Madame de Ruth ceased laughing and looked at her piercingly. 'Poor Madame de Geyling?' she exclaimed. 'But, my child! Ah!' and she caught Wilhelmine by the wrist; 'you pity her? because she has lost the Duke's affection? Why?' She paused a moment—reflected. 'Girl! you have fallen in love with Serenissimus,' she whispered.
Wilhelmine sprang up—her cheeks aflame. It was true, and she knew it herself then for the first time. She was angry, and yet there was an immense gladness in her heart. Her eyes were wet, and she felt the pulses throbbing in her temples. She was ashamed and yet gloriously proud.
Madame de Ruth watched her; at first, with smiling curiosity, then the old woman's face softened, she took Wilhelmine's hand and said gently: 'God give you joy, my child. There, there—I am a foolish old woman—you make me weep.—Lord God! but hearts are the great intriguers, not brains!'
Wilhelmine turned to her and, bending, kissed the old courtesan on the brow.
'Madame,' she said, 'Madame, be my friend; I shall need one in the days to come.'
Madame de Ruth drew the girl down beside her on the bench, her face had grown suddenly old and infinitely sad. 'Yes,' she answered, 'I will be your friend. Do you know that I had a little girl twenty years ago? She would have been just your age now, had she lived, and perhaps I should have been a different woman. Well, well—no sentiment, my dear; it is so unsuitable, isn't it? but I will be your friend.'
She kissed the young woman, and, rising hastily, took her way towards the house.
The days dragged slowly on in Stuttgart for Wilhelmine, and there came no message from his Highness, who had gone to Urach, they told her, to hunt. Though the court remained nominally in Stuttgart while her Highness Johanna Elizabetha resided at the castle, most of the courtiers had retired to the country and Stuttgart was more than usually dull. Stafforth had accompanied the Duke to Urach, so Wilhelmine remained alone with Madame de Stafforth. The heat was terrible in the town, which lay encircled by the vine-clad hills, as in a great caldron. The Stuttgarters told her that such heat was unusual at that time of year, but there was little consolation for her in that.
To some natures dullness becomes an insupportable suffering. Loneliness, all you will, they can bear, for they draw occupation and joy from the depth of their own souls; but that dreariness, which has been called dullness, is an almost tangible presence at moments, and seems to blight the beauty of all things. This Wilhelmine felt in those stifling days at Stuttgart. Madame de Stafforth's moth-like personality wearied her. Madame de Ruth, who had returned to Rottenburg, wrote constantly imploring her friend to visit her; yet something seemed to hold the girl, some mysterious sentiment, that if she left Stuttgart she would turn her back on her life.