r Highness must remember how much I am in the open air.'

This allusion to the constant drives with Eberhard Ludwig goaded Johanna
Elizabetha past endurance.

'You will not be able to be abroad so much in future, Mademoiselle de
Graevenitz,' she answered grimly; 'I intend to commence a large piece of
embroidery, and the work will keep me more in the house. I shall require
your services to read to me while I am working.'

Wilhelmine bowed.

'Fetch me that embroidery frame and the silks, Mademoiselle,' the Duchess
said, in a tone of such imperious command that the other felt an angry
blush flame in her cheeks; but she walked quietly across the room and
brought the frame to her Highness, who at once busied herself in matching
the coloured silks on the design. Seating herself near the window, and
settling the frame on a small table before her, she worked steadily for
some time in silence, Wilhelmine standing near, not having been granted
permission to be seated. The silence became horrible, tense, gloomy; the
air seemed quivering with the hatred which both women felt. At length the
Duchess laid aside her work and, turning, faced her lady-in-waiting
directly.

'Mademoiselle Wilhelmine von Graevenitz,' she said slowly, 'I will give
you one chance of becoming an honest woman. You are unnecessary to me in
your present capacity, and I have decided to remove you from my service.'
She rose with the dignity she could assume at times. 'The reasons for my
decision you know well enough, and, indeed, it were not fitting for me to
discuss them with you. If you will resign your charge, and leave the
country to-day, promising never to return, I will announce that, to my
regret, you have been called back to your home. As I know you came here
penniless, I offer you a free present of ten thousand gulden, under the
conditions I have named. If you will not accept this I shall have you
driven from my house, and I shall command that no one in Wirtemberg shall
shelter you under pain of loss of entry at court.'

Johanna Elizabetha was really impressive and dignified, infinitely
pathetic too; for it was a futile assumption of an authority hers by
right, and, in fact, absolutely non-existent. 'I await your answer,' she
added, a little tremulously.

'And I give you my answer, here and now, for to-day and for as long as I
choose. And my answer is--No!' She said it boldly, but her heart was
beating violently; after all, she too was fighting for