The road lay before her into Italy, but it was a road of unknown perils, through mountains deep in snow.

And this escape of to-night from the villa, this thunderous flight, with its hardships and its dangers, which followed the escape, was only the symbol of her life.
She stepped from the shelter of her girlhood, as she stepped across the threshold of the villa, into a womanhood dark with many trials, storm-swept and wandering.

She might reach the queendom which was her due, as the berlin in which she was to travel might--nay, surely would--rush one day from the gorges into the plains and the sunlight of Italy; but had Wogan travelled to Rome in Gaydon's place and talked with Whittington outside the Caprara Palace, it is very likely that she would never have been allowed by him to start.

Up till now he had thought only of her splendid courage, of the humiliation of her capture, of her wounded pride; she was the chosen woman.

Now he thought of the girl, and wondered of her destiny, and was stricken with remorse.
"Promise me," she repeated, and her hand tightened upon his and clung to it.