Clementina would not allow him to complete the sentence.  Her cheek flushed, and she said quickly,—­

“You are right, Mr. Wogan.  The King is right.  Mine was a girl’s thought.  I am ashamed of it;” and she frankly gave him her hand.  Wogan was fairly well pleased with his apology for his King.  It was not quite the truth, no doubt, but it had spared Clementina a trifle of humiliation, and had re-established the King in her thoughts.  He bent over her hand and would have kissed it, but she stopped him.

“No,” said she, “an honest handclasp, if you please; for no woman can have ever lived who had a truer friend,” and Wogan, looking into her frank eyes, was not, after all, nearly so well pleased with the untruth he had told her.  She was an uncomfortable woman to go about with shifts and contrivances.  Her open face, with its broad forehead and the clear, steady eyes of darkest blue, claimed truth as a prerogative.  The blush which had faded from her cheeks appeared on his, and he began to babble some foolish word about his unworthiness when the Princess-mother interrupted him in a grudging voice,—­

“Mr. Wogan, you were to bring a written authority from the Prince my husband.”

Wogan drew himself up straight.

“Your Highness,” said he, with a bow of the utmost respect, “I was given such an authority.”

The Princess-mother held out her hand.  “Will you give it me?”

“I said that I was given such an authority.  But I have it no longer.  I was attacked on my way from Ohlau.  There were five men against me, all of whom desired that letter.  The room was small; I could not run away; neither had I much space wherein to resist five men.  I knew that were I killed and that letter found on me, your Highness would thereafter be too surely guarded to make escape possible, and his Highness Prince Sobieski would himself incur the Emperor’s hostility.  So when I had made sure that those five men were joined against me, I twisted that letter into a taper and before their faces lit my pipe with it.”

Clementina’s eyes were fixed steadily and intently upon Wogan’s face.  When he ended she drew a deep breath, but otherwise she did not move.  The Princess-mother, however, was unmistakably relieved.  She spoke with a kindliness she had never shown before to Wogan; she even smiled at him in a friendly way.

“We do not doubt you, Mr. Wogan, but that written letter, giving my daughter leave to go, I needs must have before I let her go.  A father’s authority!  I cannot take that upon myself.”

Clementina took a quick step across to her mother’s side.

“You did not hear,” she said.

“I heard indeed that Mr. Wogan had burnt the letter.”

“But under what stress, and to spare my father and to leave me still a grain of hope.  Mother, this gentleman has run great risks for me,—­how great I did not know; even now in this one instance we can only guess and still fall short of the mark.”