ssion which had been only momentary, and wanted
to forget it and have her forget it, too, as soon as possible. As for
the rest, he wrote regularly to his bride-elect, who responded most
punctually. Frau Regine, who considered it her special prerogative, read
all this correspondence, and declared herself satisfied with it. There
was no sentiment, no declaration of affection, in these letters; they
were quite practical epistles, telling of home matters in a homely
fashion, but they evinced Will's intention to keep his word and marry
his cousin on the day appointed, and now near at hand.

So Willibald was told that he could go and visit his bride; the
permission was granted all the more willingly because Frau Regine knew
that Marietta Volkmar must have returned to the city long since. Baron
von Wallmoden and his wife had paid a flying visit to Burgsdorf on their
way south from the Stahlberg factories, and Willibald was put in their
care and was to spend a few days in the South-German Capital. During
those few days in which he would remain in the ambassador's house, he
was perfectly safe, his mother assured herself.

The baron found that it would be necessary to tell his nephew about his
old friend at once. On the very day of their arrival, Hartmut Rojanow's
name was mentioned several times in Willibald's presence. He asked
promptly to whom the name belonged, and was answered, 'to a young
Roumanian poet.' An unmistakable wink from his uncle was all that saved
him from further questions.

Then when they were alone the ambassador explained to Willibald who and
what this Hartmut Rojanow was. An adventurer of the lowest and worst
type, whom he would soon expose and force to abandon forever the _role_
which he was now playing with so little right, but with such signal
success.

Poor Willibald shook his head in a dazed sort of way over this news. His
old friend, for whom he had always had a warm and unchanged affection,
notwithstanding the episode of ten years before, was near him now, and
he dare not see him again.

Wallmoden was especially sharp and explicit about this, and made his
nephew promise to say nothing about the matter to Frau von Wallmoden or
his uncle von Schoenau. But poor Willibald could not understand it at
all; he needed time and quiet with this as with all other things, to
comprehend them fully.

The day on which "Arivana" was to be produced, came at last. It was the
work of a young and unknown poet, but