She strained her ears, yet she could not catch the words; but she saw Friedrich Wilhelm's satisfied face. He clapped his Highness between the shoulders with a heavy hand. Evidently Serenissimus met with his Majesty's entire approval. The company broke up for the night, and the Landhofmeisterin rose from her cramped, kneeling position and took her way back to her apartments. A cruel foreknowledge of disaster overshadowed her; something unusual, elusively sinister, haunted her.
As she passed his Highness's door she hesitated. Should she go in bravely and speak her fear to him? Pride forbade, and a certain sense of hopelessness. She drew herself up proudly. No, he loved her; how could he change after twenty years? He could not escape her, for she was his life; all his memories were hers, his past, his present; therefore she argued, as a woman always argues, his future too must be hers.
She passed into her apartments and, opening her window, leaned far out. How silent it was in the garden! The moonlight played gently over the terraces, only the splash of the fountains broke the stillness. The air was delicious, scented with freshness, and after the noisome fumes of wine, beer, victuals, and tobacco in the banqueting-hall, she thought the night air was laden with rose fragrance. So it had been on that far-off night in the Stuttgart palace gardens after the theatricals. Time had not played havoc then with Nature. How weary she was! Suddenly a moan in the room behind her attracted her attention. She started nervously, and, as usual, the thought of the White Lady worked in her mind. They said the poor ghost moaned when death drew near to any of her descendants, and she was Eberhard Ludwig's ancestress. The Landhofmeisterin dared not turn her head for fear she should see a tall, white, shrouded figure with bloodstained hands. Again the moan.
'Who is there?' the Landhofmeisterin said tremulously.
'Pardon, Madame, you said I was to await you.' It was only the dwarf, then. Her Excellency almost laughed in her relief.
'Ah! I had forgotten you. Well, tell me your story now. I am listening,' she said. It would serve to pass the time till his Highness came, for he would come, she told herself.
The dwarf stood trembling before her, ridiculous, grotesque, infinitely pathetic. He poured forth the tale of his miserable life, of the taunts, the jeers, the kicks, the cuffs, the lack of food which he had often suffered in the midst of the lavish splendour of Ludwigsburg. Incidentally he let her see how the very servants of the palace spoke of her, and how they mocked her authority when they dared.
His was a pitiful life-history, and the Landhofmeisterin was moved to compassion; her own heart was sore, and already the crust of world-hardness had begun to melt under the tears which were welling up ready to be shed.
She told the dwarf that he was free to return to that humble cottage in the Swiss valley which he called home. There and then she wrote out a passport for him and an order for a seat in the Duke's diligence as far as the frontier; she gave him a purse of gold, and, more precious still, an official command to all to treat the deformed traveller with consideration; also, as postscriptum, an intimation that if the dwarf did not reach his home safe and unrobbed, she would cause the whole Secret Service to track the offender, who would suffer the utmost penalty of the law. With this document the dwarf could have travelled from one end of Wirtemberg to the other in safety; nay, more, he was sure of even servile acceptance from high and low, for never was monarch so feared in his domains as the Güstrow adventuress in the Dukedom of Wirtemberg.
'God reward you for this great good,' the dwarf said as he turned to leave her presence, and she answered sadly: