in warp of
bitterness; humour, which is of the heart, had given place in her
to wit, which is of the mind, and this wit was barbed, and a little
reckless of how or where it offended.

Koenigsmark observed these changes that the years had wrought, and knew
enough of her story to account for them. He knew of her thwarted love
for her cousin, the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, thwarted for the sake of
dynastic ambition, to the end that by marrying her to the Electoral
Prince George the whole of the Duchy of Luneberg might be united.
Thus, for political reasons, she had been thrust into a union that was
mutually loveless; for Prince George had as little affection to bring to
it as herself. Yet for a prince the door to compensations is ever open.
Prince George's taste, as is notorious, was ever for ugly women, and
this taste he indulged so freely, openly, and grossly that the coldness
towards him with which Sophia had entered the alliance was eventually
converted into disgust and contempt.

Thus matters stood between that ill-matched couple; contempt on her
side, cold dislike on his, a dislike that was fully shared by his
father, the Elector, Ernest Augustus, and encouraged in the latter by
the Countess von Platen.

Madame von Platen, the wife of the Elector's chief minister of state,
was--with the connivance of her despicable husband, who saw therein
the means to his own advancement--the acknowledged mistress of Ernest
Augustus. She was a fleshly, gauche, vain, and ill-favoured woman.
Malevolence sat in the creases of her painted face, and peered from her
mean eyes. Yet, such as she was, the Elector Ernest loved her. His son's
taste for ugly women would appear to have been hereditary.

Between the Countess and Sophia there was a deadly feud. The princess
had mortally offended her father-in-law's favourite. Not only had she
never troubled to dissemble the loathing which that detestable woman
inspired in her, but she had actually given it such free and stinging
expression as had provoked against Madame von Platen the derision of
the court, a derision so ill-concealed that echoes of it had reached its
object, and made her aware of the source from whence it sprang.

It was into this atmosphere of hostility that the advent of the elegant,
romantic Koenigsmark took place. He found the stage set for comedy of
a grim and bitter kind, which he was himself, by his recklessness, to
convert into tragedy.

It began by the Countess von Pla