Of all people in the world, his sister-in-law was the one George William least expected to see; but Sophia cut short his exclamations and apologies by announcing that she had travelled all night to present in person her congratulations to himself and his Duchess on the occasion of the sixteenth birthday of their daughter, and wound up by asking curtly, “Where is your wife?” The Duke pointed to the half-open door of the bedchamber adjoining, where Eléonore was still in bed—a capacious bed in a comparatively small room with the ceiling decorated with a realistic fresco of the legend of Leda and the Swan.[19] Eléonore, hearing voices, called out to her husband to ask who came thus early to disturb their rest. The Duchess Sophia, through the half-open door, repeated in a loud voice what she had already said to the Duke, thus breaking the ice of the awkward first greeting with her enemy, and, without waiting to hear what the perturbed Eléonore had to say in reply, she turned to the Duke, and, addressing him in Low Dutch, a language she knew his wife did not understand, she intimated that she had something important to say to him alone. George William glanced meaningly at the half-open door, behind which was the flurried Eléonore, and suggested they should wait a little while and discuss the matter elsewhere. But Sophia cut short his excuses and proposals by answering that what she had to say must be said there and then. She could not be so rude as to shut the door in Eléonore’s face, so she drew up a chair by the Duke’s dressing-table, and, continuing to speak in Low Dutch, proceeded to unfold her scheme—first exacting from him a promise that, if he did not accede to her wishes, he was never to divulge a syllable of what she had come to say. ----- Footnote 19: The room remains the same to this day. -----