Clementina

Maria Vittoria listened very seriously till he came to the end. Then she

made a pouting grimace. "That is very fine, moral, and poetical. Your

Princess was born to be a queen. But what if her throne is set up only

in your city of dreams? Well, it is some consolation to know that you

are one of the four."

"Nay, I will make a shift not to plague myself upon the way the world

treats you."

"Ah, but because it treats you well," cried she. "There will be work for

you, hurryings to and fro, the opportunities of excelling, nights in the

saddle, and perhaps again the quick red life of battlefields. It is well

with you, but what of me, Mr. Wogan? What of me?" and she leaned back in

her carriage and drove away. Wogan had no answer to that despairing

question. He stood with his head bared till the carriage passed round a

corner and disappeared, but the voice rang for a long while in his ears.

And for a long while the dark eyes abrim with tears, and the tortured

face, kept him company at nights. He walked slowly back to his lodging,

and mounting a horse rode out of Bologna, and towards the Apennines.

On one of the lower slopes he came upon a villa just beyond a curve of

the road, and reined in his horse. The villa nestled on the hillside

below him in a terraced garden of oleander and magnolias, very pretty to

the eye. Cypress hedges enclosed it; the spring had made it a bower of

rose blossoms, and depths of shade out of whose green darkness glowed

here and there a red statue like a tutelary god. Wogan dismounted and

led his horse down the path to the door. He inquired for Lady

Featherstone, and was shown into a room from the windows of which he

looked down on Bologna, that city of colonnades. Lady Featherstone,

however, had heard the tramp of his horse; she came running up from the

garden, and without waiting to hear any particulars of her visitor,

burst eagerly into the room.

"Well?" she said, and stopped and swayed upon the threshold. Wogan

turned from the window towards her.

"Your Ladyship was wise, I think, to leave Bologna. The little house in

the trees there had no such wide prospect as this."

He spoke rather to give her time than out of any sarcasm. She set a

hand against the jamb of the door, and even so barely sustained her

trifling weight. Her knees shook, her childlike face grew white as

paper, a great terror glittered in her eyes.