"Yes, your majesty. I do not, I cannot love Count Voss."
"Well, then," cried Sophia, "you will marry him without love, and
that speedily!"
Laura raised her head passionately; her eye met the queen's, but
this time not humbly, not timidly, but decisively. From this moment,
Sophia Dorothea was to her no longer a queen, but a cruel, unfeeling
woman, who was trampling upon her soul and binding it in chains.
"Pardon, your majesty, as I have said that I do not love Count Voss,
it follows of course that I will never marry him."
The queen sprang from her seat as if bitten by a poisonous reptile.
"Not marry him!" she shrieked; "but I say you shall marry him! yes,
if you have to be dragged with violence to the altar!"
"Then at the altar I will say no!" cried Laura von Pannewitz,
raising her young face, beaming with courage and enthusiasm, toward
heaven.
The queen uttered a wild cry and sprang forward; the lion was about
to seize upon its prey and tear it to pieces, but Elizabeth
Christine laid her hand upon the raised arm of the queen and held
her back. "Majesty," she said, "what would you do? you would not
force this poor girl to marry against her will; she does not love
Count Voss, and she is right to refuse him."
"Ha! you defend her?" cried Sophia, brought to extremities by the
resistance of the queen; "you have then no presentiment why she
refuses the hand of Count Voss; you do not comprehend that when a
poor dependent maid of honor refuses to marry a rich and noble
cavalier, it is because she believes she has secured her future in
another direction--because in the haughtiness of her vain,
infatuated heart, she hopes through her beauty and well-acted
coquetry to secure for herself a more brilliant lot.
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