if with less noise.
"Quick, Jenny," said Wogan, "to bed with you!"
He pointed to the door which led to the Princess's bedroom.
"Now you must write a letter," he added to Clementina, in a low voice,
as soon as the door was shut upon Jenny. "A letter to your mother,
relieving her of all complicity in your escape. Her Highness will find
it to-morrow night slipped under the cover of her toilette."
Clementina ran to a table, and taking up a pen, "You think of
everything," she said. "Perhaps you have written the letter."
Wogan pulled a sheet of paper from his fob.
"I scribbled down a few dutiful sentiments," said he, "as we drove down
from Nazareth, thinking it might save time."
"Mother," exclaimed Clementina, "not content with contriving my escape,
he will write my letters to you. Well, sir, let us hear what you have
made of it."
Wogan dictated a most beautiful letter, in which a mother's claims for
obedience were strongly set out--as a justification, one must suppose,
for a daughter's disobedience. But Clementina was betrothed to his
Majesty King James, and that engagement must be ever the highest
consideration with her, on pain of forfeiting her honour. It was
altogether a noble and stately letter, written in formal, irreproachable
phrases which no daughter in the world would ever have written to a
mother. Clementina laughed over it, but said that it would serve. Wogan
looked at his watch again. It was then a quarter to ten.
"Quick!" said he. "Your Highness will wait for me under the fourth tree
of the avenue, counting from the end."
He left the mother and daughter alone, that his presence might not check
the tenderness of their farewell, and went down the stairs into the dark
hall. M. Chateaudoux was waiting there, with his teeth chattering in the
extremity of his alarm. Wogan unlatched the door very carefully and saw
through the chink the sentry standing by the steps. The snow still fell;
he was glad to note the only light was a white glimmering from the waste
of snow upon the ground.
"You must go out with her," Wogan whispered to Chateaudoux, "and speak a
word to the sentry."
"At any moment the magistrate may come," said Chateaudoux, though he
trembled so that he could hardly speak.
"All the more reason for the sentinel to let your sweetheart run home at
her quickest step," said Wogan, and above him he heard Clementina come
out upon the landing. He crept up the stairs to her.