The Duchess's terrors had been allayed by the familiar discussion of the Erbprinz's ailments, but a thrill of nameless fear passed through her when she remembered she would be alone again in her sombre apartment. But this was weakness! What had she read in the Swiss sermon? 'In the hands of God are all things. It is blasphemy to fear darkness, solitude, or the evil machinations of men. All is in the Great Grasp, and each happening is made and directed by God.' The solemn words came back to her now.
'Dear Madame de Stafforth, I can ring when I wish for any one. Good night, and God bless you!' she said, and laid her hand upon the small silver hand-bell which was on the bureau near her.
When the sound of Madame de Stafforth's footsteps ceased, her Highness turned to the books on the table and sought the volume of Swiss sermons; but it was not there; evidently Madame de Stafforth had forgotten to bring it from the salon. The Duchess decided to fetch it, but she lingered a moment, for it was unaccountably disagreeable to her to pass through the half-light of her sleeping apartment.
'In the hands of God are all things!' she murmured, and with firm step she moved towards the sombre chamber. Once more she thought she saw the bed-curtains sway; she fancied she heard a movement behind her. 'It is blasphemy to fear,' she said, but she felt her brow moisten with the sweat of terror.
She found the book, and resolutely re-entered the sleeping-room. She would not allow her eyes to wander to the bed-hangings, nor to search the dusky corners of the chamber. She passed on, and, gaining the little study, laid the book open on the table, and, leaning her head on her hands, began to read; but she could not fix her attention on the page before her. She was tortured by faint stirrings, by scarcely perceptible sounds, by an eerie feeling of some lurking presence always behind her.
At length she could bear it no longer. She closed the book and rose, intending to ring the hand-bell and summon her attendants, but the words of the sermon echoed in her brain: 'It is blasphemy to fear,' and she felt ashamed of her impulse. She turned, and, going to the praying-stool, kneeled in prayer.
'Give me strength, O God! to resist this baseless terror,' she prayed. 'In thy hands are all things!' Yet her anxiety was unsoothed, and the dread of madness came to her, but with it grew a brave defiance: she would not go mad, she would not! She saw herself a prisoner in some castle, kept alive and well treated, perhaps, but a piteous object, a thing for all to point at—'the mad Duchess!' And the Grävenitz at Stuttgart a legal Duchess. She believed a Prince could put away an insane wife. 'Not madness, kind Jesus!' she prayed. Her heart was wrung in agony as she pictured her son, the Erbprinz, taunted perhaps by the mention of his mother's madness. 'All is in the Great Grasp, and each happening is made and directed by God.' 'O Christ,' she prayed, 'I believe, I trust, I will not blaspheme by fear; no madness can strike me down while I believe and pray.' She lifted her hot face from her hands, calmed, soothed, brave once more. She was rising from her knees, and the movement brought her eyes on a level with the mirror panel. As one turned to stone, she stood looking into the mirror, for it reflected one corner of her bed in the next room, and the fading light fell on something white which pushed aside the black brocade bed-curtain—a large yellow-white hand holding a small gleaming knife. The Duchess, still with the dread of insanity upon her, told herself that it was an hallucination, a delusion, the frenzied working of her overwrought brain. She gathered her courage and fixed her eyes on the mirror, which showed her what she conceived to be a phantom. The hand was large, with hair growing hideously over it, and jagged, bitten nails—she could see this distinctly, for the light fell from the window full on the black curtain, and showed up the yellow hand. Fascinated, she gazed into the mirror, wondering the while why, now that the horror actually confronted her, she felt so little fear, whereas before she had started and trembled at each gust of wind. Now the hand emerged further from out the hangings. An arm in a brown sleeve appeared. Then the curtains parted, and her Highness saw a ferret-like face appear. She knew that this was no phantom. Swiftly she calculated the distance between her and the hand-bell. She remembered that only her tiring-maid would come in answer to the usual daily summons. If this man was indeed an assassin, he would do his work immediately; kill her ere the woman could come, and the unsuspecting maid herself might easily be silenced with one stab from that pointed dagger. All this the Duchess realised in a flash. She had never thought so rapidly in her life. No! she must not ring; she must dupe the murderer! Her eyes met the assassin's in the mirror, but she had the strength to return the gaze in an abstracted fashion, so that the man should be uncertain whether she had seen him, or whether the mirror had failed, by some strange chance, to transmit his reflection. Instinctively she felt that her death-warrant would be signed did the man know her to be aware of his presence. She moved towards the table; thus she was out of the mirror's range, and she therefore could not see what the man was doing in the adjoining apartment. 'Dupe him! escape by ruse! get out of the rooms to the ante-hall, let him think I am coming back!' Dully this thought struggled in her mind. With extraordinary calmness she commenced to move the books on the table, purposely rustling the pages. Then suddenly she knew her only way of escape.
'Curious!' she said aloud; 'I thought my other book was here. I have left it next door. I must find it and return to read and rest.' As she said the words she walked into the sleeping-room. 'God give me strength not to look towards the bed,' she prayed silently. 'Lord, in thy hands are all things. It is blasphemy to fear.'
Now she was in the shadowy bedroom; she moved slowly across, saying again aloud: 'I will fetch the volume and return.' As the words left her lips she realised she had spoken in French; her ruse was useless then! The murderer was probably some illiterate scoundrel; how should he comprehend? But her dogged, methodical nature stood her in good stead. If Johanna Elizabetha began anything, she invariably completed her task; so although she imagined her strategy spoiled through her use of the French language, she kept steadily moving across the large dark room. As she gained the door leading to the audience-chamber she heard the man's bitten, jagged nails scrape the silk brocade of the hangings. He had pushed aside the curtains, then—he was following her! 'God give me strength,' she prayed again. With unhurried step she passed across the whole length of the long audience-chamber, and gently opened the door of the ante-hall. The page-in-waiting, a slight child of fourteen years, sprang to his feet, bowing deeply, as her Highness entered.
'Are you alone?' said the Duchess quietly. 'Is no lackey in waiting?'