It was a curious interview between Eberhard Ludwig and his deserted wife; strained, unnatural, terrible, this meeting after long years, and insensibly they fell into their old attitudes: he wearied, irritated, coldly courteous; she tearful, imploring, tiresome. He told her that she was nothing to him, and that she had no further claims upon him; he provided residence, appanage, everything to which she had a right. She responded that she claimed his love, his company, and in answer he bowed deeply and left her presence. Madame de Ruth returning to her rooms found a fainting woman prone upon the floor, and to her credit be it written, she tended the Duchess gently. When her Highness recovered from her swoon she requested Madame de Ruth to lead her to the palace chapel. 'I would fain leave a prayer here! A foolish fancy, you will say, but the sorrowful are often foolish,' she said bitterly. Madame de Ruth guided the Duchess through another maze of long corridors, and ushered her into the tapestried room which is behind the palace gallery. Her Highness gazed with displeasure at the luxurious furnishing of the Ducal pew, its gilded armchairs, red silk cushions, soft red silk praying hassocks, and the gilt casement looking down into the church. The church itself, designed by the Italian Papist, Frisoni, showed a wealth of delicate pink brocade and of rich azure hangings, of golden angels, of smiling goddesses whose voluptuous faces bore so unmistakable a likeness to the Landhofmeisterin. With a sigh the Duchess fell on her knees. 'God is everywhere,' she reminded herself, 'even in this frivolous chapel.' She prayed earnestly for some time, and, rising, would have turned to go, when her eye was caught by a finely sculptured medallion, placed high up to the right of the much gilded and ornamented pulpit. Its subject was Truth, and this severe personage stood represented by a charming shepherdess with rose-wreathed mirror, and flower-bedecked, coquettish hat, bare breast, and a skirt which, for no particular reason unless it were the showing of the model's beautiful limbs, suddenly fell on one side from the hip to the ankle of this remarkable figure of Truth. Here again the face was unmistakable, and the sculptor had taken immense pains to make this medallion a masterly portrait of the Landhofmeisterin. With a gesture of despair and disgust the Duchess turned away and hurried through the corridors. Placing her hand on Madame de Ruth's arm she pressed her guide forward at so rapid a pace that the older woman almost fell. 'Quick, Madame! quick, Madame! take me from this terrible place!' the Duchess repeated. It seemed to her that Wilhelmine's face, her triumphant beauty, pursued her at every yard of the Sinner's Palace. Even in the church she knew that each figure, feigning to beautify the House of God, was in reality merely another homage to the great mistress, another subtle compliment of the architect Frisoni's for the Landhofmeisterin.