The story, as may be imagined, was very soon in everybody’s mouth, and Madame Walmoden was thoroughly alarmed; she knew there were plenty to carry the story to the King. But she took her courage in both hands, and did what every woman has done in similar circumstances and will no doubt continue to do as long as women exist on this earth, beloved by natures weaker than their own. She ordered her coach soon after daylight, and by six o’clock was on the road to Herrenhausen to be the first to tell her version of the story to her elderly royal lover. At Herrenhausen she passed the royal guards who knew her, and went straight to the King’s bedroom. Here she cast herself on her knees by the bed in which little George lay half awakened rubbing his eyes. She besought him to protect her from insult or allow her to retire from his Court; in a torrent of tears she declared that she loved him, not as a king, but as a man and for himself alone. He must have looked far from loveable at the moment, unshaven and in his nightcap, but these things are never remembered when a pretty and designing woman is making love to a man the wrong side of fifty. George the King rubbed his eyes, and asked for an explanation. She told him amid her sobs that she was the subject of a dastardly plot, that a certain Madame d’Elitz had caused a ladder to be placed beneath her window, with a view to ruining her with the King. Now Madame d’Elitz was herself a von der Schulemburg, and was credited by scandal with having been the mistress successively of George the First, George the Second, and Prince Frederick before he came over to England. These achievements, however, are doubted by historians as far as the Prince was concerned, but it is pretty certain she had been the mistress of the two first Georges, father and son. This bringing in of Madame d’Elitz was a stroke of genius, as it opened the door for the Walmoden to tell the King of the arrest of Captain von Schulemberg in the Leine Schloss gardens. It need hardly be said that her story was accepted by King George, who ordered the captain of the Leine Palace Guard to be placed in arrest, and search to be made for von der Schulemberg, that he might be again made prisoner. [Illustration: THE PALACE OF HERRENHAUSEN, HANOVER.] But here Horace Walpole, the English minister in attendance, secretly interposed; he sent word privately to Schulemberg to be off across the frontier as quickly as he could, and he took care that no obstacles should be put in the way of his doing so, for the last thing, he knew very well, that his brother, Sir Robert, wanted, was trouble with the Austrian Emperor. And so Madame Walmoden triumphed; but the story spread, even to England, and in Hanover the infantine features of Madame Walmoden’s fine boy were scanned more eagerly than ever for traces of his paternity.