“That goes beyond anything I ever heard,” cried the head forester, in a towering rage.  “My future son-in-law fights a duel on Marietta’s account.  What was the quarrel about?  What do you know about it, Regine?  My papers don’t mention it.”

“But mine do.  You’ll find it in yours if you look them over well.  I caught sight of the article yesterday, and started at once, without even staying over to see Herbert.  Evidently he knows nothing about it yet, or he’d have sent me word.”

“Herbert’ll be here to-day; in an hour or two now,” said von Schoenau, while glancing hastily over the papers.  “He was going to Ostwalden with Adelheid, he wrote me, and would return to town by way of Fuerstenstein and spend an hour with me.  Perhaps he is coming to tell me about it, but that doesn’t change anything.  What’s the matter with Will, has he gone mad?”

“Yes, that he has,” answered Regine, all excitement again.  “You sneered at me, Moritz, when I warned you your child would suffer from association with an actress.  That such a thing as this could happen never entered my head until the moment when I discovered that Willibald, my own, only son, was in love with this Marietta Volkmar.  I tore him from the danger and returned at once to Burgsdorf.  That was the reason of our sudden flight.  I did not tell you for I thought Will was only dazed for the moment, and would soon recover his reason again.  The boy seemed to have done so, or I would never have trusted him to come here without me.  I put him in Herbert’s charge and felt perfectly sure that all would be well.  He could only have been in the city three or four days at most, and well must he have spent his time.”

She threw herself back in an easy chair, worn out and anxious as well as angry, while the head forester walked up and down the room angrier than ever now.

“And that’s not the worst of it,” he cried.  “The worst is the game which the rascal has been playing with me and my poor daughter since he came here.  My poor child has been running to Waldhofen day after day to give what comfort and aid she could, and Willibald has always accompanied her to comfort Marietta too—­oh, its atrocious!  Your model son has turned out well, I must say, Regine.”

“Perhaps you think I intend to shield him!” Regine answered spitefully.  “He shall stand before me, shall stand before us both, and speak.  That’s what I have come for.  He shall learn to know me!”

She rose as though ready now for the attack, and her hearer, who was muttering angrily to himself, said aloud: 

“He shall learn to know us both!”

Just then, in the middle of their excitement, the door opened, and the poor, ill-treated fiance, Antonie von Schoenau entered the room quiet and composed as ever, and said as she went toward her aunt: 

“I heard from the servants of your unexpected arrival, dear aunt—­I am so glad to see you.”

Instead of any answer or word of greeting from her aunt the same question from both sides sounded in her ears.