"Your Highness, that was bravely done," said he, and kneeling he kissed
her hand. He went back into the embrasure, slipped the bundle over his
arm, and opened the window very silently. He saw the snow was still
falling, the wind still moaning about the crannies and roaring along
the streets. He set his knee upon the window-ledge, climbed out, and
drew the window to behind him.
The Princess-mother waited in the room with her hand upon her heart. She
waited, it seemed to her, for an eternity. Then she heard the sound of a
heavy fall, and the clang of a musket against the wall of the villa. But
she heard no cry. She ran to the window and looked out. But strain her
eyes as she might, she could distinguish nothing in that blinding storm.
She could not see the sentinel; nor was this strange, for the sentinel
lay senseless on the snow against the house-wall, and Mr. Wogan was
already running down the avenue.
Under the fourth tree he found Clementina; she took his arm, and they
set off together, wrestling with the wind, wading through the snow. It
seemed to Clementina that her companion was possessed by some new fear.
He said no single word to her; he dragged her with a fierce grip upon
her wrist; if she stumbled, he jerked her roughly to her feet. She set
her teeth and kept pace with him. Only once did she speak. They had come
to a depression in the road where the melted snow had made a wide pool.
Wogan leaped across it and said,-"Give me your hand! There's a white stone midway where you can set your
foot."
The Princess stepped as he bade her. The stone yielded beneath her tread
and she stood ankle-deep in the water. Wogan sprang to her side and
lifted her out. She had uttered no cry, and now she only laughed as she
stood shivering on the further edge. It was that low musical,
good-humoured laugh to which Wogan had never listened without a thrill
of gladness, but it waked no response in him now.
"You told me of a white stone on which I might safely set my foot," she
said. "Well, sir, your white stone was straw."
They were both to remember these words afterwards and to make of them a
parable, but it seemed that Wogan barely heard them now. "Come!" he
said, and taking her arm he set off running again.
Clementina understood that something inopportune, something terrible,
had happened since she had left the villa. She asked no questions; she
trusted herself without reserve to these true friends who had striven at
such risks for her, she desired to prove to them that she was what they
would have her be,--a girl who did not pester them with inconvenient
chatter, but who could keep silence when silence was helpful, and face
hardships with a buoyant heart.