“You are in the right.  It is my business, and why?  Because it touches you, Charles Wogan, and you are my friend.”

“Therefore you will tell me,” cried Wogan.

“Therefore I will not tell you,” answered Gaydon.  He had a very keen recollection of certain pages of poetry he had seen on the table at Schlestadt, of certain conversations in the berlin when he had feigned to sleep.

Wogan caught him by the arm.

“I must know.  Here have I lost two hours out of one poor fortnight.  I must know.”

“Why?”

Gaydon stood quite unmoved, and with a remarkable sternness of expression.  Wogan understood that only the truth would unlock his lips, and he cried,—­

“Because unless I do, in a fortnight her Highness will refuse to marry the King.”  And he recounted to him the walk he had taken and the conversation he had held with Clementina that morning.  Gaydon listened with an unfeigned surprise.  The story put Wogan in quite a different light, and moreover it was told with so much sincerity of voice and so clear a simplicity of language, Gaydon could not doubt one syllable.

“I am afraid, my friend,” said he, “my thoughts have done you some wrong—­”

“Leave me out of them,” cried Wogan, impatiently.  He had no notion and no desire to hear what Gaydon meant.  “Tell me from first to last what you saw in Rome.”

Gaydon told him thereupon of that secret passage from the Chevalier’s house into the back street, and of that promenade to the Princess’s house which he had spied upon.  Wogan listened without any remark, and yet without any attempt to quicken his informant.  But as soon as he had the story, he set off at a run towards the Cardinal’s palace.  “So the Princess,” he thought, “had more than a rumour to go upon, though how she came by her knowledge the devil only knows.”  At the palace he was told that the Cardinal was gone to the Archiginnasio.

“I will wait,” said Wogan; and he waited in the library for an hour,—­another priceless hour of that swiftly passing fortnight, and he was not a whit nearer to his end!  He made it his business, however, to show a composed face to his Eminence, and since his Eminence’s dinner was ready, to make a pretence of sharing the meal.  The Cardinal was in a mood of great contentment.

“It is your presence, Mr. Wogan, puts me in a good humour,” he was pleased to say.

“Or a certain letter your Eminence received from Spain to-day?” asked Wogan.

“True, the letter was one to cause all the King’s friends satisfaction.”

“And some few of them, perhaps, relief,” said Wogan.

The Cardinal glanced at Wogan, but with a quite impassive countenance.  He took a pinch of snuff and inhaled it delicately.  Then he glanced at Wogan again.

“I have a hope, Mr. Wogan,” said he, with a great cordiality.  “You shall tell me if it is to fall.  I see much of you of late, and I have a hope that you are thinking of the priesthood.  We should welcome you very gladly, you may be sure.  Who knows but what there is a Cardinal’s hat hung up in the anteroom of the future for you to take down from its peg?”