“I never dared to think you loved me, you were always so inflexible, so unapproachable—­” he broke off and looked up at his father, who put his arm around him and drew him closer to himself.  Their eyes met in a long, tender gaze, and the iron man’s voice broke as he said softly: 

“You are my only child, Hartmut, all that remains to me of a dream of happiness which vanished, leaving only bitterness and disenchantment in its wake.  I lost much and bore it;—­but if I were to lose you, you,—­I could not bear it.”

He held his son close in his arms, and the boy threw himself sobbing on his breast, and in this passionate embrace all else seemed to sink from view.  They had both forgotten the threatening shadow from the past which was forcing itself between them.

In the meantime Frau von Eschenhagen was harangueing Will in the dining-room.  She had already performed that duty once this morning, but she thought the occasion required a second portion.  The young heir looked sorely disturbed, he felt himself in a false position both as regarded his mother and his friend, and yet he was quite innocent in the matter.  As a dutiful son he listened patiently to the tirade, and only threw a wistful glance now and then toward the table upon which the evening meal was already spread, and of which his mother took not the slightest notice.

“This is what comes of it, when a boy has secrets behind his parents’ back,” she said in conclusion.  “Hartmut will be well watched now, and the Major won’t deal any too gently with him, either, and you, I think, will refrain from assisting in any more plots, if I have anything to say.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” said Will, defending himself.  “I only promised to be silent, and I had to keep my word.”

“You should never keep silence toward your mother.  She is always and ever an exception,” said Frau Regine, decidedly.

“Yes, mamma, that was probably what Hartmut thought; that’s how he acted toward his mother,” said Willibald, and the remark was so just that nothing could be said in contradiction; it provoked Frau von Jischenhagen none the less, on that account.

“That’s something different, something quite different,” she answered shortly.  But her son asked obstinately: 

“Why is it something different here, then?”

“Do not bother me any more with your talk and your questions,” his mother went on angrily.  “That is a thing which you do not understand, and about which you have no business to trouble your head.  It’s bad enough that Hartmut has brought you into the affair at all.  Now be quiet, and don’t trouble me any more about it.  Do you understand?”

Will was silent as requested.  It was the first time in his life that he had been catechised so sharply and had received so severe a lecture.  At this moment his uncle Wallmoden, just back from a walk, entered the room.

“I hear Falkenried has come already?” he said to his sister.