"I was able, most happily," continued Lady Featherstone, "to send my
brother homewards in a ship a fortnight back, and so to stay with my
friend here on my way to Vienna, for we English are all bitten with the
madness of travel. Mr. Warner will bear me out?"
"To be sure I will," said Wogan, stoutly. "For here am I in the depths
of winter journeying to the carnival in Italy."
The Countess smiled, all disbelief and amusement, and Lady Featherstone
turned quickly towards him.
"For my frankness I claim a like frankness in return," said she, with a
pretty imperiousness.
Wogan was a little startled. He suddenly remembered that he had
pretended to know no English on the road to Bologna, nor had he given
any reason for his haste. But it was upon neither of these matters that
she desired to question him.
"You spoke in parables," said she, "which are detestable things. You
said you would not lose your black horse for the world because the lady
you were to marry would ride upon it into your city of dreams. There's a
saying that has a provoking prettiness. I claim a frank answer."
Wogan was silent, and his face took on the look of a dreamer.
"Come," said one. It was the Princess Charlotte, the second daughter of
the Prince Sobieski, who spoke. "We shall not let you off," said she.
Wogan knew that she would not. She was a girl who was never checked by
any inconvenience her speech might cause. Her tongue was a watchman's
rattle, and she never spoke but she laughed to point the speech.
"Be frank," said the Countess; "it is a matter of the heart, and so
proper food for women."
"True," answered Wogan, lightly, "it is a matter of the heart, and in
such matters can one be frank--even to oneself?"
Wogan was immediately puzzled by the curious look Lady Featherstone
gave him. The words were a mere excuse, yet she seemed to take them very
seriously. Her eyes sounded him.
"Yes," she said slowly; "are you frank, even to yourself?" and she spoke
as though a knowledge of the answer would make a task easier to her.
Wogan's speculations, however, were interrupted by the entrance of
Princess Casimira, Sobieski's eldest daughter. Wogan welcomed her coming
for the first time in all his life, for she was a kill-joy, a person of
an extraordinary decorum. According to Wogan, she was "that black care
upon the horseman's back which the poets write about." Her first
question if she was spoken to was whether the speaker was from top to
toe fitly attired; her second, whether the words spoken were well-bred.
At this moment, however, her mere presence put an end to the demands for
an explanation of Wogan's saying about his horse, and in a grateful mood
to her he slipped from the room.