Clementina

Wogan was guided through the streets to the mouth of a blind alley, at

the bottom of which rose a high garden wall, and over the wall the

smoking chimneys of a house among the tops of many trees freshly green,

which shivered in the breeze and shook the sunlight from their leaves.

This alley, from the first day when the Princess came to lodge in the

house, had worn to Wogan a familiar air; and this morning, as he

pondered dismally whether, after all, those laborious months since he

had ridden hopefully out of Bologna to Ohlau were to bear no fruit, he

chanced to remember why. He had passed that alley at the moment of grey

dawn, when he was starting out upon this adventure, and he had seen a

man muffled in a cloak step from its mouth and suddenly draw back as his

horse's hoofs rang in the silent street, as though to elude recognition.

Wogan wondered for a second who at that time had lived in the house; but

he was admitted through a door in the wall and led into a little room

with French windows opening on a lawn. The garden seen from here was a

wealth of white blossoms and yellow, and amongst them Clementina paced

alone, the richest and the whitest blossom of them all. She was dressed

simply in a white gown of muslin and a little three-cornered hat of

straw; but Wogan knew as he advanced towards her that it was not merely

the hat which threw the dark shadow on her face.

She took a step or two towards him and began at once without any

friendly greeting in a cold, formal voice,-"You have received a letter this morning from his Majesty?"

"Yes, your Highness."

"Why does the King linger in Spain?"

"The expedition from Cadiz--"

"Which left harbour a week ago. Well, Mr. Wogan," she asked in biting

tones, "how does that expedition now on the high seas detain his Majesty

in Spain?"

Wogan was utterly dumfounded. He stood and gazed at her, a great trouble

in his eyes, and his wits with that expedition all at sea.

"Is your Highness sure?" he babbled.

"Oh, indeed, most sure," she replied with the hardest laugh which he had

ever heard from a woman's lips.

"I did not know," he said in dejection, and she took a step nearer to

him, and her cheeks flamed.

"Is that the truth?" she asked, her voice trembling with anger. "You did

not know?"