“Well?” she asked quickly.

Whittington took a seat on the sofa by her side.

“Charles Wogan left Bologna at daybreak.  Moreover, I have had a message from the Chevalier bidding me not to mention that I saw him in Bologna yesterday.  One could hazard a guess at the goal of so secret a journey.”

“Ohlau!” exclaimed the lady, in a whisper.  Then she nestled back upon the sofa and bit the fragment of lace she called her handkerchief.

“So there’s an end of Mr. Wogan,” she said pleasantly.

Whittington made no answer.

“For there’s no chance that he’ll succeed,” she continued with a touch of anxiety in her voice.

Whittington neither agreed nor contradicted.  He asked a question instead.

“What is the sharpest spur a man can know?  What is it that gives a man audacity to attempt and wit to accomplish the impossible?”

The lady smiled.

“The poets tell us love,” said she, demurely.

Whittington nodded his head.

“Wogan speaks very warmly of the Princess Clementina.”

Her Ladyship’s red lips lost their curve.  Her eyes became thoughtful, apprehensive.

“I wonder,” she said slowly.

“Yes, I too wonder,” said Whittington.

Outside the branches of the trees rustled in the wind and flung shadows, swift as ripples, across the sunlit grass.  But within the little room there was a long silence.

CHAPTER IV

M. Chateaudoux, the chamberlain, was a little portly person with a round, red face like a cherub’s.  He was a creature of the house, one that walked with delicate steps, a conductor of ceremonies, an expert in the subtleties of etiquette; and once he held his wand of office in his hand, there was nowhere to be found a being so precise and consequential.  But out of doors he had the timidity of a cat.  He lived, however, by rule and rote, and since it had always been his habit to take the air between three and four of the afternoon, he was to be seen between those hours at Innspruck on any fine day mincing along the avenue of trees before the villa in which his mistress was held prisoner.

On one afternoon during the month of October he passed a hawker, who, tired with his day’s tramp, was resting on a bench in the avenue, and who carried upon his arm a half-empty basket of cheap wares.  The man was ragged; his toes were thrusting through his shoes; it was evident that he wore no linen, and a week’s growth of beard dirtily stubbled his chin,—­in a word, he was a man from whom M. Chateaudoux’s prim soul positively shrank.  M. Chateaudoux went quickly by, fearing to be pestered for alms.  The hawker, however, remained seated upon the bench, drawing idle patterns upon the gravel with a hazel stick stolen from a hedgerow.

The next afternoon the hawker was in the avenue again, only this time on a bench at the opposite end; and again he paid no heed to M. Chateaudoux, but sat moodily scraping the gravel with his stick.