"Your Highness, the truth is there are great matters brewing in Spain.
His Majesty was needed there most urgently. He had to decide between
Innspruck and Cadiz, and it seemed that he would honour your great
confidence in him and at the same time serve you best--"
Clementina would not allow him to complete the sentence. Her cheek
flushed, and she said quickly,-"You are right, Mr. Wogan. The King is right. Mine was a girl's thought.
I am ashamed of it;" and she frankly gave him her hand. Wogan was fairly
well pleased with his apology for his King. It was not quite the truth,
no doubt, but it had spared Clementina a trifle of humiliation, and had
re-established the King in her thoughts. He bent over her hand and would
have kissed it, but she stopped him.
"No," said she, "an honest handclasp, if you please; for no woman can
have ever lived who had a truer friend," and Wogan, looking into her
frank eyes, was not, after all, nearly so well pleased with the untruth
he had told her. She was an uncomfortable woman to go about with shifts
and contrivances. Her open face, with its broad forehead and the clear,
steady eyes of darkest blue, claimed truth as a prerogative. The blush
which had faded from her cheeks appeared on his, and he began to babble
some foolish word about his unworthiness when the Princess-mother
interrupted him in a grudging voice,-"Mr. Wogan, you were to bring a written authority from the Prince my
husband."
Wogan drew himself up straight.
"Your Highness," said he, with a bow of the utmost respect, "I was given
such an authority."
The Princess-mother held out her hand. "Will you give it me?"
"I said that I was given such an authority. But I have it no longer. I
was attacked on my way from Ohlau. There were five men against me, all
of whom desired that letter. The room was small; I could not run away;
neither had I much space wherein to resist five men. I knew that were I
killed and that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be
too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince
Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor's hostility. So when I had made
sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter
into a taper and before their faces lit my pipe with it."
Clementina's eyes were fixed steadily and intently upon Wogan's face.
When he ended she drew a deep breath, but otherwise she did not move.
The Princess-mother, however, was unmistakably relieved. She spoke with
a kindliness she had never shown before to Wogan; she even smiled at
him in a friendly way.