his Highness's room. She listened; Eberhard Ludwig was asleep; she could hear the long, even breaths. Noiselessly she pushed aside the arras and entered. The moon shone into the room, and again she could have vowed that a white-shrouded woman's figure stood in the wan light, but, as before, the faint vision vanished when she looked more searchingly. 'Eberhard, beloved,' she called gently, 'are you ill?' The old witchery was in her voice, and the sleeping man answered to it. 'I come, sweet love; I come, Philomele!' Serenissimus appeared on the threshold of the writing-room. He had flung himself down to sleep without undressing, and was still in his riding-clothes. He looked ghastly in the pale moonlight, and she hurried to him with outstretched arms. 'You are ill and you do not come to me? Beloved, have I not tended you that you should thus flaunt me?' She drew him to her. 'What have I done, my heart, how have I sinned, that you have taken your love from me? See, I come to you to pray you to forgive me!' The old trick of speech, her catchword, 'See,' the low voice--the soft, strong arms. He had doubted her, and why? She had given him all; it was not her fault if he wearied of her tyranny. No; he alone was to blame, his inconstancy, his weakness. He poured forth a torrent of self-reproach, and words of love, and she responded passionately. Once more they were lovers, thrilling to each other's touch. And the wan moon looked on at their transports, and perchance the pale wraith of the Countess of Orlamuende, the White Lady, watched the lovers and smiled, knowing that love's death, satiety, had them in his chill grip for all their passionate vows. 'I start at nine to-morrow morning for the reception, beloved. The Erbprincessin and Friedrich accompany me in my coach,' the Landhofmeisterin said as she prepared to return to her apartments. His Highness started. 'I pray you, do not go, Wilhelmine. The King is a bear, and if you meet him he will fail in courtesy to you,' he said. 'It is my right to go, and I start at nine,' she repeated. 'You shall not go; it is my right to forbid you,--you shall not go!' he cried. Then ensued a quarrel, bitter, terrible, between two beings who so short a while before had loved so madly. The quarrel ended by the man giving in, as usual, but the wrangle pierced one more nail in his love's coffin for all that. * * * * * True to her word, the next morning at nine of the clock the Landhofmeisterin entered her coach accompanied by a very angry-faced Erbprincessin, and the Erbprinz. They drove past Hohenasperg to the plain where the review was to be held, and the Landhofmeisterin's coach took up a commanding position near to Eberhard Ludwig and the officers of his staff. The Prussian King appeared riding with a numerous retinue.