This was too much. The storm cloud burst now with thunder and lightning; it loaded and discharged with such vehemence over the head of the young lord that really nothing seemed left for him to do but to disappear quickly under the ground, which could not bear a person of his kind any longer.
But he did not disappear; he only bowed his head to the storm, and when it finally subsided--for Frau Regine had necessarily to draw breath some time--he drew himself up and said: "Mamma, please let me talk."
"You want to talk? that is remarkable," declared Schonan, who was not used to such efforts from his daughter's betrothed; but Willibald actually began, hesitatingly and uncertainly at first, but he gradually acquired firmness in speech and bearing.
"I am sorry that I have to offend you, but it could not be helped. I am just as innocent about the duel as Marietta is. She was being followed by an impertinent fellow persistently. I protected her and chastised the offender, who sent me a challenge, which I never could nor would decline. I have to beg Toni's pardon alone for loving Marietta, and I did that immediately upon my arrival. She heard everything and gave me back my pledge. Indeed, we have broken our engagement much more independently than we formed it."
"Oh, ho, is that meant for us?" cried the Forester angrily. "We did not force you--both of you could have said no if you had wished."
"Well, we do that now as a supplement," returned Willibald, so quickly that Schonan looked at him amazed. "Toni came to the same conclusion that custom alone is not sufficient for marriage, and if one has learned to know happiness, one wants to possess it also."
Fran von Eschenhagen, who had not yet quite regained her breath, started at these words as if bitten by a snake. It had never entered her mind that a second engagement would follow the first, now broken. She had never contemplated this most awful of possibilities.
"Possess it," she repeated. "What do you wish to possess? Does that mean perhaps that you want to marry this Marietta--this creature----"
"Mamma, I beg you to speak in a different tone of my future wife," her son interrupted her, so gravely and decidedly that the angry mother stopped indeed. "Toni has given me freedom; therefore there is no wrong in my love for Marietta, and Marietta's reputation is blameless--I am convinced of that. Whoever hurts or offends her has to answer to me, even if it should be my own mother."
"Hear, hear! the boy is coming out," murmured the Chief Forester, with whom the sense of justice overpowered his vexation, but Frau von Eschenhagen was far from listening to justice.