'I am accustomed to being attended immediately, Mademoiselle, when I send for my ladies,' said the Duchess icily as Wilhelmine entered.
'Your Highness will pardon me; it was an unexpected summons, and I was not dressed.'
'Ah! I suppose the so evidently recent attack of smallpox makes Mademoiselle a little delicate still?' replied Johanna Elizabetha, with a spiteful smile, and looking pointedly at her lady-in-waiting's face.
At this taunt, once more, though this time involuntarily, the snake look came into Wilhelmine's eyes. Her Highness did not shrink, but returned the gaze fully with a glance of quiet animosity. Johanna Elizabetha was a brave woman, of good blood, and it is remarkable that, through all her dealings with the Grävenitz, she never showed any of that fear, which to arouse was one of this mysterious woman's most potent weapons. 'Would it please you were I to give you permission to retire from court for a few months, Mademoiselle, in order to recoup your damaged—er—health?' She paused before the last word, and her adversary knew what she would have said. The lady-in-waiting still had the strength to command the wave of bitter anger which was surging within her, and she answered calmly:
'I thank your Highness for the offer; but,' here a note of insolent triumph pierced through the studied courtesy of her manner, 'but I find the climate of Stuttgart agrees vastly well with me, and I need no change. Your Highness must remember how much I am in the open air.'
This allusion to the constant drives with Eberhard Ludwig goaded Johanna Elizabetha past endurance.
'You will not be able to be abroad so much in future, Mademoiselle de Grävenitz,' she answered grimly; 'I intend to commence a large piece of embroidery, and the work will keep me more in the house. I shall require your services to read to me while I am working.'
Wilhelmine bowed.
'Fetch me that embroidery frame and the silks, Mademoiselle,' the Duchess said, in a tone of such imperious command that the other felt an angry blush flame in her cheeks; but she walked quietly across the room and brought the frame to her Highness, who at once busied herself in matching the coloured silks on the design. Seating herself near the window, and settling the frame on a small table before her, she worked steadily for some time in silence, Wilhelmine standing near, not having been granted permission to be seated. The silence became horrible, tense, gloomy; the air seemed quivering with the hatred which both women felt. At length the Duchess laid aside her work and, turning, faced her lady-in-waiting directly.
'Mademoiselle Wilhelmine von Grävenitz,' she said slowly, 'I will give you one chance of becoming an honest woman. You are unnecessary to me in your present capacity, and I have decided to remove you from my service.' She rose with the dignity she could assume at times. 'The reasons for my decision you know well enough, and, indeed, it were not fitting for me to discuss them with you. If you will resign your charge, and leave the country to-day, promising never to return, I will announce that, to my regret, you have been called back to your home. As I know you came here penniless, I offer you a free present of ten thousand gulden, under the conditions I have named. If you will not accept this I shall have you driven from my house, and I shall command that no one in Wirtemberg shall shelter you under pain of loss of entry at court.'
