He rode at a quick trot, and did not notice at the corner of a street a big stalwart man who sauntered along swinging his stick by the tassel with a vacant look of idleness upon the passers-by.

He stopped and directed the same vacant look at Gaydon.
But he was thinking curiously, "Will he tell Charles Wogan ?" The stalwart man was Harry Whittington.
Gaydon, however, never breathed a word about the Caprara Palace when he handed the passport to Charles Wogan at Schlestadt.

Wogan was sitting propped up with pillows in a chair, and he asked Gaydon many questions of the news at Rome, and how the King bore himself.
"The King was not in the best of spirits," said Gaydon.
"With this," cried Wogan, flourishing the passport, "we'll find a means to hearten him." Gaydon filled a pipe and lighted it.
"Will you tell me, Wogan," he asked,--"I am by nature curious,--was it the King who proposed this enterprise to you, or was it you who proposed it to the King ?" The question had an extraordinary effect.

Wogan was startled out of his chair.
"What do you mean ?" he exclaimed fiercely.

There was something more than fierceness in the words,--an accent of fear, it almost seemed to Gaydon.
There was a look almost of fear in his eyes, as though he had let some appalling secret slip.