Part 4 (2/2)

Wogan turned towards the voice which had so startled him and saw the gossamer lady whom he had befriended on the road from Florence. At once he rose and bowed to her.

”I should have presented you before to my friend, Lady Featherstone,” said the Countess, ”but it seems you are already acquainted.”

”Indeed, Mr. Warner did me a great service at a pinch,” said Lady Featherstone. ”He was my postillion, though I never paid him, as I do now in thanks.”

”Your postillion!” cried one or two of the ladies, and they gathered about the great stove as Lady Featherstone told the story of Wogan's charioting.

”I bade him hurry,” said she, ”and he outsped my bidding. Never was there a postillion so considerately inconsiderate. I was tossed like a tennis ball, I was one black bruise, I bounced from cus.h.i.+on to cus.h.i.+on; and then he drew up with a jerk, sprang off his horse, vanished into a house and left me, panting and dishevelled, a twist of torn ribbons and lace, alone in my carriage in the streets of Bologna.”

”Bologna. Ah!” said the Countess, with a smile of significance at Wogan.

Wogan was looking at Lady Featherstone. His curiosity, thrust into the back of his mind by the more important matter of his mission now revived. What had been this lady's business who travelled alone to Bologna and in such desperate haste?

”Your Ladys.h.i.+p, I remember,” he said, ”gave me to understand that you were sorely put to it to reach Bologna.”

Her Ladys.h.i.+p turned her blue eyes frankly upon Wogan. Then she lowered them.

”My brother,” she explained, ”lay at death's door in Venice. I had just landed at Leghorn, where I left my maid to recover from the sea, and hurrying across Italy as I did, I still feared that I should not see him alive.”

The explanation was made readily in a low voice natural to one remembering a great distress, but without any affectation of gesture or so much as a glance sideways to note whether Wogan received it trustfully or not. Wogan, indeed, was rea.s.sured in a great measure. True, the Countess of Berg was now his declared enemy, but he need not join all her friends in that hostility.

”I was able, most happily,” continued Lady Featherstone, ”to send my brother homewards in a s.h.i.+p a fortnight back, and so to stay with my friend here on my way to Vienna, for we English are all bitten with the madness of travel. Mr. Warner will bear me out?”

”To be sure I will,” said Wogan, stoutly. ”For here am I in the depths of winter journeying to the carnival in Italy.”

The Countess smiled, all disbelief and amus.e.m.e.nt, and Lady Featherstone turned quickly towards him.

”For my frankness I claim a like frankness in return,” said she, with a pretty imperiousness.

Wogan was a little startled. He suddenly remembered that he had pretended to know no English on the road to Bologna, nor had he given any reason for his haste. But it was upon neither of these matters that she desired to question him.

”You spoke in parables,” said she, ”which are detestable things. You said you would not lose your black horse for the world because the lady you were to marry would ride upon it into your city of dreams. There's a saying that has a provoking prettiness. I claim a frank answer.”

Wogan was silent, and his face took on the look of a dreamer.

”Come,” said one. It was the Princess Charlotte, the second daughter of the Prince Sobieski, who spoke. ”We shall not let you off,” said she.

Wogan knew that she would not. She was a girl who was never checked by any inconvenience her speech might cause. Her tongue was a watchman's rattle, and she never spoke but she laughed to point the speech.

”Be frank,” said the Countess; ”it is a matter of the heart, and so proper food for women.”

”True,” answered Wogan, lightly, ”it is a matter of the heart, and in such matters can one be frank-even to oneself?”

Wogan was immediately puzzled by the curious look Lady Featherstone gave him. The words were a mere excuse, yet she seemed to take them very seriously. Her eyes sounded him.

”Yes,” she said slowly; ”are you frank, even to yourself?” and she spoke as though a knowledge of the answer would make a task easier to her.

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