"Everything."
"So he is at Burgsdorf? Since when? Who notified him?"
The young man, with fluttering breath, reported what had happened, but he had not finished when the bitter laugh of his mother interrupted him.
"Naturally they are all in the plot when it concerns the tearing of my child from me. And your father, he has probably threatened and punished and made you suffer for the heavy crime of having been in the arms of your mother?"
Hartmut shook his head.
The remembrance of that moment when his father drew him to his breast stood firm, in spite of the bitterness with which that scene had ended.
"No," he said in a low voice; "but he commanded me not to see you again, and requested irrevocable separation from you."
"And yet you are here? Oh, I knew it!"
The exclamation was full of joyous victory.
"Do not triumph too soon, mamma," said the youth bitterly. "I came only to say farewell."