Startled at this unexpected and stormy succor, Marietta turned around, and her face, flushed from insult and anger, bore expression of great amazement as she recognized her deliverer, who now stood at her side, looking wrathfully at the form upon the ground, as if it were his highest desire to quite finish him.
"Herr von Eschenhagen--you!"
In the meantime Count Westerburg had struggled painfully to his feet and now drew near his aggressor threateningly.
"How dare you! Who gives you the right----"
"I advise you to remain ten feet away from this young lady," interrupted Willibald, placing himself in front of Marietta, "or you will fly off again, and the second blow might not prove as soft as the first."
The Count, a slender, far from powerful man, measured the giant before him, whose fist he had already felt, but one look was enough to convince him that he would come out second best in an encounter.
"You will give me satisfaction--if you are worth it," he hissed in a half-choked voice. "Probably you do not know whom you have before you----"
"An impudent fellow whom one chastises with pleasure," said Willy stolidly. "Please remain standing where you are, or I will do it now. My name is Willibald von Eschenhagen. I am lord of Burgsdorf, and can be found at the mansion of the Prussian Ambassador if you should have more to tell me---- If you please, mein Fraulein, you may trust yourself unhesitatingly to my protection. I pledge myself that you will not be molested further."
And now something unprecedented, unheard of, happened. Herr von Eschenhagen, without stammering, without showing embarrassment of any kind, offered his arm with a genuinely chivalrous movement to the young lady, and carried her off without concerning himself further about the Count.