Wogan let her run on; he was at his wits’ end what to do.  All this turmoil, these tears, these oaths and blows, came from nothing more serious than this, that Jenny, to make her height less remarkable, must wear no heels.  It was ludicrous, it was absurd, but none the less the whole expedition, carried to the very point of completion, must fail, utterly and irretrievably fail, because Jenny would not for one day go without her heels.  The Princess must remain in her prison at Innspruck; the Chevalier must lose his wife; the exertions of Wogan and his friends, their risks, their ingenuity, must bear no fruit because Jenny would not show herself three inches short of her ordinary height.  O’Toole had warned him there would be a difficulty; but that the difficulty should become an absolute hindrance, should spoil a scheme of so much consequence, that was inconceivable.

Yet there was Jenny sobbing her heart out on the steps not half a mile from the villa; the minutes were passing; the inconceivable thing was true.  Wogan could have torn his hair in the rage of his despair.  He could have laughed out loudly and passionately until even on that stormy night he brought the guard.  He thought of the perils he had run, the difficulties he had surmounted.  He had outwitted the Countess de Berg and Lady Featherstone, he had persuaded the reluctant Prince Sobieski, he had foiled his enemies on the road to Schlestadt, he had made his plans, he had gathered his friends, he had crept out with them from Strasbourg, yet in the end they had come to Innspruck to be foiled because Jenny would not go without her heels.  Wogan could have wept like Jenny.

But he did not.  On the contrary, he sat down by her side on the steps and took her hand, gentle as a sheep.

“You are in the right of it, Jenny,” said he, in a most remorseful voice.

Jenny looked up.

“Yes,” he continued.  “I was in the wrong.  O’Toole is the most selfish man in the whole world.  Cowardly, too!  But there never was a selfish man who was not at heart a bit of a coward.  Sure enough, sooner or later the cowardice comes out.  It is a preposterous thing that O’Toole should think that you and I are going to rescue his heiress for him while he sits at his ease by the inn fire.  No; let us go back to him and tell him to his face the selfish cowardly man he is.”

It seemed, however, that Jenny was not entirely pleased to hear her own sentiments so frankly uttered by Mr. Wogan.  Besides, he seemed to exaggerate them, for she said with a little reluctance, “I would not say that he was a coward.”

“But I would,” exclaimed Wogan, hotly.  “Moreover, I do.  With all my heart I say it.  A great lubberly monster of a coward.  He is envious, too, Jenny.”

Jenny had by this time stopped weeping.

“Why envious?” she asked with an accent of rebellion which was very much to Wogan’s taste.