One morning, about a month after the commencement of Wilhelmine's sojourn at the castle, she was dressing at her leisure, her Highness having commanded her presence at a later hour than usual. The window stood open, and she could hear the whirl of wings as the doves flew about from the roof of the inner courtyard or alighted on the stone balustrade below her window. The heat had abated, and a faint sighing breeze was wafted through the window. Maria had gone to the town to purchase a ribbon for Madame de Ruth's spaniel, and the Graevenitzin remained alone. She leaned back in a tall, carved chair, listening to the million sounds of silence. Ah! Silence!--quiet! how she loved it! With yearning she realised how she longed for the stillness of some deep wood or of some fragrant garden, with Eberhard Ludwig at her side. True, she saw him daily at court; drove with him on his fine coach drawn by eight horses; supped with him, sang to him, knew herself to be his acknowledged mistress. There were stolen interviews in her little room, moments of wondrous rapture and thrilling, passionate surrender. Yet, somehow, she never had the sensation of being entirely undisturbed, of enjoying the delight of solitude with him, safe from possible interruption. She knew that her genuine passion for the Duke was regarded by the court as an ordinary gallant adventure; her relation with him classed among the unlovely liaisons of princes; and, like each woman who considers her personal conduct, she imagined her own love to be a thing utterly different to the passions of other women--infinitely purer, absolutely apart. Also, she hated disapproval; it had the power to vilify her, drawing out the worst in her nature. Then the Duchess, who was possessed of all the harsh cruelty of the untempted virtuous woman, constantly slighted the lady-in-waiting, whose presence she, perforce, endured, while it afforded her a decided relief to vent her jealous, agonised spleen in the privacy of her apartment upon her victorious rival of public society. She little knew, poor soul, what a sinister list of 'affronts to be avenged' was being written in Wilhelmine's mind, nor could she gauge, she of the moth-coloured spite, the evil, relentless hatred which she was daily fostering in a heart strong to love and strong to hate.