Fran von Eschenhagen's harsh reticence could not hold fast at this question. Her lips trembled.
"I came to see my only son once more before he goes to war--perhaps to death," she said, with painful bitterness. "I had to hear from others that he had come to say farewell to his bride. He did not come to his mother, and that--that I could not bear."
"We should have come," cried the young lord; "we should have made one more attempt to win your heart before leaving. See, mother, here is my bride-elect--my Marietta. She is waiting for a friendly word from you."
Regine threw a long look upon the young couple, and again her face quivered painfully as she saw how Marietta pressed shyly, but confidently, to the man in whose protection she knew herself so secure. Maternal jealousy stood a last, hard struggle; but finally she allowed herself to be conquered. She stretched out her hand to the young girl.
"I offended you once, Marietta," she said, in a half-stifled voice, "and did you a possible wrong that time; but for that you have taken from me my boy, who, until then, had not loved anybody but his mother, and who now loves nobody but you. I believe we are quits."
"Oh, Willy loves his mother as dearly as ever," Marietta said heartily. "I best know how he has suffered under the separation."
"So? Well, we will have to agree with each other for his sake," said Regine, with an attempt at playfulness, which did not quite succeed. "We shall be in a great deal of anxiety about him soon, when we know him in the battlefield; care, anxiety, will be plentiful then. What do you think, my child? I believe we could bear it easier if we worry about him together."
She opened her arms, and the next second Marietta lay sobbing upon her breast. Tears glittered also in the eyes of the mother when she bent down to kiss her future daughter-in-law; but then she said in the old, commanding tone: "Do not cry; hold up your head, Marietta, for a soldier's fiancée must be brave--remember that."
"A soldier's wife," corrected Willibald, who stood by with beaming eyes. "We have just now decided to be married before I leave."
"Well, then, Marietta really belongs to Burgsdorf," declared Regine, who was hardly surprised, and seemed to find this decision quite in order. "No arguments, child. The young Frau von Eschenhagen has nothing to do further at Waldhofen, except as she comes for a visit to her grandfather. Or are you perhaps afraid of your grim mother-in-law? But I believe you have in him"--she pointed to her son--"a sufficient protection, even if he is not at home. He would be capable of declaring war upon his own mother if she did not bear his little wife upon her hands."