His eyes followed the young wife, who had just reached the foot of the hill, and a deep scowl settled on his brow.

“If I meet Wallmoden here, and perhaps I won’t be able to avoid it, he’ll recognize me without a doubt.  Then he’ll tell her all about it, and if she ever sees me again, and gives me one of her contemptuous glances, I’ll—­” He stamped his foot on the ground with fury at the thought, and then gave a bitter laugh.

“Pah!  What need I care?  What does this pale, blue-eyed creature, with her cold blood, know of freedom, of the throes of passion, of the storms which come to some lives?  Let her pronounce sentence on me.  Why should I shun a meeting?  I will face her and bid her beware.”

And with a haughty movement of his head he turned his back on the slender figure, and strode back again into the woods.

CHAPTER V.

The betrothal festivities to which Baron von Wallmoden and his wife had been bidden were carried out to the letter.  Antonie von Schoenau plighted her troth to her cousin, the heir of Burgsdorf.

The young people had known their parents’ plan for years, and were fully agreed as to its accomplishment.  Willibald subscribed like a dutiful son, to his mother’s opinion that she was the suitable person to choose his life’s companion for him, and he had waited patiently her pleasure as to the time when his betrothal should become an accomplished fact; the thought of having his little cousin Toni for a wife was very pleasant to him.  He had known her since childhood, and she suited him exactly.  She was a girl absolutely bereft of romance, and Willibald knew she would make no sentimental demands upon him, to which he, with the best will in the world, had not the temperament to respond.  Toni, for her part, possessed that good taste for which Frau Regine had given her credit.  Will pleased her very well, and the prospect of being mistress of Burgsdorf pleased her still better—­in short, everything was as it should be.

The newly betrothed pair were at the piano in the drawing-room, and Toni was entertaining her lover with music, not voluntarily, however, but at her father’s request, for she herself considered music a wearisome and superfluous accomplishment.  But the head forester had insisted that his daughter should show she was not educated in housewifery alone, but had learned something at boarding-school as well.  He was walking to and fro on the terrace with his sister-in-law now; they had come there to listen to the music, and discuss for the hundredth time the happiness and prospects of their children.  They had, as usual, soon drifted away from pleasant topics and their contention was growing fiercer each moment.

“I really don’t know what to think of you, Moritz,” said Frau von Eschenhagen, very red in the face.  “You don’t seem to comprehend the impropriety of permitting such an intimacy.  When I ask you who is the school-girl friend of Toni’s who is expected at Waldhofen, you answer me coolly and complacently, that she is a singer who has been on the stage of the Court theatre for some time.  An actress, a theatrical star.  One of those wretched, frivolous creatures who—­”