“Then I am sure,” said Clementina.

“Sure that I speak truth?”

“No, sure that you mislead me.  It is not kind; for here perhaps I might give you some small token of my gratitude, would you but let me.  Oh, it is no matter.  I shall find out who the lady is.  You need not doubt it.  I shall set my wits and eyes to work.  There shall be marriages when I am Queen.  I will find out!”

Wogan’s face was not visible in the darkness; but he spoke quickly and in a startled voice,—­

“That you must never do.  Promise that you never will!  Promise me that you will never try;” and again Gaydon stirred in his corner.

Clementina made no answer to the passionate words.  She did not promise, but she drew a breath, and then from head to foot she shivered.  Wogan dared not repeat his plea for a promise, but he felt that though she had not given it, none the less she would keep it.  They sat for awhile silent.  Then Clementina came back to her first question.

“Tell me of the King,” she said very softly.  And as the carriage rolled down the mountain valley through the night and its wheels struck flashes of fire from the stones, Wogan drew a picture for her of the man she was to marry.  It was a relief to him to escape from the dangerous talk of the last hour, and he spoke fervently.  The poet in him had always been sensitive to the glamour of that wandering Prince; he had his countrymen’s instinctive devotion for a failing cause.  This was no suitable moment for dwelling upon the defects and weaknesses.  Wogan told her the story of the campaign in Scotland, of the year’s residence in Avignon.  He spoke most burningly.  A girl would no doubt like to hear of her love’s achievements; and if James Stuart had not so many to his name as a man could wish, that was merely because chance had served him ill.  So a fair tale was told, not to be found in any history book, of a night attack in Scotland and how the Chevalier de St. George, surprised and already to all purposes a prisoner, forced a way alone through nine grenadiers with loaded muskets and escaped over the roof-tops.  It was a good breathless story as he told it, and he had just come to an end of it when the carriage drove through the village of Wellishmile and stopped at the posting-house.  Wogan opened the door and shook Gaydon by the shoulder.

“Let us try if we can get stronger horses here,” said he, and he got out.  Gaydon woke up with surprising alacrity.

“I must have fallen asleep,” said he.  “I beseech your Highness’s forgiveness; I have slept this long while.”  It was no business of his if Wogan chose to attribute his own escape from Newgate as an exploit of the King’s.  The story was a familiar one at Bologna, whither they were hurrying; it was sufficiently known that Charles Wogan was its hero.  All this was Wogan’s business, not Gaydon’s.  Nor had Gaydon anything to do with any city of dreams or with any lady that might ride into it, or with any black horse that chanced to carry her.  Poets no doubt talked that way.  It was their business.  Gaydon was not sorry that he had slept so heartily through those last stages.  He got down from the carriage and met Wogan coming from the inn with a face of dismay.