“Your Majesty will yet thank me for my insistence.”  He drew a pocket-book out of his coat.  “At Peri in Italy we were attacked by five soldiers sent over the border by the Governor of Trent.  Who guided those five soldiers?  Your Majesty’s confidant and friend, who is now, I thank God, waiting in the garden.  Here is the written confession of the leader of the five.  I pray your Majesty to read it.”

Wogan held out the paper.  The Chevalier hesitated and took it.  Then he read it once and glanced at it again.  He passed his hand over his forehead.

“Whom shall I trust?” said he, in a voice of weariness.

“What honest errand was taking Whittington to Peri?” asked Wogan, and again the Chevalier read a piece here and there of the confession.  Wogan pressed his advantage.  “Whittington is not the only one of Walpole’s men who has hoodwinked us the while he filled his pockets.  There are others, one, at all events, who did not need to travel to Spain for an ear to poison;” and he leaned forward towards the Chevalier.

“What do you mean?” asked the Chevalier, in a startled voice.

“Why, sir, that the same sort of venomous story breathed to you in Spain has been spoken here in Bologna, only with altered names.  I told your Majesty I brought a visitor to this house to-night.  I did; there was no need I should, since the marriage is fixed for to-morrow.  I brought her all the way from Rome.”

“From Rome?” exclaimed the Chevalier.

“Yes;” and Wogan flung open the door of the library, and drawing himself up announced in his loudest voice, “The King!”

A loud cry came through the opening.  It was not Clementina’s voice which uttered it.  The Chevalier recognised the cry.  He stood for a moment or two looking at Wogan.  Then he stepped over the threshold, and Wogan closed the door behind him.  But as he closed it he heard Maria Vittoria speak.  She said,—­

“Your Majesty, a long while ago, when you bade me farewell, I demanded of you a promise, which I have but this moment explained to the Princess, who now deigns to call me friend.  Your Majesty has broken the promise.  I had no right to demand it.  I am very glad.”

Wogan went downstairs.  He could leave the three of them shut up in that room to come by a fitting understanding.  Besides, there was other work for him below,—­work of a simple kind, to which he had now for some weeks looked forward.  He crept down the stairs very stealthily.  The hall door was still open.  He could see dimly the figure of a man standing on the grass.

* * * * *

When the Chevalier came down into the garden an hour afterwards, a man was still standing on the grass.  The man advanced to him.  “Who is it?” asked the Chevalier, drawing back.  The voice which answered him was Wogan’s.

“And Whittington?”

“He has gone,” replied Wogan.

“You have sent him away?”