ar had come for a little gossip with her old friend, and
as usual during such visits, the laughter and the babble knew no end.
Toni sat in the window-seat, and near her stood Willibald, who, by his
mother's special orders, was to play the _role_ of sentinel.

Frau von Eschenhagen had not yet been able to accomplish her purpose
concerning the opera singer. Her brother-in-law had remained obdurate,
and even from her future daughter, whom she imagined so pliant, she had
met with decided resistance when she demanded that all intercourse
should be broken off between the two. "I cannot do that, dear auntie.
You ask too much," Toni had answered. "Marietta is so noble and good. I
could not wound her so deeply."

"Noble and good!" Frau Regine shrugged her shoulders over the
inexperience of this girl whose eyes she might not open; but she was
diplomatic enough to let the subject drop for the present and bide her
time. Willibald, accustomed to confide in his mother, had told her of
his meeting with Fraeulein Volkmar, and how he had enacted the part of
porter at her suggestion. Frau von Eschenhagen was, naturally enough,
incensed at the thought that her son, the heir of Burgsdorf, should act
as lackey for a "theatrical hussy." She drew, for his benefit, a picture
of this child of the devil, and explained how it would be an
impossibility for her to follow such a shameless life without being
thoroughly bad. Willibald, of course, was horror stricken at what he
heard, and agreed fully with his mother that his future wife must be
protected from so contaminating an influence.

He received orders never to let the young girls be alone, and to watch
carefully how this Marietta behaved. At the very first intimation of a
disgraceful word or action, Regine would go to her brother-in-law and
demand that he should no longer permit his daughter to associate with
such an one; then she would call her son as witness, and the incubus
would be expelled at once and forever from their presence. Willibald
had been on guard when Marietta paid her first visit to Fuerstenstein,
had accompanied Toni to Waldhofen when she went to the old doctor's to
see her friend, and he was now at his post again, to-day, in Antonie's
boudoir.

Antonie and Marietta were chatting over the approaching arrival of the
Court at Fuerstenstein, and the former, who possessed little taste in the
matter of dress, was asking her friend's advice about some details of
the toilette, a