“Sir, I am her mother,” replied the Princess, gaining at this moment a suitable dignity from her tears.  “I was wondering not of the King, but of the man the King conceals.”

“You need not, madam,” said Wogan, who had no time for eulogies upon his master.  “Take his servant’s loyalty as the measure of his merits.”

He looked out of the window and suddenly drew back.  He stood for a moment with a look of great fear upon his face.  For the sentinel was back at his post; Wogan dared not at this moment risk a struggle, and perhaps an outcry.  Clementina was waiting under the avenue of trees; Wogan was within the house, and the lights of the guard were already flaring in the roadway.  Even as Wogan stood in the embrasure of the window, he heard a heavy knocking on the door.

CHAPTER XIV

Wogan closed the window cautiously.  The snow had drifted through and lay melting in a heap beneath the sill.  He drew the curtain across the embrasure, and then he crossed to the bedroom door.

“Jenny,” he whispered, “are you in bed?”

“Yes.”

“Lie close!  Do not show your face nor speak.  Only groan, and groan most delicately, or we are lost.”

He closed the door upon Jenny, and turning about came face to face with the Princess-mother.  She stood confronting him, a finger on her lips, and terror in her eyes; and he heard the street-door open and clang to below.

“The magistrate!” she whispered.

“Courage, your Highness.  Keep them from the bed!  Say that her eyes are weak and cannot bear the light.”

He slipped behind the curtain into the embrasure, picturing to himself the disposition of the room, lest he should have left behind a trifle to betray him.  He had in a supreme degree that gift of recollection which takes the form of a mental vision.  He did not have to count over the details of the room; he summoned a picture of it to his mind, and saw it and its contents from corner to corner.  And thus while the footsteps yet sounded on the stair, he saw Clementina’s bundle lying forgotten on a couch.  He darted from his hiding-place, seized it, and ran back.  He had just sufficient and not a second more time, for the curtain had not ceased to swing when the magistrate knocked, and without waiting for an answer entered.  He was followed by two soldiers, and these he ordered to wait without the door.

“Your Highness,” he said in a polite voice, and stopped abruptly.  It seemed to Wogan behind the curtain that his heart stopped at the same moment and with no less abruptness.  There was no evidence of Clementina’s flight to justify that sudden silence.  Then he grew faint, as it occurred to him that he had made Lady Featherstone’s mistake,—­that his boot protruded into the room.  He clenched his teeth, expecting a swift step and the curtain to be torn aside.  The window was shut; he would never have time to open it and leap out and take his