devotion.

"I thank you again," she breathed. "And now I must think--I must
consider where I can count upon finding refuge."

That cooled his ardour a little. His own high romantic notion was, no
doubt, to fling her there and then upon the withers of his horse, and so
ride out into the wide world to carve a kingdom for her with his sword.
Her sober words dispelled the dream, revealed to him that it was not
quite intended he should hereafter be her custodian. And there for the
moment the matter was suspended.

Both had behaved quite recklessly. Each should have remembered that
an Electoral Princess is not wise to grant a protracted interview,
accompanied by lapel-holding, hand-holding, and hand-kissings, within
sight of the windows of a palace. And, as it happened, behind one of
those windows lurked the Countess von Platen, watching them jealously,
and without any disposition to construe the meeting innocently. Was she
not the deadly enemy of both? Had not the Princess whetted satire upon
her, and had not Koenigsmark scorned the love she proffered him, and
then unpardonably published it in a ribald story to excite the mirth of
profligates?

That evening the Countess purposefully sought her lover, the Elector.

"Your son is away in Prussia," quoth she. "Who guards his honour in his
absence?"

"George's honour?" quoth the Elector, bulging eyes staring at the
Countess. He did not laugh, as might have been expected at the notion of
guarding something whose existence was not easily discerned. He had no
sense of humour, as his appearance suggested. He was a short, fat man
with a face shaped like a pear--narrow in the brow and heavy in the
jowl. "What the devil do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean that this foreign adventurer, Koenigsmark, and Sophia grow too
intimate."

"Sophia!" Thick eyebrows were raised until they almost met the line of
his ponderous peruke. His face broke into malevolent creases expressive
of contempt.

"That white-faced ninny! Bah!" Her very virtue was matter for his scorn.

"It is these white-faced ninnies can be most sly," replied the Countess,
out of her worldly wisdom. "Listen a moment now." And she related, with
interest rather than discount, you may be sure, what she had witnessed
that afternoon.

The malevolence deepened in his face. He had never loved Sophia, and he
felt none the kinder towards her for her recent trip to Zell. Then, too,
being a libertine, and the father of a libertine,