Clementina

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."