Clementina

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.