Both had behaved quite recklessly. Each should have remembered that an Electoral Princess is not wise to grant a protracted interview, accompanied by lapel-holding, hand-holding, and hand-kissings, within sight of the windows of a palace. And, as it happened, behind one of those windows lurked the Countess von Platen, watching them jealously, and without any disposition to construe the meeting innocently. Was she not the deadly enemy of both? Had not the Princess whetted satire upon her, and had not Königsmark scorned the love she proffered him, and then unpardonably published it in a ribald story to excite the mirth of profligates? That evening the Countess purposefully sought her lover, the Elector. “Your son is away in Prussia,” quoth she. “Who guards his honour in his absence?” “George’s honour?” quoth the Elector, bulging eyes staring at the Countess. He did not laugh, as might have been expected at the notion of guarding something whose existence was not easily discerned. He had no sense of humour, as his appearance suggested. He was a short, fat man with a face shaped like a pear—narrow in the brow and heavy in the jowl. “What the devil do you mean?” he asked. “I mean that this foreign adventurer, Königsmark, and Sophia grow too intimate.” “Sophia!” Thick eyebrows were raised until they almost met the line of his ponderous peruke. His face broke into malevolent creases expressive of contempt. “That white-faced ninny! Bah!” Her very virtue was matter for his scorn. “It is these white-faced ninnies can be most sly,” replied the Countess, out of her worldly wisdom. “Listen a moment now.” And she related, with interest rather than discount, you may be sure, what she had witnessed that afternoon. The malevolence deepened in his face. He had never loved Sophia, and he felt none the kinder towards her for her recent trip to Zell. Then, too, being a libertine, and the father of a libertine, it logically followed that unchastity in his women-folk was in his eyes the unpardonable sin. He heaved himself out of his deep chair. “How far has this gone?” he demanded. Prudence restrained the Countess from any over-statement that might afterwards be disproved. Besides, there was not the need, if she could trust her senses. Patience and vigilance would presently afford her all the evidence required to damn the pair. She said as much, and promised the Elector that she would exercise herself the latter quality in his son’s service. Again the Elector did not find it grotesque that his mistress should appoint herself the guardian of his son’s honour.