The company now took leave, Zollern offering Forstner a seat in his coach, which was accepted; thus the 'Representative of all the virtues' (another of Madame de Ruth's names for 'L'osseux') was safely removed from the scene, leaving Kammerjunker Graevenitz to attend his Highness. Madame de Ruth retired to her rooms in the castle. Stafforth escorted Wilhelmine to his coach, which waited to convey her to the house in the Graben. As he bowed gallantly over her hand he felt her fingers press a paper into his palm. She must have penned it ere she came to the concert, he reflected, for she could have found no opportunity for writing since. When he reached the deserted corridor outside the antehall, where two tall gentlemen-at-arms guarded the door of his Highness's sleeping apartment, he held the missive up to the light of one of the flickering wall-lamps: 'For his Highness's own hand alone,' he read. 'Ah----!' he murmured. Passing through the antehall, he gained admission to Eberhard Ludwig's apartment. 'Stafforth, my friend!' cried the Duke, when the Oberhofmarshall appeared, 'this is much courtesy,--you attend me with zeal!' and he laughed gaily. Stafforth looked fixedly at him; he wished to convey to his Highness his desire to speak with him alone; but Friedrich Graevenitz also, unfortunately, had this impression, and being at once the most suspicious and the most tactless of mortals, he had evidently made up his mind to remain in attendance, as was indeed officially correct, though it was usual for the subordinate official to retire courteously when a person holding a superior court charge was present at the Duke's disrobing. It was impossible for Stafforth to give his Highness Wilhelmine's missive in her brother's presence, for the conspirators had long discovered that Friedrich Graevenitz either lost his temper and blustered, if he felt himself excluded from full knowledge of anything concerning his sister's affairs; or else, were he taken into their confidence, he compromised the situation by some gross tactlessness the which he himself considered, and represented, to be a master-stroke of diplomacy.