Marietta had accepted the proffered arm without speaking a word until, having reached a considerable distance, she commenced, with a timidity otherwise foreign to her manner: "Herr von Eschenhagen----"
"Mein Fraulein."
"I--I am very grateful for your protection, but the Count--you have insulted him--even with a blow. He will challenge you and you will have to accept it."
"Of course, with the greatest pleasure," said Willy, and his face was beaming as if the prospect gave him unmixed delight.
His awkward, embarrassed manner had suddenly disappeared; he felt himself a hero and deliverer, and enjoyed the new position immensely.
Marietta looked at him in speechless amazement.
"But it is awful that this should happen for my sake!" she commenced again, "and that it should be just you."
"Perhaps that is not agreeable to you," said the young lord, who in his present elated mood took offence at the last remark. "But Fraulein, in such a case one has no choice. Forced by necessity, you had to accept me as protector, even if I did not stand very high in your esteem."
A burning blush spread over Marietta's face at the remembrance of that hour when she had poured out her supreme contempt on the man who now took her part so gallantly.
"I thought only of Toni and her father," she returned in a low voice. "I am blameless in this matter, but if I should be the cause of your being torn from your fiancée----"