Adelheid lowered her voice, but she avoided the colonel's eye as she continued:
"You know that I was not engaged to Herbert until after our year's residence in Florence. My father was very ill and his physicians ordered him to Italy for the winter. We went to Florence for a couple of months; our farther movements were to depend upon my father's condition. My brother accompanied, us and when the winter set in he was to return home. After a few weeks we took a villa just outside the city, and lived, of course, a very retired life. Eugen saw Italy for the first time under very sad and depressing circumstances; it was very trying for him, a mere boy, to sit day after day in a sick room, so I seconded his request to be allowed to go to Rome for a few weeks, and obtained the desired permission for him. I ought never to have done so. But I did not know how great was his inexperience or into what it would lead him."
"Which means that he plunged into frivolous pleasure or dissipation while his father lay on his death-bed," the Colonel interposed harshly.
"Do not be hard on him. My brother was scarcely twenty years old, and while he had a loving father, he had a severe one, who had brought him up with such strictness that this little breath of freedom proved too much for him. The young German, with no worldly experience whatever, was enticed into a circle where play ran high, and where, as was afterwards proven, cheats and gamblers plied their vocation. Eugen in his ignorance saw nothing of all this; he lost considerable sums, and at last one night the club was raided by the police. The Italians resisted them and a scuffle ensued, into which Eugen was drawn. He only defended himself, but in so doing severely wounded one of the police, and he was arrested with the others."
The Colonel had listened in silence to Adelheid's agitated recital, but he showed neither interest nor emotion as he said severely: "And poor Stahlberg had to live to see his son, whom he imagined a model, come to this!"
"He never knew it. It was only a momentary seduction, a boy's misstep through ignorance, which will never be repeated; Eugen has given me his word of honor for that."
Falkenried laughed out suddenly, such a bitter, mocking laugh, that the young wife looked at him in alarm.
"His word of honor. Certainly, why not? It is as easy given as broken. Are you really so credulous that you would take the word of such a boy?"
"Yes, I am, indeed," Adelheid answered earnestly, as she looked reprovingly into the face of the man whose bitterness she could not understand. "I know my brother; he is his father's son in spite of everything and will not break his word."
"It is well for you you can still trust and believe; for me such days were over long ago," said Falkenried, scowling, but in a milder tone. "And what happened then?"