“Well, I’ve no intention of going near her, so you needn’t shake your fist at me, old boy.  But what have you to do with the opera singer, Marietta Volkmar, who has always posed as a very mirror of virtue?”

“Hartmut, have a care.  You must speak respectfully of this lady to me.  To make a long story short, this Count Westerburg has challenged me, and we’re going to have a shot at one another, and I sincerely hope I’ll leave him with a remembrance he won’t soon forget.”

“Well, you’re making very fair progress in your romance, I must say,” Hartmut answered with growing astonishment.  “You’ve been in town two days, have had a quarrel with a stranger, who has demanded satisfaction, are the knight and protector of a young singer on whose account you are going to fight a duel.  For God’s sake, Will, what’ll your mother say?”

“As it concerns an affair of honor, my mother will have no right to say anything,” Willibald declared with true heroism.  “But I will have to find a second here, where I am a stranger and know no one.  Of course uncle Wallmoden knows nothing of the matter, or he would have the police interfere at once, so I resolved to come and ask you whether you would perform that service for me?”

“Ah, that’s why you came?” said Hartmut in a pained voice.  “I thought for the moment it was the old friendship which had brought you.  But, all the same, I am at your service.  With what weapons do you fight?”

“With pistols.”

“That’s an advantage for you.  When we used to shoot at a target at Burgsdorf, you were a fine shot.  I’ll see the Count’s second the first thing in the morning, and let you know of the arrangements at once; but I must write to you, for I won’t enter Herr von Wallmoden’s house.”

Willibald only nodded.  He had thought that his uncle’s enmity would be returned in full by Rojanow, so considered it better to say nothing on the subject.

“Yes, write me,” he answered.  “You make what arrangements you deem fit.  I have no experience in such matters, and leave it all to you.  Here is the second’s address.  Now I must go.  I have much to do yet—­I must prepare for the worst.”

He rose and held out his hand to his friend, but Hartmut did not see it.  He sat with eyes fastened on the ground, as he said in a low, stifled tone: 

“Wait a minute, Will—­Burgsdorf is not far from Berlin—­do you often see—­”

“Who?” asked Will.

“My—­my father.”

The young heir was evidently embarrassed by the question; he had avoided the name of Falkenried all through the conversation, and he did not know that the father was expected in the city.

“No,” he answered finally, “We don’t see the Colonel at all.”

“But he comes to Burgsdorf sometimes, does he not?”

“No—­he keeps to himself, but I saw him by chance the other day with uncle Wallmoden in Berlin.”

“And how does he look?  Is he much changed in these last years?”