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 Ladyship, I remember," he said, "gave me to understand that you
were sorely put to it to reach Bologna."

Her Ladyship 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 reassured 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