t of visit--"

"It was no business of mine," Gaydon interrupted; "and so I made no
inquiries of Whittington."

"But Whittington did not wait for inquiries, eh?" said Wogan, shrewdly.
"You are hiding something from me, my friend,--something which that good
honest simpleton of a Whittington blurted out to you without the least
thought of making any disclosure. Oh, I know my Whittington. And I know
you, too, Dick. I do not blame you. For when the King goes a-visiting
the Princess Caprara privately at night-time while the girl to whom he
is betrothed suffers in prison for her courageous loyalty to him, and
his best friends are risking their heads to set her free, why, there's
knowledge a man would be glad to keep even out of his own hearing. So
you see I know more than you credit me with. So tell me the rest! Don't
fob me off. Don't plead it is none of your business, for, upon my soul,
it is." Gaydon suddenly changed his manner. He spoke with no less
earnestness than Wogan,--

"You are in the right. It is my business, and why? Because it touches
you, Charles Wogan, and you are my friend."

"Therefore you will tell me," cried Wogan.

"Therefore I will not tell you," answered Gaydon. He had a very keen
recollection of certain pages of poetry he had seen on the table at
Schlestadt, of certain conversations in the berlin when he had feigned
to sleep.

Wogan caught him by the arm.

"I must know. Here have I lost two hours out of one poor fortnight. I
must know."

"Why?"

Gaydon stood quite unmoved, and with a remarkable sternness of
expression. Wogan understood that only the truth would unlock his lips,
and he cried,--

"Because unless I do, in a fortnight her Highness will refuse to marry
the King." And he recounted to him the walk he had taken and the
conversation he had held with Clementina that morning. Gaydon listened
with an unfeigned surprise. The story put Wogan in quite a different
light, and moreover it was told with so much sincerity of voice and so
clear a simplicity of language, Gaydon could not doubt one syllable.

"I am afraid, my friend," said he, "my thoughts have done you some
wrong--"

"Leave me out of them," cried Wogan, impatiently. He had no notion and
no desire to hear what Gaydon meant. "Tell me from first to last what
you saw in Rome."

Gaydon told him thereupon of that secret passage from the Chevalier's
house into the back street, and of that promenade to the Princess's
house which h