Sophia Dorothea was still little more than a child; but that very circumstance was made use of in order to procure the postponement of her marriage with Augustus of Wolfenbüttel. The Duke of Zell did not stand in need of much argument from his brother to understand that the union of the young lovers might more properly be celebrated when the bride was sixteen than a year earlier. The duke was ready to accept any reasoning, the object of which was to enable him to retain his daughter another year at his side. The sixteenth birthday of Sophia Dorothea had arrived, and George Louis had made no impression on her heart--the image of the absent Augustus still lived there; and the whole plot would have failed, but for the sudden, and active, and efficient energy of one who seemed as if she had allowed matters to proceed to extremity, in order to exhibit the better her own powers when she condescended to interfere personally and remedy the ill-success of others by a triumph of her own. That person was Sophia, the wife of Ernest, a lady who rivalled Griselda in one point of her patience--that which she felt for her husband’s infidelities. In other respects she was crafty, philosophical, and free-thinking; but she was as ambitious as any of her family, and as she had resolved on the marriage of her son, George Louis, with Sophia Dorothea, she at once proceeded to accomplish that upon which she had resolved. It had suddenly come to her knowledge that Augustus of Wolfenbüttel had made his reappearance at the Court of Zell. Coupling the knowledge of this fact with the remembrance that Sophia Dorothea was now sixteen years of age, and that at such a period her marriage had been fixed, the mother of George Louis addressed herself at once to the task of putting her son in the place of the favoured lover. She ordered out the heavy coach and heavier Mecklenburg horses, by which German potentates were wont to travel stately and leisurely by post some two centuries ago. It was night when she left Hanover; and although she had not further to travel than an ordinary train could now accomplish in an hour, it was broad daylight before this match-making and match-breaking lady reached the portals of the ducal palace of Zell. There was something delightfully primitive in the method of her proceeding. She did not despise state, except on occasions when serious business was on hand. The present was such an occasion, and she therefore waited for no usher to marshal her way and announce her coming to the duke. She descended from her ponderous coach, pushed aside the sleepy sentinel, who appeared disposed to question her before he made way, and, entering the hall of the mansion, loudly demanded of the few servants who came hurrying to meet her, to be conducted to the duke. It was intimated to her that he was then dressing, but that his Highness would soon be in a condition to descend and wait upon her.