'You knew this before. You knew and approved, and now you hinder the completion of the only plan by which I can return to you. You cannot give up your Dukedom, you cannot leave Stuttgart, and we cannot live apart.' She spoke harshly. 'But is Stuttgart so much to you? Wilhelmine, do you love me only as Duke of Wirtemberg?' His eyes were full of tears. 'Alas! I am the most miserable of men.' 'Eberhard, heart of my life, look in my face and see if I love you! But because I love you I dare not take you away from your great position, from your ambition.' 'Ambition,' he broke in, 'ambition! I am ready to renounce everything----' 'Will you let yourself sink into a mooning poet, my hero of great battles? No! you shall go back, dear love--back to your grand, soldier's life! See, I will stay here and dream of you, if you will not let me take the only path back to Wirtemberg. You shall write to me, sometimes send me a poem, a jewel perhaps--but we shall be parted! O Eberhard!' She sighed deeply, but her strange, hard eyes watched him narrowly. He turned away his face. She saw that her reminder of his military ambition had succeeded as she expected. 'You are right. Alas! this horrible degradation, this masquerading before God--and yet it is the only way.' Her arms stole round him. Against his cheek he felt her smooth skin, her warm lips sought his. 'I love you, only you,' she whispered. 'In a few days I follow you to Stuttgart. Come to me!' He flung her from him almost roughly. 'Not now! God in heaven! not now! Can you dream that at such a time I could? It would make the hideous bargain you contemplate to-morrow one degree more vile.' He turned from her and fled. In a moment she heard the clatter of his horse's hoofs in the courtyard. CHAPTER XV THE RETURN A TRAVELLING coach and six horses thundered into Stuttgart, driven at a hand gallop, and raised clouds of white dust as it passed down the Graben. An escort of Silver Guards rode with this coach. One of the soldiers' horses knocked over a child playing in the roadway, but the cavalcade passed on unheeding, leaving the little crushed figure lying limp and still in the dust. The coach drew up at the Jaegerhaus, where the doors stood wide open, disclosing a company of servants drawn up in solemn line. Two sentries were posted at either side of the entrance. A black-clad major-domo bowed on the threshold, while half a dozen lackeys sprang forward to receive the tall woman who was slowly descending from the coach. Madame la Comtesse de Wuerben, her Excellency the Landhofmeisterin of Wirtemberg, Countess Graevenitz, had arrived at Stuttgart to attend to the duties connected with her invalid husband's court charge. This exalted lady was the first personage of the court after the reigning Duchess, and his Highness had offered her apartments in the castle, but these were refused, her Excellency preferring to occupy an independent residence.