She stood at the window of the comfortable little living-room, having just returned from rehearsal, and looked out drearily into the quiet street.  Fraeulein Berger was stitching industriously by the little centre table, and looked up now at the young girl with a grave shake of the head.

“Child, why do you take the thing so hard?” she said, almost sharply.  “You’ll wear yourself out with all this anxiety and excitement.  What’s the sense of looking on the worst side?”

Marietta turned toward the speaker; she was very pale and there was a sob in her voice, as she replied: 

“This is the third day and I can learn nothing.  O, it is terrible, this waiting hour after hour for bad news.”

“But why need it be bad?” remonstrated the old lady.  “Yesterday afternoon Herr von Eschenhagen, was well and happy.  I went out myself at your desire and found he was out driving with Herr and Frau von Wallmoden.  Perhaps the matter has been settled amicably.”

“Then I’d have had news before now,” the girl answered, hopelessly.  “He promised me and he’d keep his word, I know it.  If anything has happened, if he has fallen—­I believe I can’t live through it.”

The last words sounded forth so passionately that Fraeulein Berger glanced at the speaker frightened.

“Marietta, that sounds very unreasonable,” she said.  “It wasn’t your fault that you were insulted, neither would you be to blame if your friend Toni’s fiance was shot.  You couldn’t really be more despairing if it was your own lover who was to fight.”

A deep flush overspread the pale features of the girl for a moment, and she turned again toward the window.

“You do not understand, auntie,” she replied in a low tone.  “You do not know how much happiness I have had in the head forester’s house, how humbly Toni begged my pardon for the insults her future mother-in-law heaped upon me.  What will she think of me when she hears that her lover has had a duel on my account?  What will Frau von Eschenhagen say?”

“Well, they can be easily convinced that you are blameless in the whole affair, and if it ends well, they need know nothing about it.  I hardly know you, child, the last few days.  You, who always laughed every care and anxiety away, to sit and mope and grieve.  It’s incomprehensible to me.  You have hardly eaten or drunk a thing for two days, and wouldn’t sit down to your breakfast this morning.  But you must eat some dinner, and I must go and see to it at once.”

With this the old lady rose and left the room.  She was right, poor Marietta seemed indeed a changed girl.  It was without doubt a painful, depressing feeling, that blame would undoubtedly rest upon her; her friends at Fuerstenstein perhaps might never be made to understand the real state of the case, how innocent she was of any intention to wrong or even annoy them; her reputation, too, of which she had been so guarded; would not every paper be teeming with this “affair of honor,” if either combatant were killed?