t that same way
over the lawn to the window, and had sat by that log-fire and charmed
the old gentleman into an envy by his incomparable elegance and wit."

"Koenigsmarck!" exclaimed the girl. She knew the history of that
brilliant and baleful adventurer at the Court of Hanover. "He came as
you did, and wounded?"

"The Princess Sophia Dorothea was visiting the Duke of Wuertemberg,"
Wogan explained, and Clementina nodded.

"Count Otto von Ahlen, my host," he continued, "had a momentary thought
that I was Koenigsmarck mysteriously returned as he had mysteriously
vanished; and through these thirty years' retention of his youth, Count
Otto could never think of Koenigsmarck but as a man young and tossed in a
froth of passion. He would have it to the end that I had escaped from
such venture as had Koenigsmarck; he would have it my wounds were the
mere offset to a love well worth them; he _would_ envy me. 'Passion,'
said he, 'without passion there can be no great thing.'"

"And the saying lived in your thoughts," cried Clementina. "I do not
wonder. 'Without passion there can be no great thing!' Can books teach
a man so much?"

"Nay, it was an hour's talk with Koenigsmarck which set the old man's
thoughts that way; and though Koenigsmarck talked never so well, I would
not likely infer from his talk an eternal and universal truth. Count
Otto left me alone while he fetched me food, and he left me in a panic."

"A panic?" said Clementina, with a little laugh. "You!"

"Yes. That first mistake of me for Koenigsmarck, that insistence that my
case was Koenigsmarck's--"

"There was a shadow of truth in it--even then?" said Clementina,
suddenly leaning across the table towards him. Wogan strove not to see
the light of her joy suddenly sparkling in her eyes.

"I sat alone, feeling the ghost of Koenigsmarck in the room with me," he
resumed quickly, and his voice dropped, and he looked round the little
cabin. Clementina looked round quickly too. Then their eyes met again.
"I heard his voice menacing me. 'For love of a queen I lived. For love
of a queen I died most horribly; and it would have gone better with the
queen had she died the same death at the same time--'" And Clementina
interrupted him with a cry which was fierce.

"Ah, who can say that, and know it for the truth--except the Queen? You
must ask her in her prison at Ahlden, and that you cannot do. She has
her memories maybe. Maybe she has built herself within these thi