“I had a thought,” she continued, “you knew the stone was straw when you commended it to me as stone.  But this morning I have learned my error.  I acquit you, and ask your pardon.  You did not know that the King had no need of me.”  And she bowed to him as though the conversation was at an end.  Wogan, however, would not let her go.  He placed himself in front of her, engrossed in his one thought, “She must marry the King.”  He spoke, however, none the less with sincerity when he cried,—­

“Nor do I know now—­no, and I shall not know.”

“You have walked with me to the Caprara Palace this morning.  Or did I dream we walked?”

“What your Highness has shown me to-day I cannot gainsay.  For this is the first time that ever I heard of Mlle. de Caprara.  But I am very sure that you draw your inference amiss.  You sit in judgment on the King, not knowing him.  You push aside the firm trust of us who know him as a thing of no account.  And because once, in a mood of remorse at my own presumption, I ascribed one trivial exploit—­at the best a success of muscle and not brain—­to the King which was not his, you strip him of all merit on the instant.”  He saw that her face flushed.  Here, at all events, he had hit the mark, and he cried out with a ringing confidence,—­

“Your stone is stone, not straw.”

“Prove it me,” said she.

“What do you know of the Princess Caprara at the end of it all?  You have told me this morning all you know.  I will go bail if the whole truth were out the matter would take a very different complexion.”

Again she said,—­

“Prove that to me!” and then she looked over his shoulder.  Wogan turned and saw that a servant was coming from the house across the lawn with a letter on a salver.  The Princess opened the letter and read it.  Then she turned again to Wogan.

“His Eminence the Cardinal fixes the marriage in Bologna here for to-day fortnight.  You have thus two weeks wherein to make your word good.”

Two weeks, and Wogan had not an idea in his head as to how he was to set about the business.  But he bowed imperturbably.

“Within two weeks I will convince your Highness,” said he, and for a good half-hour he sauntered with her about the garden before he took his leave.

CHAPTER XXIII

But his thoughts had been busy during that half-hour, and as soon as he had come out from the mouth of the alley, he ran to Gaydon’s lodging.  Gaydon, however, was not in.  O’Toole lodged in the same house, and Wogan mounted to his apartments, hoping there to find news of Gaydon’s whereabouts.  But O’Toole was taking the air, too, but Wogan found O’Toole’s servant.

“Where will I find Captain O’Toole?” asked Wogan.

“You will find his Excellency,” said the servant, with a reproachful emphasis upon the title, “at the little bookseller’s in the Piazza.”