land. But even in
youth she could boast of little attraction. Prince George, however,
was easily attracted. A dull, undignified libertine, addicted to
over-eating, heavy drinking, and low conversation, he found in Melusina
von Schulemberg an ideal mate. Her installation as maitresse en-titre
took place publicly at a ball given by Prince George at Herrenhausen, a
ball at which the Princess Sophia was present.

Accustomed, inured, as she was to the coarse profligacy of her dullard
husband, and indifferent to his philandering as her contempt of him now
left her, yet in the affront thus publicly offered her, she felt that
the limit of endurance had been reached. Next day it was found that she
had disappeared from Herrenhausen. She had fled to her father's court at
Zell.

But her father received her coldly; lectured her upon the freedom and
levity of her manners, which he condemned as unbecoming the dignity
of her rank; recommended her to use in future greater prudence, and a
proper, wifely submission; and, the homily delivered, packed her back to
her husband at Herrenhausen.

George's reception of her on her return was bitterly hostile. She had
been guilty of a more than usual, of an unpardonable want of respect for
him. She must learn what was due to her station, and to her husband. He
would thank her to instruct herself in these matters against his return
from Berlin, whither he was about to journey, and he warned her that he
would suffer no more tantrums of that kind.

Thus he delivered himself, with cold hate in his white, flabby,
frog-face and in the very poise of his squat, ungainly figure.

Thereafter he departed for Berlin, bearing hate of her with him, and
leaving hate and despair behind.

It was then, in this despair, that Sophia looked about her for a true
friend to lend her the aid she so urgently required; to rescue her from
her intolerable, soul-destroying fate. And at her elbow, against this
dreadful need, Destiny had placed her sometime playmate, her most
devoted friend--as she accounted him, and as, indeed, he was--the
elegant, reckless Koenigsmark, with his beautiful face, his golden mane,
and his unfathomable blue eyes.

Walking with him one summer day between clipped hedges in the formal
gardens of Herrenhausen--that palace as squat and ungraceful as those
who had built and who inhabited it--she opened her heart to him very
fully, allowed him, in her overwhelming need of sympathy, to see things