fness. Gradually the beauty of the fruitful plain with its cornfields
and rich orchards, the mystery of the far-off hills on the horizon, the
poetry of the distant, dark-blue line of the forests, the song of the
wind murmuring through those few trees which had sprung up on the
fortress terraces and ramparts unabashed by warfare; gradually this peace
came to the Graevenitz, and she grew calm. True, she agonised when her
eyes fell upon Ludwigsburg, and she raged when the prison governor told
her of the march of events in Stuttgart; but still she knew a greater
peace, a more equable inner life than had been hers in the day of her
power.

A commission waited upon her, demanding the restitution of the jewels of
Wirtemberg. Some she had carried with her to Hohenasperg, some had been
already found at Freudenthal. It cost her a pang to part with the jewels.
Had not Eberhard Ludwig given each one to her with a lover's vow, a
passionate word?

They demanded also that she should give up certain locks of his
Highness's hair which she had unlawfully retained for purposes of
detestable magic. She made answer that she had but one strand of his hair
in a diamond locket. She said that she had worn this on her heart for
twenty years. 'Is that magic, Messieurs?' she asked. Had they known it,
they had indeed touched upon one of her sorceress secrets--the charm of a
woman who can love a man with undying poetry and romance. They told her
that she must give up this pathetic lock of hair, that she retained it to
brew love potions and such abominations. They took it from her, leaving
her the empty crystal locket with its encircling diamonds.

'How you fear me, Messieurs!' she said with a flash of her old defiance.
Then they left her with her empty locket and her empty life.

Yet her atonement was only beginning; 'the wages of sin is death,' and
worse than death a long-drawn agony of humiliation and loneliness.
Abasement, shame, defeat, fear, inaction, loneliness, yearning--all these
she had drunk in her cup of suffering, but in the dregs there remained
one more drop of gall--jealousy.

Now, in the spring before she left Ludwigsburg, she had been annoyed by a
rumour which had caused much commotion among the Wirtemberg peasants, and
even the courtiers had been infected with a wave of superstitious
interest. In the house of Wirtemberg there is a legend which tells how
Count Eberhard the Bearded, in humility and repentance of his youthful
sins