Sophia Dorothea was thinking the same; she wondered what had kept her alive, what had actually sustained her to grow old–yes, to come to that horror, to lead this existence to old age.
Why had she not flung away a life so miserable and died at least in the triumph of youth?
She envied Philip von Königsmarck in that he had not lived to grow old.
Hope had upheld her a certain time, but hope was dead. She could recall almost the actual moment when it had finally died, when she had stood at the window watching the road, and known at last that no help would come ever along it to her–known that her husband would not die and release her; but still she had lived and grown old.
The dark gathered, descended and settled.
She leant back in the threadbare velvet chair, and her tired eyes remained fixed on the dusk.
She thought of her husband; he was an old man now, but she pictured him as she had last seen him in the full lustiness of his youth. Her children were grown to middle life, but she saw them still in petticoats. Though both were married and had children of their own, the news had come to her through her women.
She had once had great hopes in her son; she believed that he would have some desire to see his mother.
She divined rightly. Though his attempt to swim the Aller and storm the moat had never been told her, for a long while she had clung to the hope that he had some of the chivalry his father lacked; but he was a man of forty-five now, and she was still a prisoner; that hope had died with the others. Her daughter was a Queen, and that was all Sophia Dorothea knew of her.
She soon ceased to think of them. She rose and went in to her dinner, which was served in the same room, at the same hour, always, always.