Clementina

"You?" cried the courtier. "Already?" and then laughed. He was the only

man whom Wogan had seen laugh since he drove into Bologna, and he drew a

great breath of hope.

"Then nothing has happened, Whittington? There is no bad news?"

"There is news so bad, my friend, that you might have jogged here on a

mule and still have lost no time. Your hurry is clean wasted," answered

Whittington.

Wogan ran past him up the stairs, and so left the hall and the open

doorway clear. Whittington looked now straight through the doorway, and

saw the carriage and the lady on the point of stepping down onto the

kerb. His face assumed a look of extreme surprise. Then he glanced up

the staircase after Wogan and laughed as though the conjunction of the

lady and Mr. Wogan was a rare piece of amusement. Mr. Wogan did not hear

the laugh, but the lady did. She raised her head, and at the same moment

the courtier came across the hall to meet her. As soon as he had come

close, "Harry," said she, and gave him her hand.

He bent over it and kissed it, and there was more than courtesy in the

warmth of the kiss.

"But I'm glad you've come. I did not look for you for another week," he

said in a low voice. He did not, however, offer to help her to alight.

"This is your lodging?" she asked.

"No," said he, "the King's;" and the woman shrank suddenly back amongst

her cushions. In a moment, however, her face was again at the door.

"Then who was he,--my postillion?"

"Your postillion?" asked Whittington, glancing at the servant who held

the horses.

"Yes, the tall man who looked as if he should have been a scholar and

had twisted himself all awry into a soldier. You must have passed him in

the hall."

Whittington stared at her. Then he burst again into a laugh.

"Your postillion, was he? That's the oddest thing," and he lowered his

voice. "Your postillion was Mr. Charles Wogan, who comes from Rome

post-haste with the Pope's procuration for the marriage. You have helped

him on his way, it seems. Here's a good beginning, to be sure."

The lady uttered a little cry of anger, and her face hardened out of all

its softness. She clenched her fists viciously, and her blue eyes grew

cold and dangerous as steel. At this moment she hardly looked the

delicate flower she had appeared to Wogan's fancy.