d Wilhelmine, coming from Mecklemburg to make a career, had
begun it already, God knows! by falling in love with the Duke. They went
down the steps leading to the garden, and in silence walked along the
path towards the fountain. The moon played white over the flowers, and
the sound of the violins, harps, and zithers faded away in the distance.
They reached an old stone seat beneath a beech-tree and sat down. Before
them the fountain rose, like some shimmering witch in the moonlight.

'Sing me a snatch of some song, Mademoiselle,' said Eberhard Ludwig.
'There is no one near; sing to me once, to _me alone_--to the silly
poet-fellow!'

'Nay, Monseigneur,' she answered tremulously, 'I cannot sing--my heart is
beating in my throat somehow.'

He looked at her in the moonlight.

'Mademoiselle de Graevenitz,' he said, 'I have never been so happy, yet so
unutterably sad, as at this moment. I--I--Mademoiselle----' and his voice
broke. He took her hand in his and, raising it to his lips, kissed it
once, twice, then in a husky voice he said, 'We must go back.' He rose
from the seat, offering her his arm. He led her up the dark garden-path
and into the glitter of lights in the ante-hall of the Lusthaus, where
Madame de Stafforth stood ready to depart, waiting for Wilhelmine. The
Duke sent Stafforth for Mademoiselle's cloak, and when he brought it, his
Highness himself wrapped it round her. As he did so, his hand
involuntarily touched the soft skin of her shoulder, and Eberhard Ludwig
flushed to the edge of his white curled peruke as he murmured: 'Au
revoir, Philomele!' and Wilhelmine daringly whispered back: 'Au revoir,
gentil poete.'

CHAPTER VI

LOVE'S SPRINGTIDE

'A queenly rose of sound, with tune for scent;
A pause of shadow in a day of heat;
A voice to make God weak as man,
And at its pleadings take away the ban
'Neath which so long our spirits have been bent--
A voice to make death tender and life sweet!'

PHILIP BOURKE MARSTON.

THE Hofmarshall's house stood in the 'Graben,' a broad road which ran
proudly past the old town ending at the ducal gardens on the west, while
to the east began the fields and vineyards leading up to the royal
hunting forest, the Rothwald. Stafforth's house was a fine stone building
decorated with rococo masks. To the back lay a beautiful garden laid out
on a plan of M. Lenotre's, from whose book of _Ja