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.