eys had departed with the chest. Did
her Excellency wish for this or that? Should she accompany her Ladyship's
Grace to La Favorite? Calmly the Landhofmeisterin bade her precede her,
she would follow in a few moments. She heard Maria locking the wardrobes
in the chamber below, listened to her giving orders for the redding up of
the apartments, exactly as she had heard the maid finish her preparations
for departure a hundred times before starting for Urach or Freudenthal.

'Beloved, the coaches await us; shall we begin our journey?' The
Landhofmeisterin started. Yes; that was how Eberhard Ludwig had summoned
her in the old, happy days. Her nerves had tricked her, it was only an
echo of long ago. Could everything, indeed, be ended? Was she leaving
Ludwigsburg for ever? Ah, no, no! how absurd! Of course Serenissimus
would recall her directly this blustering King had gone back to his drill
at Berlin! And yet----

She moved slowly round her rooms. Fifteen years since Frisoni had
conducted her to her pavilion! She recalled how she and Eberhard Ludwig
had laughed at the little Italian's ruse, when he led them up and down
corridors and stairs in order to reach her apartments from his Highness's
rooms. The memory of their mirth was torture to her. Once more she took
the key from her bosom and, passing through the statue gallery, she
gained the hiding-place behind the arras. She listened, but there was no
sound; she pressed the secret spring of the tapestry door and entered the
writing-closet. Slowly she walked round the room; she had not come to rob
the bureau this time, nor to upbraid her lover, nor to tempt him once
again. No; she had come to bid farewell, to look her last upon the
familiar scene. One of the Duke's gauntleted hunting-gloves lay on the
floor; she stooped and lifted it and put it to her lips. Then the full
sense of her loneliness came to her, and she sobbed aloud. She hurried
away, and her last vision of that well-known room was blurred by her
tears.

One parting look round her own apartments, and she passed out on to the
roofed terrace which led from the Corps de Logis to the West Pavilion.
Here her own face met her on sculptured vaulting and ornamented wall. Her
face, young, smiling, voluptuous, surrounded by the emblems of music held
by Cupids. Love, music, and herself. What a mockery it seemed to her,
this open homage, this enduring monument of a dead passion!

With steady tread she paced down the flight