Wogan had reason that night to acknowledge the justice of the Prince’s argument.  He accepted his hospitality, thinking that with time he would persuade him to allow the attempt; and after supper, while making riddles in verse to amuse some of the ladies of the court, one of them, the Countess of Berg, came forward from a corner where she had been busy with pencil and paper and said, “It is our turn now.  Here, Mr. Warner, is an acrostic which I ask you to solve for me.”  And with a smile which held a spice of malice she handed him the paper.  Upon it there were ten rhymed couplets.  Wogan solved the first four, and found that the initial letters of the words were C, L, E, M. The answer to the acrostic was “Clementina.”  Wogan gave the paper back.

“I can make neither head nor tail of it,” said he.  “The attempt is beyond my powers.”

“Ah,” said she, drily, “you own as much?  I would never have believed you would have owned it.”

“But what is the answer?” asked a voice at which Wogan started.

“The answer,” replied the Countess, “is Mary, Queen of Scots, who was most unjustly imprisoned in Fotheringay,” and she tore the paper into tiny pieces.

Wogan turned towards the voice which had so startled him and saw the gossamer lady whom he had befriended on the road from Florence.  At once he rose and bowed to her.

“I should have presented you before to my friend, Lady Featherstone,” said the Countess, “but it seems you are already acquainted.”

“Indeed, Mr. Warner did me a great service at a pinch,” said Lady Featherstone.  “He was my postillion, though I never paid him, as I do now in thanks.”

“Your postillion!” cried one or two of the ladies, and they gathered about the great stove as Lady Featherstone told the story of Wogan’s charioting.

“I bade him hurry,” said she, “and he outsped my bidding.  Never was there a postillion so considerately inconsiderate.  I was tossed like a tennis ball, I was one black bruise, I bounced from cushion to cushion; and then he drew up with a jerk, sprang off his horse, vanished into a house and left me, panting and dishevelled, a twist of torn ribbons and lace, alone in my carriage in the streets of Bologna.”

“Bologna.  Ah!” said the Countess, with a smile of significance at Wogan.

Wogan was looking at Lady Featherstone.  His curiosity, thrust into the back of his mind by the more important matter of his mission now revived.  What had been this lady’s business who travelled alone to Bologna and in such desperate haste?

“Your Ladyship, I remember,” he said, “gave me to understand that you were sorely put to it to reach Bologna.”

Her Ladyship turned her blue eyes frankly upon Wogan.  Then she lowered them.

“My brother,” she explained, “lay at death’s door in Venice.  I had just landed at Leghorn, where I left my maid to recover from the sea, and hurrying across Italy as I did, I still feared that I should not see him alive.”