"I heard from the servants of your unexpected arrival, dear aunt--I am so glad to see you."
Instead of any answer or word of greeting from her aunt the same question from both sides sounded in her ears.
"He'll be here in a few minutes, he waited to give some direction to the castle gardener; he does not know his mother is here."
"To the castle-gardener! Doubtless he wants some more roses," Frau von Eschenhagen broke out afresh, while the father held out both his arms to Toni and said, in a trembling voice:
"My child, my poor, deceived child, come to me. Come to your father's arms."
He would have drawn his daughter into his arms, but Regine stepped before him and said in a husky voice:
"Be composed, Toni, you will have a fearful blow from your false lover; you will despise him and his deceptions from your very soul."
This sudden sympathy had in it something alarming, but fortunately Toni had never been troubled with weak nerves; she released herself now from this double embrace, and drew back from them both as she said, with quiet decision:
"I could not do that, for Will is beginning to please me better now than he has ever pleased me before in his life."
"So much the worse," interrupted her father. "Poor child, you know nothing, suspect nothing. Your lover has fought a duel, and for a woman, too."
"But he loves Marietta," they both cried out with one voice.
"I know it all," declared Toni in her quiet, drawling tone. "Have known it for a week."
The effect of this declaration was so depressing that the two angry parents were dumb, and looked at one another stupefied. In the meantime Toni continued with the utmost composure:
"Will told me all about it just as soon as he got here; and he spoke so simply and with such true heartedness that he made me weep from very sympathy; then a letter came from Marietta begging my pardon, and it was so loving and penitent in its tone that I was deeply moved. There was nothing for me to do but to give back my lover his freedom."
"Without asking us?" interposed her aunt.
"No questions were necessary in this case," Antonie answered, quietly. "I cannot marry a man who declares to me that he loves another woman. So we dissolved our engagement without any further discussion."