Clementina

"I can make neither head nor tail of it," said he. "The attempt is

beyond my powers."

"Ah," said she, drily, "you own as much? I would never have believed you

would have owned it."

"But what is the answer?" asked a voice at which Wogan started.

"The answer," replied the Countess, "is Mary, Queen of Scots, who was

most unjustly imprisoned in Fotheringay," and she tore the paper into

tiny pieces.

Wogan turned towards the voice which had so startled him and saw the

gossamer lady whom he had befriended on the road from Florence. At once

he rose and bowed to her.

"I should have presented you before to my friend, Lady Featherstone,"

said the Countess, "but it seems you are already acquainted."

"Indeed, Mr. Warner did me a great service at a pinch," said Lady

Featherstone. "He was my postillion, though I never paid him, as I do

now in thanks."

"Your postillion!" cried one or two of the ladies, and they gathered

about the great stove as Lady Featherstone told the story of Wogan's

charioting.

"I bade him hurry," said she, "and he outsped my bidding. Never was

there a postillion so considerately inconsiderate. I was tossed like a

tennis ball, I was one black bruise, I bounced from cushion to cushion;

and then he drew up with a jerk, sprang off his horse, vanished into a

house and left me, panting and dishevelled, a twist of torn ribbons and

lace, alone in my carriage in the streets of Bologna."

"Bologna. Ah!" said the Countess, with a smile of significance at Wogan.

Wogan was looking at Lady Featherstone. His curiosity, thrust into the

back of his mind by the more important matter of his mission now

revived. What had been this lady's business who travelled alone to

Bologna and in such desperate haste?

"Your Ladyship, I remember," he said, "gave me to understand that you

were sorely put to it to reach Bologna."

Her Ladyship turned her blue eyes frankly upon Wogan. Then she lowered

them.

"My brother," she explained, "lay at death's door in Venice. I had just

landed at Leghorn, where I left my maid to recover from the sea, and

hurrying across Italy as I did, I still feared that I should not see him

alive."

The explanation was made readily in a low voice natural to one

remembering a great distress, but without any affectation of gesture or

so much as a glance sideways to note whether Wogan received it

trustfully or not. Wogan, indeed, was reassured in a great measure.

True, the Countess of Berg was now his declared enemy, but he need not

join all her friends in that hostility.