"Here is my hand," said he, in a low voice. She laid her own in his,

and bending towards him in the darkness she whispered,-"Promise me it shall always be at my service. I shall need friends. I am

young, and I have no knowledge. Promise me!"

She was young indeed. The freshness of her voice, its little tremble of

modesty, the earnestness of its appeal, carried her youth quite home to

Mr. Wogan's heart. She was sweet with youth. Wogan felt it more clearly

as they stood together in the darkness than when he had seen her plainly

in the lighted room, with youth mantling her cheeks and visible in the

buoyancy of her walk. Then she had been always the chosen woman. Wogan

could just see her eyes, steady and mysteriously dark, shining at him

out of the gloom, and a pang of remorse suddenly struck through him.

That one step she was to take was across the threshold of a prison, it

was true, but a prison familiar and warm, and into a night of storm and

darkness and ice. The road lay before her into Italy, but it was a road

of unknown perils, through mountains deep in snow. And this escape of

to-night from the villa, this thunderous flight, with its hardships and

its dangers, which followed the escape, was only the symbol of her life.

She stepped from the shelter of her girlhood, as she stepped across the

threshold of the villa, into a womanhood dark with many trials,

storm-swept and wandering. She might reach the queendom which was her

due, as the berlin in which she was to travel might--nay, surely

would--rush one day from the gorges into the plains and the sunlight of

Italy; but had Wogan travelled to Rome in Gaydon's place and talked with

Whittington outside the Caprara Palace, it is very likely that she would

never have been allowed by him to start. Up till now he had thought only

of her splendid courage, of the humiliation of her capture, of her

wounded pride; she was the chosen woman. Now he thought of the girl, and

wondered of her destiny, and was stricken with remorse.

"Promise me," she repeated, and her hand tightened upon his and clung to

it. Wogan had no fine sentiments wherewith to answer her; but his voice

took a depth of sincerity and tenderness quite strange to her. Her

fingers ceased to tremble.

They went down into the hall. Chateaudoux, who had been waiting in an

agony of impatience, opened the door and slipped out; Clementina

followed him.




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