Wilhelmine, gazing at the waters of the Rhine with her half-closed, serpent-like eyes, sought for some device which should enable her to return to Stuttgart. In the first place, she loved power; in the second, she loved Eberhard Ludwig; in the third, she yearned to outwit her enemy Johanna Elizabetha and her opposers generally. Then she longed once more to defy the d.u.c.h.ess-mother, whom she, at the same time, greatly dreaded.

By this you will see that Wilhelmine was no longer merely the gay, charming, if scheming woman who had come to Wirtemberg sixteen months before. She had developed. Her extraordinary prosperity had poisoned her being. She had grown hard. Could she not achieve the height of power by one road, very well, she was ready to climb back by any circuitous path she could find. For many days her ingenuity and her searchings failed to show her any way back to Stuttgart. It was the pretext for returning which she sought; once there she knew she could grasp power again, and this time she intended to retain it. A chance speech of Madame de Ruth's set her on the track.

'Ah! my dear, we have gone too far; it is perilous to stand on the top of the hill; better to remain near the summit, indeed, but on some sheltered ledge whence we cannot be toppled over. Had I had my way, you should have married some high court dignitary, and as his wife you could have ruled undisturbed.'

'Can the wife of a court dignitary not be forbidden the court?' said Wilhelmine idly.

'Naturally, my dear! The Emperor cannot order an official of a German state to remove his wife from the court where he is employed.'

'Only the prince's wedded wife can be exiled, then?' said Wilhelmine sneeringly.

'My dear! we climbed too high, alas!' Madame de Ruth replied.

Her words had started Wilhelmine on a new track of thought. Married to a courtier holding high office at court, she could return and resume her career. But that would declare her marriage with Eberhard Ludwig to be a farce, she reflected. Still, if this were the only way? In her mental vision she reviewed each courtier, but she could find none fitting for the position of husband in name. Schutz perhaps? She laughed at the very idea. No; the bridegroom must be a man of much breeding and no morals.

She wrote to Schutz requesting him to journey to Schaffhausen on important business. The attorney arrived, and Wilhelmine observed how shabby was his coat, how rusty his general appearance. He was again the pettifogging lawyer in poor circ.u.mstances, and Wilhelmine reflected that he would be all the more anxious to serve her in order to return to his ill-gotten splendour at her illegitimate court.

Schutz responded eagerly to her proposal. He acclaimed her a marvel of intelligence, and a.s.sured her that in Vienna he would be able to find the very article--a ruined n.o.bleman ready to sell his name to any bidder.

On the day following Schutz's advent at Schaffhausen, Wilhelmine was surprised by a visit from her brother Friedrich, who arrived in a deeply injured mood. Since Wilhelmine left Urach, he averred, he had been treated in a manner all unfitting for an Oberhofmarshall, and the head of the n.o.ble family of Gravenitz. Serenissimus had paid him scant attention, and Stafforth had been reinstated as Hofmarshall to the d.u.c.h.ess Johanna Elizabetha--a brand new dignity, complained this Oberhofmarshall of a sham court. He made himself mighty disagreeable to his sister, varying his behaviour by outbursts of despair and noisy self-pity, which would have been laughable had they not been so loud, violent, and disturbing.

Wilhelmine informed him of her plan, and after many expressions of disapproval, when she had made it clear to him that it would be entirely to his advantage if she succeeded in her design, he gave the ugly plan his brotherly blessing and his sanction as head of the family.

Hereupon Schutz returned to Vienna to seek a bridegroom. In an astonishingly short time, he wrote that he had found an admirably adapted person in the Count Joseph Maria Aloysius Nepomuk von Wurben, a gentleman of very old lineage, and ex-owner of a dozen castles in Bohemia, all of which, however, had gradually been converted into gulden, and the gold pieces, in their turn, had vanished into the recollection of many lost card games. This personage, owing to his sad misfortunes, found himself at the age of sixty inhabiting a garret in Vienna.

Schutz wrote that he knew Monsieur le Comte well. They met constantly at the eating-house. He further a.s.sured her that Wurben was a very pleasant companion. Wilhelmine replied that it was profoundly indifferent to her whether her future husband was an agreeable companion or not, as she intended only to see him once--viz., at her own marriage, after which ceremony he could follow his namesake St. Nepomuk into the waves of the Moldau, for aught she cared! It angered her that Schutz wrote concerning Wurben, as though he were in truth to be the companion of her life, and she winced under a new note of familiarity which had crept into the attorney's tone.

