An enchanted place this Schaffhausen, guarded by the great white Alps whose pure crests rise in awful majesty to high Heaven. And here it was that the Graevenitz dwelt after she left Wirtemberg, and here Time the consoler healed her bruised heart and her crushed pride. She dwelt in the small castle which Zollern had given her and where her marriage with Wuerben had been solemnised. Her soul rested from pain, but there were torturing ghosts of the past around her: Eberhard Ludwig, Madame de Ruth, Zollern, her unkind brother, even the fraudulent attorney Schuetz, and the ridiculous figure of her name-husband, Nepomuk Wuerben. Yes, all her life's denizens had vanished. Death or absence had swallowed them; only she, the central figure, remained. She was memory-haunted, who herself was but a memory. Her great healthfulness endured, but sometimes she suffered from strange swoons. 'It is from the heart,' said the apothecary whom Maria called in. 'God knows--heart affliction!' said the Graevenitz bitterly, when they told her of this verdict. Years passed, and still she lingered at Schaffhausen, though she often promised herself to journey to Berlin armed with that 'Letter of Royal Protection' which Zollern had procured for her from Prussia's first King Friedrich I. But she shrank from bringing her cause before Friedrich Wilhelm I., the blustering monarch who had played so unexpected a role in her life. She accounted him as the destroyer of her happiness, for she believed that it was he alone who had influenced Eberhard Ludwig against her, and had induced him to banish her. Woman-like, she threw the blame of her lover's action entirely upon the adviser. She hankered after her beautiful Freudenthal, and she dreamed of returning thither. Deeming herself forgotten, she believed she would be safe in Wirtemberg. Also the fierce torrent of the people's rage had been diverted to another channel, their hatred sated with their vengeance on another favourite. Suess Oppenheimer, who had saved her from imprisonment, had paid the penalty of his own crimes; in his expiation he had borne the brunt, and, for the time, appeased the people's wrath against favouritism. Karl Alexander of Wirtemberg was dead, and his son, a child of some twelve years, was Duke of Wirtemberg. He resided in Stuttgart with his mother, a princess of the House of Thurn and Taxis. Ludwigsburg was deserted, the palace closed; the busy crowd of merchants, clothiers, perruquiers, dressmakers, which had flocked to the new centre of gaiety, had vanished. The Graevenitz had heard that Ludwigsburg was like a city of the dead, with grass-grown streets and deserted houses. Surely she, who belonged to that forgotten past, was forgotten also? She longed to return and once more to view the scenes of her dead glory. But the years passed, and she lingered in Switzerland.