Her daughter was now the second Queen of Prussia, but the King cared not to exercise his influence in behalf of his unfortunate mother-in-law. Not that he was unconcerned with respect to her. His consort was heiress to property over which her mother had control, and Frederick was not tranquil of mind until this property had been secured as the indisputable inheritance of his wife. He was earnest enough in his correspondence with Sophia Dorothea until this consummation was arrived at; and when he held the writings which secured the succession of certain portions of the property of the duchess on his consort, he ceased to trouble himself further with any question connected with the unfortunate prisoner; except, indeed, that he forbade his wife to hold any further intercourse with her mother, by letter or otherwise. Few and trivial are the incidents told of her long captivity. The latter had been embittered, in 1703, by the knowledge that Mademoiselle von der Schulenburg was the mother of another daughter, Margaret Gertrude, of whom the Elector was the father. This child was ten years younger than her sister, Petronilla Melusina, who subsequently figured at the Court of George II. as Countess of Walsingham, and who was the uncared-for wife of Philip Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield. Previous to the prohibition laid on his wife by the King of Prussia, an epistolary intercourse had been privately maintained between Sophia Dorothea and her daughter. Such intercourse had never received the King’s sanction; and when it came to his knowledge, at the period of the settlement of part of the maternal property on the daughter, he peremptorily ordered its cessation. It had been maintained chiefly by means of a Chevalier de Bar; Ludwig, a privy-councillor at Berlin; Frederick, a page of the Queen’s; and a bailiff of the castle of Ahlden. There were too many confederates in a matter so simple, and the whole of them betrayed the poor lady, for whom they professed to act. The most important agent was the chevalier: in him the duchess confided longest, and in his want of faith she was the last to believe. He had introduced himself to her by sending her presents of snuff, no unusual present to a lady in those days--though it is pretended that these gifts bore a peculiar signification, known only to the donor and the recipient. They probably had less meaning than the presents forwarded to the prisoner by her daughter, consisting now of her portrait, another time of a watch, or some other trinket, which served to pass a letter with it, in which were filial injunctions to the poor mother to be patient and resigned, and to put no trust in the Count de Bar.