She took a step or two towards him and began at once without any
friendly greeting in a cold, formal voice,-"You have received a letter this morning from his Majesty?"

"Yes, your Highness."

"Why does the King linger in Spain?"

"The expedition from Cadiz--"

"Which left harbour a week ago. Well, Mr. Wogan," she asked in biting
tones, "how does that expedition now on the high seas detain his Majesty
in Spain?"

Wogan was utterly dumfounded. He stood and gazed at her, a great trouble
in his eyes, and his wits with that expedition all at sea.

"Is your Highness sure?" he babbled.

"Oh, indeed, most sure," she replied with the hardest laugh which he had
ever heard from a woman's lips.

"I did not know," he said in dejection, and she took a step nearer to
him, and her cheeks flamed.

"Is that the truth?" she asked, her voice trembling with anger. "You did
not know?"

And Wogan understood that the real trouble with her at this moment was
not so much the King's delay in Spain as a doubt whether he himself had
played with her and spoken her false. For if he was proved untrue here,
why, he might have been untrue throughout, on the stairway at Innspruck,
on the road to Ala, in the hut on the bluff of the hills. He could see
how harshly the doubt would buffet her pride, how it would wound her to
the soul.