Part 36 (1/2)

”Do not dare to attempt to follow me by even a step.” she cried in deepest anger. ”Your escort is just as unbearable to me as your presence. How often must I tell you that?”

”Ah, so angry!” cried the Count with a malicious smile. ”Well, I shall not have ventured this attack for nothing. I shall at least repay myself with a kiss from those charming, angry lips.”

He actually prepared to fulfil his threat, approaching the quickly retreating girl, but at that moment, propelled by an awful blow, he flew to one side and fell full length upon the damp ground, where he remained lying in a very pitiable plight.

Startled at this unexpected and stormy succor, Marietta turned around, and her face, flushed from insult and anger, bore expression of great amazement as she recognized her deliverer, who now stood at her side, looking wrathfully at the form upon the ground, as if it were his highest desire to quite finish him.

”Herr von Eschenhagen--you!”

In the meantime Count Westerburg had struggled painfully to his feet and now drew near his aggressor threateningly.

”How dare you! Who gives you the right----”

”I advise you to remain ten feet away from this young lady,”

interrupted Willibald, placing himself in front of Marietta, ”or you will fly off again, and the second blow might not prove as soft as the first.”

The Count, a slender, far from powerful man, measured the giant before him, whose fist he had already felt, but one look was enough to convince him that he would come out second best in an encounter.

”You will give me satisfaction--if you are worth it,” he hissed in a half-choked voice. ”Probably you do not know whom you have before you----”

”An impudent fellow whom one chastises with pleasure,” said w.i.l.l.y stolidly. ”Please remain standing where you are, or I will do it now.

My name is Willibald von Eschenhagen. I am lord of Burgsdorf, and can be found at the mansion of the Prussian Amba.s.sador if you should have more to tell me---- If you please, mein Fraulein, you may trust yourself unhesitatingly to my protection. I pledge myself that you will not be molested further.”

And now something unprecedented, unheard of, happened. Herr von Eschenhagen, without stammering, without showing embarra.s.sment of any kind, offered his arm with a genuinely chivalrous movement to the young lady, and carried her off without concerning himself further about the Count.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII.

Marietta had accepted the proffered arm without speaking a word until, having reached a considerable distance, she commenced, with a timidity otherwise foreign to her manner: ”Herr von Eschenhagen----”

”Mein Fraulein.”

”I--I am very grateful for your protection, but the Count--you have insulted him--even with a blow. He will challenge you and you will have to accept it.”

”Of course, with the greatest pleasure,” said w.i.l.l.y, and his face was beaming as if the prospect gave him unmixed delight.

His awkward, embarra.s.sed manner had suddenly disappeared; he felt himself a hero and deliverer, and enjoyed the new position immensely.

Marietta looked at him in speechless amazement.

”But it is awful that this should happen for my sake!” she commenced again, ”and that it should be just you.”

”Perhaps that is not agreeable to you,” said the young lord, who in his present elated mood took offence at the last remark. ”But Fraulein, in such a case one has no choice. Forced by necessity, you had to accept me as protector, even if I did not stand very high in your esteem.”

A burning blush spread over Marietta's face at the remembrance of that hour when she had poured out her supreme contempt on the man who now took her part so gallantly.

”I thought only of Toni and her father,” she returned in a low voice.

”I am blameless in this matter, but if I should be the cause of your being torn from your fiancee----”