“Is that all?” cried O’Toole, jumping up.  “Swear it!”

“I do,” said Wogan; and “Here’s to the devil with the Latin grammar!” exclaimed O’Toole.  He flung open his window and hurled the book out across the street with the full force of his prodigious arm.  There followed a crash and then the tinkle of falling glass.  O’Toole beamed contentedly and shut the window.

“Now what will I do for you in return for this?” he asked.

“Keep a watch on the little house and the garden.  I will tell you why when I return.  Observe who goes in to visit the Princess, but hinder no one.  Only remember who they are and let me know.”  And Wogan got back to his lodging and mounted his black horse.  He could trust O’Toole to play watchdog in his absence.  If the mysterious visitor who had bestowed upon Clementina with so liberal a hand so much innuendo and such an artful combination of truth and falsity, were to come again to the little house to confirm the slanders, Wogan in the end would not fail to discover the visitor’s identity.

He dismissed the matter from his mind and rode out from Bologna.  Four days afterwards he presented himself at the door of the Caprara Palace.

CHAPTER XXIV

Maria Vittoria received the name of her visitor with a profound astonishment.  Then she stamped her foot and said violently, “Send him away!  I hate him.”  But curiosity got the better of her hate.  She felt a strong desire to see the meddlesome man who had thrust himself between her and her lover; and before her woman had got so far as the door, she said, “Let him up to me!” She was again surprised when Wogan was admitted, for she expected a stout and burly soldier, stupid and confident, of the type which blunders into success through sheer ignorance of the probabilities of defeat.  Mr. Wogan, for his part, saw the glowing original of the picture at Bologna, but armed at all points with hostility.

“Your business,” said she, curtly.  Wogan no less curtly replied that he had a wish to escort Mlle. de Caprara to Bologna.  He spoke as though he was suggesting a walk on the Campagna.

“And why should I travel to Bologna?” she asked.  Wogan explained.  The explanation required delicacy, but he put it in as few words as might be.  There were slanderers at work.  Her Highness the Princess Clementina was in great distress; a word from Mlle. de Caprara would make all clear.

“Why should I trouble because the Princess Clementina has a crumpled rose-leaf in her bed?  I will not go,” said Mlle. de Caprara.

“Yet her Highness may justly ask why the King lingers in Spain.”  Wogan saw a look, a smile of triumph, brighten for an instant on the angry face.

“It is no doubt a humiliation to the Princess Clementina,” said Maria Vittoria, with a great deal of satisfaction.  “But she must learn to bear humiliation like other women.”