“I mean that this foreign adventurer, Königsmark, and Sophia grow too intimate.”
“Sophia!” Thick eyebrows were raised until they almost met the line of his ponderous peruke. His face broke into malevolent creases expressive of contempt.
“That white-faced ninny! Bah!” Her very virtue was matter for his scorn.
“It is these white-faced ninnies can be most sly,” replied the Countess, out of her worldly wisdom. “Listen a moment now.” And she related, with interest rather than discount, you may be sure, what she had witnessed that afternoon.
The malevolence deepened in his face. He had never loved Sophia, and he felt none the kinder towards her for her recent trip to Zell. Then, too, being a libertine, and the father of a libertine, it logically followed that unchastity in his women-folk was in his eyes the unpardonable sin.
He heaved himself out of his deep chair. “How far has this gone?” he demanded.
Prudence restrained the Countess from any over-statement that might afterwards be disproved. Besides, there was not the need, if she could trust her senses. Patience and vigilance would presently afford her all the evidence required to damn the pair. She said as much, and promised the Elector that she would exercise herself the latter quality in his son’s service. Again the Elector did not find it grotesque that his mistress should appoint herself the guardian of his son’s honour.
The Countess went about that congenial task with zeal—though George’s honour was the least thing that concerned her. What concerned her was the dishonour of Sophia, and the ruin of Königsmark. So she watched assiduously, and set others, too, to watch for her and to report. And almost daily now she had for the Elector a tale of whisperings and hand-pressings, and secret stolen meetings between the guilty twain. The Elector enraged, and would have taken action, but that the guileful Countess curbed him. All this was not enough. An accusation that could not be substantiated would ruin all chance of punishing the offenders, might recoil, indeed, upon the accusers by bringing the Duke of Zell to his daughter’s aid. So they must wait yet awhile until they held more absolute proof of this intrigue.
And then at last one day the Countess sped in haste to the Elector with word that Königsmark and the Princess had shut themselves up together in the garden pavilion. Let him come at once, and he should so discover them for himself, and thus at last be able to take action. The Countess was flushed with triumph. Be that meeting never so innocent—and Madame von Platen could not, being what she was, and having seen what she had seen, conceive it innocent—it was in an Electoral Princess an unforgivable indiscretion, to take the most charitable view, which none would dream of taking. So the Elector, fiercely red in the face, hurried off to the pavilion with Madame von Platen following. He came too late, despite the diligence of his spy.
Sophia had been there, but her interview with the Count had been a brief one. She had to tell him that at last she was resolved in all particulars. She would seek a refuge at the court of her cousin, the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, who, she was sure—for the sake of what once had lain between them—would not now refuse to shelter and protect her. Of Königsmark she desired that he should act as her escort to her cousin’s court.