'Really, Monseigneur,' replied Forstner, 'I am ready to obey your Highness, but——'
'Well, then, go!' The Duke was getting beyond himself; each moment he feared Wilhelmine would appear, and Forstner was not a person he desired as witness either to his meeting with his beloved, or to her advent from the lowest part of the town.
The estimable Forstner had at length commenced his departure, but he was distant only a few paces when the Duke heard a laugh coming from the gloom of the shadowed Judengasse. It was a laugh which, though low-pitched and quiet, had a resonant distinctness which caused it to carry a long way.
'Wait, for Heaven's sake, till he is gone,' his Highness whispered over his shoulder into the darkness, observing to his dismay that Forstner had halted.
'Did your Highness call me?' asked the too-devoted friend, and made as though to return.
'No; I coughed. Do go away!' shouted the Duke in return, and set himself to cough vigorously, for behind him from the darkened street there came the unmistakable sound of Wilhelmine's irrepressible laughter.
At length the angular figure vanished, and the Duke sprang round with arms outstretched, and into them he received the stately form of his mistress, who lay upon his breast; for once unresponsive to his passionate kisses, while she laughed in a very agony of mirth.
'Forgive me, Monseigneur,' she said at last, her voice still shaking with laughter; 'but you know the scene was really beyond me. I heard all, and oh! Forstner was so droll, and you too.' She began to laugh again. 'Oh, how delightfully undignified, mon Prince—when you coughed to hide my laughter.'
Once more she leaned against Eberhard Ludwig's shoulder and rocked with merriment. The Duke also laughed, but a trifle ruefully; that meddler Forstner had destroyed the rapture of his meeting with Wilhelmine, had broken the charm of his pensive mood; and besides, the Duke knew from experience that when Wilhelmine began to laugh like that he would probably hear no serious word from her during the evening. Even in their passion's transports he had known his mistress suddenly go off into a series of 'fous rires,' and no man enjoys the most harmless laughter at such moments.
'Wilhelmine, for God's sake stop laughing, and tell me where you have been since the Duchess—since the Duchess——' he hesitated, not knowing how to express the summary ejection from the castle.