The excited girl did not let her finish; she flung her arms around her neck, and cried out, passionately: 

“Ah, now I know why I was so angry when he allowed his mother to insult me and did not take my part.  It grieved me so to think he was weak and cowardly, for I have loved him from the very first.”

CHAPTER XII.

Extensive preparations for the approaching social season were being made at the house of the Prussian ambassador.  Wallmoden had entered upon the duties of his present official position early in the past spring, but his father-in-law’s death following immediately after, and the summer coming on, he had as yet done nothing to discharge the social obligations incumbent upon him as the representative of a great government.  The magnificent house which he had taken was furnished with great splendor.  His marriage to an heiress made many pleasant things possible to him now, and his great desire was to make his residence one of mark in the southern capital.  The following week he was to give his first reception, and in the meantime, numerous visits had to be made.

The ambassador was busily engaged, also, in attending to certain official matters of more than usual importance.  With all his other cares he was secretly annoyed at the result of the production of “Arivana.”  If he had had any thought before of openly denouncing Hartmut Rojanow, such denunciation was now almost impossible.

This adventurer had been so praised and so lauded and admired for his poetical genius and talents, that just at present it was a matter of doubt whether any statement which Wallmoden could make would have much effect on the society and the court where the newly risen star was the hero of the hour.  Hartmut had risked much against Wallmoden’s threats—­and won.  The one thing which completed the ambassador’s discomfiture, and made his position extremely painful, was the coming of Falkenried.  It would be impossible to conceal his son’s whereabouts and doings from the father, and Wallmoden dare not let him learn them from strangers.  When they had met in Berlin, for a brief hour, neither knew of the journey to the South which the Colonel would have to take almost immediately.  He was to be the guest of his old friend, for he also knew Adelheid very well; she and her brother had grown up under his eyes.

When Major Falkenried had taken command of a distant garrison ten years before, the little city where he was stationed had been very near the principal Stahlberg factories.  The new major’s reputation had preceded him; he was said to be a valiant soldier, devoted to the service, who, when not on duty, gave all his time to the study of military tactics and discipline, but who held all mankind, soldiers excepted, in abhorrence.  He had a house and lived among men, but for the rest, he turned his back upon society and every one connected with it.