Jenny passed her month in a delicious excitement.  She was a daughter of the camp, and had no fears whatever.  She was a conspirator; she was trusted with a tremendous secret; she was to help the beautiful and enormous O’Toole to a rich and beautiful wife; she was to outwit an old curmudgeon of an uncle; she was to succour a maiden heart-broken and imprisoned.  Jenny was quite uplifted.  Never had a maid-servant been born to so high a destiny.  Her only difficulty was to keep silence, and when the silence became no longer endurable she would run on some excuse or another to Wogan and divert him with the properest sentiments.

“To me,” she would cry, “there’s nothing sinful in changing clothes with the beautiful mistress of O’Toole.  Christian charity says we are to make others happy.  I am a Christian, and as to the uncle he can go to the devil!  He can do nothing to me but talk, and I don’t understand his stupid language.”

Jenny was the one person really happy during this month.  It was Wogan’s effort to keep her so, for she was the very pivot of his plan.

There remains yet one other who had most reason of all to repine at the delay, the Princess Clementina.  Her mother wearied her with perpetual complaints, the Prince of Baden, who was allowed admittance to the villa, persecuted her with his attentions; she knew nothing of what was planned for her escape, and the rigorous confinement was not relaxed.  It was not a happy time for Clementina.  Yet she was not entirely unhappy.  A thought had come to her and stayed with her which called the colour to her cheeks and a smile to her lips.  It accounted to her for the delay; her pride was restored by it; because of it she became yet more patient with her mother, more gentle with the Prince of Baden, more good-humoured to her gaolers.  It sang at her heart like a bird; it lightened in her grey eyes.  It had come to her one sleepless night, and the morning had not revealed it as a mere phantasy born of the night.  The more she pondered it, the more certain was she of its truth.  Her King was coming himself at the hazard of his life to rescue her.

CHAPTER XI

Therefore she waited in patience.  It was still winter at Innspruck, though the calendar declared it to be spring.  April was budless and cold, a month of storms; the snow drifted deep along the streets and M. Chateaudoux was much inconvenienced during his promenades in the afternoon.  He would come back with most reproachful eyes for Clementina in that she so stubbornly clung to her vagabond exile and refused so fine a match as the Prince of Baden.  On the afternoon of the 25th, however, Clementina read more than reproach in his eyes, more than discomfort in the agitation of his manner.  The little chamberlain was afraid.

Clementina guessed the reason of his fear.

“He has come!” she cried.  The exultation of her voice, the deep breath she drew, the rush of blood to her face, and the sudden dancing light in her eyes showed how much constraint she had set upon herself.  She was like an ember blown to a flame.  “You were stopped in your walk.  You have a message for me.  He has come!”