y routine of it, the
dressing, the eating, the lying down to rest at night. She heard the
village children singing on their way home from school, and the
harvesters driving merrily to the fields. Sometimes she would cry out in
protest against Nature, against the unalterable, indifferent working of
the universe: the smiling sun, the peace of summer evenings. All things
went their way heedless of her tragedy.

Summer blossomed gloriously; then the long, weary days grew shorter, and
autumn brought endless nights to the stricken woman. Once, twice she had
written to Serenissimus, but no answer came to her.

The Erbprinz still battled with death. Eberhard Ludwig and Johanna
Elizabetha watched together at his bedside, and the Erbprincessin sat
stonily silent in the darkened room whose gloom seemed deepened by the
poor girl's overshadowed mind.

Then in October came the news that Death had conquered; the Erbprinz had
passed away, and the Erbprincessin, half-mad already, had fallen into
such despair that her clouded soul grew utterly black, and she raved in
hopeless insanity. Truly God's hand was heavy upon Wirtemberg.

A few days after this terrible news the Graevenitz, wandering moodily in
the Freudenthal garden, heard the rattle of an approaching troop of
horse. He was coming to fetch her, of course--her lover, her trusted one.
She had known he must come! And she hurried away to her tiring-room to
don her finest raiment. She would meet him like a bride. Was it not
fitting that she should be gorgeously attired on this great day of
triumph--this renascence of joy in her life?

The gown of golden cloth lay spread out for her; she always kept it
ready, for she knew he would come.

'Quick, Maria,' she called, as with trembling hands she began her toilet;
'quick! His Highness comes!' She seemed young again, with flushed cheeks
and shining eyes. Then her sister Sittmann burst into the room.

'Wilhelmine, I hardly know how to tell you--it is----' she said, but the
Graevenitz interrupted her.

'You need not--for I know--I always knew.' She stood before the mirror
fastening a diamond ornament into her hair, and her glowing eyes met her
sister's reflected in the glass.

'Good lack, sister! what ails you?' she cried, for the Sittmann's face
was ashen, and she gazed at the Graevenitz in terrified bewilderment.

'Who do you think has come, then? Wilhelmine, you are mad! It is a troop
of horse, headed by Roeder, with a warrant f