Having made up his mind that an alliance with the House of Zell would be advantageous to that of Hanover, Ernest Augustus found no difficulty in persuading his brother to postpone the marriage of his daughter, Sophia Dorothea, with Augustus of Wôlfenbuttel on the score of her youth, as she was only fifteen years of age, he argued, and too young to become a wife. Anxious as he was to retain possession of his child for another year, the Duke of Zell was only too willing to listen to any argument that would accomplish that object, so he consented to a betrothal only, and postponed the marriage for a year. What reasoning he employed to make the young lovers agree to this arrangement, is not known; but Augustus went off evidently satisfied that the prize he was to get was worth waiting for, and with no suspicion that treachery would deprive him of his lady love. No sooner was he well out of the way, than Ernest Augustus, Madame Von Platen, and others busied themselves in endeavoring to bring their plot to a climax. Months rolled by, Sophia Dorothea celebrated her sixteenth birthday; George Louis visited her from time to time, but he had made no impression whatever on the young girl, and the series of intrigues concocted by the old heads for the ruin of young hearts would have been utterly worthless had it not been for the active and efficient zeal of one person, who, just when failure seemed {029}imminent, stepped in to prove the worth of her energy and power. That person was Sophia, mother to George Louis, a crafty, designing woman, ambitious as any of her family, who, having seen the advantage to be derived from the marriage of her son with her niece Sophia Dorothea, was determined that it should take place. She had heard rumors of an engagement with Augustus of Wôlfenbuttel; but that was a matter of small consideration in her eyes, and so long as no marriage had taken place, it was not too late for her son to supplant the favored lover. The great, heavy family coach was therefore ordered to be put in readiness for a journey of about thirty miles, which an ordinary railway train of to-day would make in an hour. But two centuries ago travelling was a more serious matter, and it took the duchess all night to reach the ducal palace of Zell. The sleepy sentinel was astonished when the lady pushed past him, and, totally regardless of anything like ceremony, breathlessly requested the servants she met in the hall to conduct her at once to the duke. She was told that he was dressing, but would soon come down stairs to see her if she would have the goodness to wait in a' reception-room.