lady-in-waiting, whose
office it should have been to attend her Highness. After saluting her
guests collectively by one sweeping courtesy, Johanna Elizabetha walked
towards her apartments. Eberhard Ludwig made a movement forward as though
to stay the Duchess; but he stopped short, and turned to Wilhelmine, who
was standing behind the Duchess's empty chair, uncertain whether to
follow her Highness or no.

'Mademoiselle de Graevenitz,' he said, 'the Duchess is evidently
indisposed, and thus will not be present at the supper this evening,
therefore I take it your services as lady-in-waiting will be dispensed
with. May I have the honour of leading you to supper?' and he offered
Wilhelmine his hand in the graceful fashion of those days. The last thing
her Highness Johanna Elizabetha saw, as once more she paused to bow from
the doorway to her guests, was the Duke leading her new lady-in-waiting
towards the supper-room.

* * * * *

The Duchess Johanna Elizabetha's guests were leaving the castle: a
constant stream of coaches drew up, one by one, in the courtyard, and
having taken up their owners rumbled away through the heavy archway and
across the moat towards the town. Only Oberhofmarshall Stafforth, Madame
de Ruth, his Grace of Zollern, and Friedrich Graevenitz lingered in the
supper-room by his Highness's command. Stafforth was anxious and silent;
Zollern sleepy; the voluble Madame de Ruth was talking rapidly, with the
evident intention of making the scene appear unimportant to the flunkeys
in attendance. Friedrich Graevenitz said nothing, but looked pompous, and
drank ostentatiously with rounded forearm, showing off his fine muscles,
in spite of the fact that no one paid any heed to him. He had been
invaluable during supper itself, for he had roared out stories, under
cover of whose noise those who had real things to discuss had been
enabled to talk, while the outsiders imagined that his Highness's circle
listened to the Kammerjunker. But now he had been silenced by a
peremptory word from the Duke, and he was thus relegated to the position
of onlooker, though, in truth, he evidently believed all eyes to be upon
him, for he looked sulkily self-conscious and perfectly foolish.

At one of the windows stood Eberhard Ludwig, beside him Wilhelmine. They
were speaking together in an undertone. Madame de Ruth sometimes cast an
anxious glance towards them. She wished the conversation would end;
al