The anxious Eléonore, who by this time was up and dressed, was waiting for her husband on his return, and asked for an explanation of this unexpected visit. He gave it promptly, and added the unwelcome intelligence that he had consented to an alliance between George Louis and Sophie Dorothea. Eléonore was at first stunned by this blow to her hopes on the very morning of expected victory. The alliance she had laboured for years to bring about with the House of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel was shattered to the dust, and the woman who had slighted and scorned her had only to propose an opposition scheme for it to be accepted. In vain she urged upon the Duke the insult such a _volte-face_ would be to Duke Antony Ulrich and his son. George William answered testily that he had given nothing but a conditional promise. In vain she pointed out the hostility and self-seeking policy of the House of Hanover. George William said he was tired of family quarrels, and hailed this as a means of putting an end to them. He then proceeded to dilate upon the advantages of the union, and the advisability of Eléonore reconciling herself to the new state of affairs and burying the hatchet. But Eléonore, to her honour be it said, was unlike her husband in this—she was deaf to the voice of ambition where her heart was concerned. The failure of her cherished plans was bad enough, but it was as nothing compared with the wreck of her daughter’s happiness. She threw herself on her knees before her husband, and implored him, with tears, not to sacrifice their only child, the one pledge of their love, to the promptings of policy and ambition, and doom her to the misery of a loveless marriage; she reminded him of the tales that had reached Celle of George Louis’s sullen and profligate character, and of the hatred with which the House of Hanover had ever viewed her daughter and herself. It was like throwing their lamb to the wolves. But George William was obdurate; he pooh-poohed all these things as idle fancies, and again told his wife to reconcile herself with the altered state of affairs, and, deaf to her entreaties, he bade her go and acquaint Sophie Dorothea with the plans he had made for her future. With a heavy heart the mother went to break the news to her daughter, a sad greeting for a birthday morning.