p was yet visible, and was at once shown into a room with
long windows which stood open to the garden. Her Ladyship lay upon a
sofa sipping her coffee and teasing a spaniel with the toe of her
slipper.

"You are early," she said with some surprise.

"And yet no earlier than your Ladyship," said Whittington.

"I have to make my obeisance to my King," said she, stifling a yawn.
"Could one, I ask you, sleep on so important a day?"

Mr. Whittington laughed genially. Then he opened the door and glanced
along the passage. When he turned back into the room her Ladyship had
kicked the spaniel from the sofa and was sitting bolt upright with all
her languor gone.

"Well?" she asked quickly.

Whittington took a seat on the sofa by her side.

"Charles Wogan left Bologna at daybreak. Moreover, I have had a message
from the Chevalier bidding me not to mention that I saw him in Bologna
yesterday. One could hazard a guess at the goal of so secret a journey."

"Ohlau!" exclaimed the lady, in a whisper. Then she nestled back upon
the sofa and bit the fragment of lace she called her handkerchief.

"So there's an end of Mr. Wogan," she said pleasantly.

Whittington made no answer.

"For there's no chance that he'll succeed," she continued with a touch
of anxiety in her voice.

Whittington neither agreed nor contradicted. He asked a question
instead.

"What is the sharpest spur a man can know? What is it that gives a man
audacity to attempt and wit to accomplish the impossible?"

The lady smiled.

"The poets tell us love," said she, demurely.

Whittington nodded his head.

"Wogan speaks very warmly of the Princess Clementina."

Her Ladyship's red lips lost their curve. Her eyes became thoughtful,
apprehensive.

"I wonder," she said slowly.

"Yes, I too wonder," said Whittington.

Outside the branches of the trees rustled in the wind and flung shadows,
swift as ripples, across the sunlit grass. But within the little room
there was a long silence.

CHAPTER IV

M. Chateaudoux, the chamberlain, was a little portly person with a
round, red face like a cherub's. He was a creature of the house, one
that walked with delicate steps, a conductor of ceremonies, an expert in
the subtleties of etiquette; and once he held his wand of office in his
hand, there was nowhere to be found a being so precise and
consequential. But out of doors he had the timidity of a cat. He lived,
however, by rule and rote, and since it