Wilhelmine again sent Schütz to Stuttgart with the message that, as she had not been given just and fair compensation, she would know how, at a future date, to wring out from Wirtemberg a hundred times the modest sum refused her.
The Geheimräthe, thinking their foe vanquished and the affair at an end, laughed at this threat. They would have trembled had they known that the Grävenitz had a plan, and that their Duke was cognisant of the whole matter.
Wilhelmine, gazing at the waters of the Rhine with her half-closed, serpent-like eyes, sought for some device which should enable her to return to Stuttgart. In the first place, she loved power; in the second, she loved Eberhard Ludwig; in the third, she yearned to outwit her enemy Johanna Elizabetha and her opposers generally. Then she longed once more to defy the Duchess-mother, whom she, at the same time, greatly dreaded.
By this you will see that Wilhelmine was no longer merely the gay, charming, if scheming woman who had come to Wirtemberg sixteen months before. She had developed. Her extraordinary prosperity had poisoned her being. She had grown hard. Could she not achieve the height of power by one road, very well, she was ready to climb back by any circuitous path she could find. For many days her ingenuity and her searchings failed to show her any way back to Stuttgart. It was the pretext for returning which she sought; once there she knew she could grasp power again, and this time she intended to retain it. A chance speech of Madame de Ruth's set her on the track.
'Ah! my dear, we have gone too far; it is perilous to stand on the top of the hill; better to remain near the summit, indeed, but on some sheltered ledge whence we cannot be toppled over. Had I had my way, you should have married some high court dignitary, and as his wife you could have ruled undisturbed.'
'Can the wife of a court dignitary not be forbidden the court?' said Wilhelmine idly.
'Naturally, my dear! The Emperor cannot order an official of a German state to remove his wife from the court where he is employed.'
'Only the prince's wedded wife can be exiled, then?' said Wilhelmine sneeringly.
'My dear! we climbed too high, alas!' Madame de Ruth replied.