"'Are you not ashamed, Harald,' I said, 'to tease the poor, innocent lamb in this way? Fie, Harald--I have always known you were bad, but I did not think you were so bad!'--He started up with one bound and seized me by the throat.--'Say another word,' he ground out from between his teeth, 'and I break your neck, old witch.'--I knew he could do what he threatened, but I was not afraid of death. 'Do what you like,' I said, calmly, 'but as long as I have a breath in me, I will tell you to your face you are a wretch.' I looked firmly into his eye; I saw how his anger rose in him, and I felt that his fingers were encircling my throat as with an iron band. I thought my last hour had come.--Suddenly Marie was standing by our side; she put her hand on Harald's arm, and said, in a low voice: 'Let her go, Harald, I will go with you!'--That was all she said, but it was enough to move even Harald's wild heart. He dropped his arms and stared at Marie, as if he were aroused from a dark dream. Suddenly he fell on his knees before her, hid his burning face in the folds of her dress, and sobbed: 'Forgive me, Marie, forgive me!' Then he started up when he saw her smiling, lifted her up in his arms like a child, carried her up and down in the room, caressing and kissing her. Then he put her down into an arm-chair, the same chair you sit in, and knelt down before her, kissing her hands and her dress, and turning to me, he said: 'Go, old one, and tell Charles to have the horses saddled. I am unwell, or whatever they choose to say, but I cannot see the gentlemen to-day again, nor to-morrow. Is that right so, darling? I am not quite so bad, am I, as the old one says?' I went, crying for joy, and thought: 'Maybe after all it will all come right!' "But it did not. After a few days all was as of old. Similar scenes occurred again and again, but Harald's good resolves lasted only a few days, and we had to pay with bitter tears for every laughing remark of the gentlemen. I say we, for I loved the poor girl now as if she had been my own child. And now the poor child needed help and counsel more than ever. She was sorely concerned for the fate of the child she knew she bore--'What is to become of me,' she said, 'matters little. I would die to-day if I could; but I must live and will live for my child's sake. And I will not cry and complain any more; it does no good, and Harald says he hates nothing more than red eyes.'--I asked her if she had no parents, no relations, no friends, to whom she might go. She shook her head sadly: 'I have no one in this wide world; no one but you, good Mother Claus, and one other, who would do anything for me, if he knew where I was; but he does not know it, and never shall know it.'--She had never said anything about her former life: 'I have promised the baron to keep it secret till he is publicly married to me, and,' she added, sadly smiling, 'you see yourself that it will probably remain secret forever.'