n's ruin in stone and marble.

They passed up the broad white marble staircase, and Frisoni solemnly
conducted them to his Highness's private apartments--the antechamber, the
audience-closet, the writing-room, and the sleeping-room.

'The apartments of her Excellency are situated in the west pavilion. If
your Highness wishes to inspect them we must pass downstairs once more,
to gain the entrance to the pavilion,' he said gravely.

Eberhard Ludwig, smiling, bade him lead the way, though, of a truth, he
knew a shorter way by a small door leading through the statue gallery
directly from his apartments to the decorously closed pavilion.

In solemn procession, Serenissimus leading the Landhofmeisterin, preceded
by Frisoni as guide, passed down the chief stair, and from the lower
antehall to the door of the west pavilion. Here were the apartments of
the great Landhofmeisterin. On the ground floor the room for her personal
attendant, the wardrobe-room, her Excellency's library and business-room,
where the various affairs of the Landhofmeisterin's office were to be
transacted. Then up a narrow stair to the first floor to a large
antechamber, a sleeping-room, a private writing-room, and above another
small stair leading to the powdering-room.

All these rooms were little masterpieces of various arts, chief among
which that of the wood-inlayer--the floors, the walls, the doors being
profusely inlaid with precious woods. Everywhere the arms of Wirtemberg
were interwoven with the Wuerben and Graevenitz devices, and with the
emblems of the chase and of music--symbols of the Duke-hunter and his
beloved musician-mistress.

The courtiers who followed his Highness and the Landhofmeisterin
expressed their admiration discreetly, Zollern and Madame de Ruth leading
the chorus of approval.

At length the ceremonious inspection was concluded, and the courtiers
hurried away to view their own quarters, leaving her Excellency in the
pavilion, and Serenissimus in his sumptuous Corps de Logis.

When the courtiers' steps ceased to echo in the corridor, Wilhelmine drew
a little golden key from her bosom and, approaching a panel in the
antechamber wall on the first floor, fitted it into a keyhole which was
artfully hidden in the intricacies of the inlaid design. She turned the
lock and a small door flew open. She stepped through and found herself in
the corridor of statues. Directly facing the hidden panel door she found
another similar lock