This stopped his laughter, for it puzzled him. He looked from one of his companions to the other with an air of most complete bewilderment. "What's Herr Kreutzer got to do with it?" he asked.
"Why, he has just confessed."
"Confessed to what?"
"That he is guilty."
Kreutzer interrupted earnestly and hastily. He did not wish to have her even tell her son that Anna ever had been suspected. "Yes," he assured him earnestly, "I—I alone am guilty."
The youth's evident amazement doubled. Sinking into a chair he looked from his mother to Herr Kreutzer, from Herr Kreutzer to his mother, with an expression of bewilderment so genuine that, for the first time, his mother was a bit in doubt about her cleverness, for the first time Herr Kreutzer wondered if there might not, somewhere, be a ray of hope for him and for his Anna.
"Guilty of what?" said Vanderlyn, at length. "Of being the father of the dearest girl in all the world, who has promised to become my wife?"