Friedrich Gravenitz, who had taken up his abode in Wilhelmine's house at Schaffhausen, made matters worse by what he conceived to be witty and subtle pleasantries. He was never done with his allusions to 'mon cher futur beau frere a Vienne,' and he playfully called his sister 'la pet.i.te fiancee.'

On a golden evening of late September, Wurben, accompanied by Schutz, arrived at Schaffhausen. Wilhelmine and Madame de Ruth saw the coach crawling up the steep incline which led to the little castle that Zollern had given to the favourite. With difficulty Madame de Ruth had induced Wilhelmine to offer her future husband one day's hospitality. The wedding was fixed for the morning after Wurben's arrival, and the bridegroom had agreed to return to Vienna immediately after the ceremony.

'I have the honour to present to you Monsieur le Comte de Wurben!' said Schutz, as he ushered in the n.o.ble Bohemian. Wurben bowed to the ground, and Wilhelmine and Madame de Ruth bent in grand courtesies.

'Delighted to see you, mon cher! Welcome to our family!' cried Friedrich Gravenitz ostentatiously, departing entirely from the ceremonious code of those days, which hardly permitted the nearest friends to greet each other in this informal manner. But Friedrich Gravenitz prided himself on his friendliness and geniality, and, like most genial persons, he constantly floundered into tactlessness and vulgarity. On this occasion his misplaced affability was received with undisguised disapproval.

Madame de Ruth tapped him on the arm with her fan; Wilhelmine shot him a furious, snake-like glance; Wurben himself looked surprised, and merely responded with a bow to the effusive speech. Schutz, of course, was the only one to whom it appeared natural, nay, correct. In his world geniality, translated into jocoseness, was indispensable before, during, and after a wedding--even at these scarcely usual nuptials!

Now Wurben came forward. 'Mademoiselle de Gravenitz,' he said, 'believe me, I am deeply sensible of the great honour you will do me.'

'Monsieur, I thank you,' began Wilhelmine; but Friedrich Gravenitz interposed pompously:

'As the head of the family, Monsieur, I wish to express to you my pleasure at the thought of my sister bearing your ancient name.'

'My name is much at Mademoiselle your sister's service,' responded Wurben; and Madame de Ruth surprised a covert sneer on the old roue's lips.

'Come, mes amis!' she cried, 'the travellers must be in need of refreshment. Will you not repair to the guest-chamber, gentlemen? and when you have removed the dust of travel from your clothes, we will partake of an early supper.'

'Madame de Ruth, I will escort the gentlemen to their apartments, if they wish it,' said Friedrich pompously, opening his eyes wide in what he thought was a reproving look, but in truth was only angrily foolish.

'Thank you, Friedrich. I will tell you when I wish your a.s.sistance,' said Wilhelmine calmly. 'Dear Madame de Ruth, you are right. I think Baron Schutz knows the way to the guest-chamber? or shall I tell my brother to summon a lackey?' Her tone was haughty to insolence. The irritation, the disgust, the hatred of her odious though necessary plan, made her mood evil. She was grateful to Wurben for his silence, and his fine, if somewhat contemptuous manner, and she bestowed a smile on him as he pa.s.sed out of the room.

A constrained silence fell on the remaining three. Wilhelmine leaned back in the chair into which she had sunk directly Schutz and Wurben disappeared; her elbows rested on the chair-arms, and her fingers were pressed together at the points in an att.i.tude of fastidious, artificial prayer. Madame de Ruth fanned herself slowly and watched Friedrich Gravenitz, who stood paring his nails with a small file he had taken from his pocket.

'I certainly do not like your way towards me, Wilhelmine,' he broke forth, puffing out his fine torso. 'You show a spirit which is not nice towards the head of your family! I think----'

'Dear Friedrich, if you could but realise that I do not care what you think,' Wilhelmine interrupted icily.

'And your manner was not kind to Wurben--a nice man, I like him!' said her brother in an almost ecstatic tone.

'How fortunate!' she called after Friedrich's retreating figure, as he strode across the room with such pompous haste that the affairs of the whole Empire might have waited his directions.

