e King had need of me. For that
saying of yours I find an apt simile. Call it a stone on which you bade
me set my foot and step. I stepped, and found that your stone was
straw."

"No, madam," cried Wogan.

"I had a thought," she continued, "you knew the stone was straw when
you commended it to me as stone. But this morning I have learned my
error. I acquit you, and ask your pardon. You did not know that the King
had no need of me." And she bowed to him as though the conversation was
at an end. Wogan, however, would not let her go. He placed himself in
front of her, engrossed in his one thought, "She must marry the King."
He spoke, however, none the less with sincerity when he cried,--

"Nor do I know now--no, and I shall not know."

"You have walked with me to the Caprara Palace this morning. Or did I
dream we walked?"

"What your Highness has shown me to-day I cannot gainsay. For this is
the first time that ever I heard of Mlle. de Caprara. But I am very sure
that you draw your inference amiss. You sit in judgment on the King, not
knowing him. You push aside the firm trust of us who know him as a thing
of no account. And because once, in a mood of remorse at my own
presumption, I ascribed one trivial exploit--at the best a success of
muscle and not brain--to the King which was not his, you strip him of
all merit on the instant." He saw that her face flushed. Here, at all
events, he had hit the mark, and he cried out with a ringing
confidence,--

"Your stone is stone, not straw."

"Prove it me," said she.

"What do you know of the Princess Caprara at the end of it all? You
have told me this morning all you know. I will go bail if the whole
truth were out the matter would take a very different complexion."

Again she said,--

"Prove that to me!" and then she looked over his shoulder. Wogan turned
and saw that a servant was coming from the house across the lawn with a
letter on a salver. The Princess opened the letter and read it. Then she
turned again to Wogan.

"His Eminence the Cardinal fixes the marriage in Bologna here for to-day
fortnight. You have thus two weeks wherein to make your word good."

Two weeks, and Wogan had not an idea in his head as to how he was to set
about the business. But he bowed imperturbably.

"Within two weeks I will convince your Highness," said he, and for a
good half-hour he sauntered with her about the garden before he took his
leave.

CHAPTER XXIII

But his t