"Here is my hand," said he, in a low voice. She laid her own in his,
and bending towards him in the darkness she whispered,-"Promise me it shall always be at my service. I shall need friends. I am
young, and I have no knowledge. Promise me!"
She was young indeed. The freshness of her voice, its little tremble of
modesty, the earnestness of its appeal, carried her youth quite home to
Mr. Wogan's heart. She was sweet with youth. Wogan felt it more clearly
as they stood together in the darkness than when he had seen her plainly
in the lighted room, with youth mantling her cheeks and visible in the
buoyancy of her walk. Then she had been always the chosen woman. Wogan
could just see her eyes, steady and mysteriously dark, shining at him
out of the gloom, and a pang of remorse suddenly struck through him.
That one step she was to take was across the threshold of a prison, it
was true, but a prison familiar and warm, and into a night of storm and
darkness and ice. The road lay before her into Italy, but it was a road
of unknown perils, through mountains deep in snow. And this escape of
to-night from the villa, this thunderous flight, with its hardships and
its dangers, which followed the escape, was only the symbol of her life.
She stepped from the shelter of her girlhood, as she stepped across the
threshold of the villa, into a womanhood dark with many trials,
storm-swept and wandering. She might reach the queendom which was her
due, as the berlin in which she was to travel might--nay, surely
would--rush one day from the gorges into the plains and the sunlight of
Italy; but had Wogan travelled to Rome in Gaydon's place and talked with
Whittington outside the Caprara Palace, it is very likely that she would
never have been allowed by him to start. Up till now he had thought only
of her splendid courage, of the humiliation of her capture, of her
wounded pride; she was the chosen woman. Now he thought of the girl, and
wondered of her destiny, and was stricken with remorse.
"Promise me," she repeated, and her hand tightened upon his and clung to
it. Wogan had no fine sentiments wherewith to answer her; but his voice
took a depth of sincerity and tenderness quite strange to her. Her
fingers ceased to tremble.
They went down into the hall. Chateaudoux, who had been waiting in an
agony of impatience, opened the door and slipped out; Clementina
followed him.