Clementina

"I am not beautiful, I know; I never boasted that I was; but I have a

figure and limbs that a painter would die to paint. And what do you make

of me? A maggot, a thing all body like a nasty bear. Oh, curse the day

that I set out with such tyrants! A pretty figure of fun I should make

before your beautiful German, covered with mud to the knees. No, you

shall hang me first! Why couldn't O'Toole do his own work, the ninny, I

hate him! He's tall enough, the great donkey; but no, I must do it,

who am shorter, and even then not short enough for him and you, but you

must drag me through the dirt without heels!"

Wogan let her run on; he was at his wits' end what to do. All this

turmoil, these tears, these oaths and blows, came from nothing more

serious than this, that Jenny, to make her height less remarkable, must

wear no heels. It was ludicrous, it was absurd, but none the less the

whole expedition, carried to the very point of completion, must fail,

utterly and irretrievably fail, because Jenny would not for one day go

without her heels. The Princess must remain in her prison at Innspruck;

the Chevalier must lose his wife; the exertions of Wogan and his

friends, their risks, their ingenuity, must bear no fruit because Jenny

would not show herself three inches short of her ordinary height.

O'Toole had warned him there would be a difficulty; but that the

difficulty should become an absolute hindrance, should spoil a scheme of

so much consequence, that was inconceivable.

Yet there was Jenny sobbing her heart out on the steps not half a mile

from the villa; the minutes were passing; the inconceivable thing was

true. Wogan could have torn his hair in the rage of his despair. He

could have laughed out loudly and passionately until even on that stormy

night he brought the guard. He thought of the perils he had run, the

difficulties he had surmounted. He had outwitted the Countess de Berg

and Lady Featherstone, he had persuaded the reluctant Prince Sobieski,

he had foiled his enemies on the road to Schlestadt, he had made his

plans, he had gathered his friends, he had crept out with them from

Strasbourg, yet in the end they had come to Innspruck to be foiled

because Jenny would not go without her heels. Wogan could have wept like

Jenny.

But he did not. On the contrary, he sat down by her side on the steps

and took her hand, gentle as a sheep.