O'Toole spent his month in polishing his pistols and sharpening his
sword. It is true that he had to persuade Jenny to bear them company,
but that was the work of an afternoon. He told her the story of the rich
Austrian heiress, promised her a hundred guineas and a damask gown, gave
her a kiss, and the matter was settled.
Jenny passed her month in a delicious excitement. She was a daughter of
the camp, and had no fears whatever. She was a conspirator; she was
trusted with a tremendous secret; she was to help the beautiful and
enormous O'Toole to a rich and beautiful wife; she was to outwit an old
curmudgeon of an uncle; she was to succour a maiden heart-broken and
imprisoned. Jenny was quite uplifted. Never had a maid-servant been born
to so high a destiny. Her only difficulty was to keep silence, and when
the silence became no longer endurable she would run on some excuse or
another to Wogan and divert him with the properest sentiments.
"To me," she would cry, "there's nothing sinful in changing clothes
with the beautiful mistress of O'Toole. Christian charity says we are to
make others happy. I am a Christian, and as to the uncle he can go to
the devil! He can do nothing to me but talk, and I don't understand his
stupid language."
Jenny was the one person really happy during this month. It was Wogan's
effort to keep her so, for she was the very pivot of his plan.
There remains yet one other who had most reason of all to repine at the
delay, the Princess Clementina. Her mother wearied her with perpetual
complaints, the Prince of Baden, who was allowed admittance to the
villa, persecuted her with his attentions; she knew nothing of what was
planned for her escape, and the rigorous confinement was not relaxed. It
was not a happy time for Clementina. Yet she was not entirely unhappy. A
thought had come to her and stayed with her which called the colour to
her cheeks and a smile to her lips. It accounted to her for the delay;
her pride was restored by it; because of it she became yet more patient
with her mother, more gentle with the Prince of Baden, more
good-humoured to her gaolers. It sang at her heart like a bird; it
lightened in her grey eyes. It had come to her one sleepless night, and
the morning had not revealed it as a mere phantasy born of the night.
The more she pondered it, the more certain was she of its truth. Her
King was coming himself at the hazard of his life to rescue her.