She was young indeed.  The freshness of her voice, its little tremble of modesty, the earnestness of its appeal, carried her youth quite home to Mr. Wogan’s heart.  She was sweet with youth.  Wogan felt it more clearly as they stood together in the darkness than when he had seen her plainly in the lighted room, with youth mantling her cheeks and visible in the buoyancy of her walk.  Then she had been always the chosen woman.  Wogan could just see her eyes, steady and mysteriously dark, shining at him out of the gloom, and a pang of remorse suddenly struck through him.  That one step she was to take was across the threshold of a prison, it was true, but a prison familiar and warm, and into a night of storm and darkness and ice.  The road lay before her into Italy, but it was a road of unknown perils, through mountains deep in snow.  And this escape of to-night from the villa, this thunderous flight, with its hardships and its dangers, which followed the escape, was only the symbol of her life.  She stepped from the shelter of her girlhood, as she stepped across the threshold of the villa, into a womanhood dark with many trials, storm-swept and wandering.  She might reach the queendom which was her due, as the berlin in which she was to travel might—­nay, surely would—­rush one day from the gorges into the plains and the sunlight of Italy; but had Wogan travelled to Rome in Gaydon’s place and talked with Whittington outside the Caprara Palace, it is very likely that she would never have been allowed by him to start.  Up till now he had thought only of her splendid courage, of the humiliation of her capture, of her wounded pride; she was the chosen woman.  Now he thought of the girl, and wondered of her destiny, and was stricken with remorse.

“Promise me,” she repeated, and her hand tightened upon his and clung to it.  Wogan had no fine sentiments wherewith to answer her; but his voice took a depth of sincerity and tenderness quite strange to her.  Her fingers ceased to tremble.

They went down into the hall.  Chateaudoux, who had been waiting in an agony of impatience, opened the door and slipped out; Clementina followed him.

The door was left ajar behind them, and Wogan in the hall saw Chateaudoux speak with the sentinel, saw the sentinel run hurriedly to Clementina, saw Clementina disappear into the snow.  Chateaudoux ran back into the hall.

“And you!” he asked, as he barred and locked the door.  “The magistrate is coming.  I saw the lights of the guard across the avenue.”

Clementina was outside in the storm; Wogan was within the house, and the lights of the guard were already near.

“I go by the way I came,” said he; “I have time;” and he ran quickly up the stairs.  In the room he found the Princess-mother weeping silently, and again, as he saw this weak elderly woman left alone to her fears and forebodings, remorse took hold on him.

“Courage, madam,” said he, as he crossed the room; “she goes to wed a king.”