wistfulness that had not been there before, that should not have
been there now had all been well. The sprightliness inherent in
her had not abated, but it had assumed a certain warp of
bitterness; humour, which is of the heart, had given place in her
to wit, which is of the mind, and this wit was barbed, and a
little reckless of how or where it offended.

Koenigsmark observed these changes that the years had wrought, and
knew enough of her story to account for them. He knew of her
thwarted love for her cousin, the Duke of Wolfenbuttel, thwarted
for the sake of dynastic ambition, to the end that by marrying
her to the Electoral Prince George the whole of the Duchy of
Luneberg might be united. Thus, for political reasons, she had
been thrust into a union that was mutually loveless; for Prince
George had as little affection to bring to it as herself. Yet for
a prince the door to compensations is ever open. Prince George's
taste, as is notorious, was ever for ugly women, and this taste
he indulged so freely, openly, and grossly that the coldness
towards him with which Sophia had entered the alliance was
eventually converted into disgust and contempt.

Thus matters stood between that ill-matched couple; contempt on
her side, cold dislike on his, a dislike that was fully shared by
his father, the Elector, Ernest Augustus, and encouraged in the
latter by the Countess von Platen.

Madame von Platen, the wife of the Elector's chief minister of
state, was--with the connivance of her despicable husband, who
saw therein the means to his own advancement--the acknowledged
mistress of Ernest Augustus. She was a fleshly, gauche, vain, and