The two ladies smiled at one another wearily when he had gone; then, without honouring this self-sufficient person with a word of comment, they fell to discussing Wurben. This Bohemian n.o.bleman was not an altogether unpleasing personality. Of middle height, he had a stoop which caused him to appear short; it was not the stoop of the scholar, but that bend which ill-health, caused by debauch, often gives to a comparatively young man. His face was sallow, hollow beneath the eyes, emaciated between chin and cheek-bone. The brown eyes were feverishly bright and a trifle blood-shot. The well-shaven mouth had loose, sensual lips, and the teeth were large and discoloured. And yet one knew that this man, repulsive though he had become, must have been a youth of promise and some personal beauty; and his manner betokened the man of breeding, and one with knowledge of the great world. His sneer at the unholy bargain he was about to make told Madame de Ruth that he was fully aware of the degradation of it. An admirably adapted person for the purpose, she reflected; for, being ashamed of his bargain, he would hide in Vienna, content so long as he had sufficient money to risk at l'hombre and faro. This she and Wilhelmine discussed while Schutz and Wurben were upstairs removing their dusty garments.

Suddenly Friedrich Gravenitz burst into the room. 'His Highness has just ridden up to the door! This is really most inconvenient, most difficult for me.' He spoke loudly.

'Hush! be careful! Wurben must not hear,' implored Madame de Ruth, while Wilhelmine sprang up. She breathed in laboured gasps, her eyes fixed wildly on her brother.

'His Highness? You are mad, Friedrich! or is this some absurd plot against me?' She turned on her brother fiercely. 'Is this some foolishness you have arranged?'

'It has nothing to do with me. I am never consulted,' he began; but his further utterance was cut short, for Eberhard Ludwig entered unannounced.

'Leave us together,' he said shortly. 'For G.o.d's sake, Madame de Ruth, manage that I may speak with her undisturbed.' Madame de Ruth hurried Friedrich Gravenitz away with scant ceremony.

'My beloved! oh, to see you again!' Serenissimus clasped her to him.

'Tell me you are mine, as you were at Urach! Am I in time to hinder this terrible sacrilege?'

She told him that the marriage had not yet taken place, that it was for the morrow.

'It cannot be; you are my wife by the laws of G.o.d and man! I cannot suffer you to be called the wife of another. Tell me that you will not do this thing. Wilhelmine, my beloved, you cannot--you cannot----' He held her hand in his, speaking rapidly, indistinctly.

'There is no other way,' she said sadly.

'But it is not possible! You cannot, it is a shameful thing. I forbid you to do it. I will never leave you again. My son may reign at Stuttgart.

See, beloved, we will live here together--live out our days in peace and love. It shall be a poem, an idyll--far from all interruptions, far from intrigues!'

He looked into her face with shining eyes, but he found there no answering spark of enthusiasm. Dropping her hand he turned away. She was aghast. True, she loved Eberhard Ludwig, but she realised at that moment how much more potent was her love of splendour and power. What! to drag out her life at Schaffhausen--even with him at her side? No, it was impossible.

'Eberhard, be reasonable. This marriage is no marriage, it is simply the purchase of a name. You know well enough the conditions which are accepted by Wurben. Twenty thousand gulden on the day of our contract, twelve thousand gulden a year for his life. Various fine t.i.tles and court charges, provided he undertakes never to appear in Stuttgart, never to claim his marriage rights! He is to sign this doc.u.ment in the presence of the lawyers to-morrow before our----' she hesitated, 'before our marriage.'

'But you will vow before G.o.d to love and obey this man; you will give him your hand and kneel with him in prayer. Something of the sanct.i.ty of our true vows will be filched away. Sacred you are to me for ever, but oh!

this will be desecration! you cannot, you must not----' he moaned.

'You knew this before. You knew and approved, and now you hinder the completion of the only plan by which I can return to you. You cannot give up your Dukedom, you cannot leave Stuttgart, and we cannot live apart.'

She spoke harshly.

'But is Stuttgart so much to you? Wilhelmine, do you love me only as Duke of Wirtemberg?' His eyes were full of tears. 'Alas! I am the most miserable of men.'

'Eberhard, heart of my life, look in my face and see if I love you! But because I love you I dare not take you away from your great position, from your ambition.'

'Ambition,' he broke in, 'ambition! I am ready to renounce everything----'