II.
It was only three days later that Grover received an invitation to dine at Professor Bornholm’s. He had spent the intervening period in meditation concerning Mrs. Bornholm’s curious behavior. That she had something on her mind was obvious, and he had no doubt that he would to-day discover what it was. He felt confident that she had been plotting against him and had some dramatic surprise in store for him. As he rang the door-bell he had need of all his sang froid to quiet his turbulent heart. He was admitted to the inner sanctuary and was greeted with studious cordiality by the three goddesses. They seemed all agitated and expectant, though they were striving to appear unconcerned. They lounged and chatted as people do in the introductory scene of a play, with hidden reference to some plot which has yet to be disclosed. To all appearances the plot had some connection with the door to the Professor’s study, which, contrary to custom, was closed. Minchen repeatedly threw furtive glances at it, and Röschen made her determination not to look at it equally conspicuous; only Gretchen was frankly curious and made no effort to disguise it. A strange sense of the unreality of the whole scene, himself included, crept over the young man; he felt like a man in a play who can murder or make love with equal irresponsibility. He was about to indulge in the latter diversion, when suddenly the mysterious door opened, and the Frau Professorin entered with much dramatic éclat, leading a lovely dark-eyed young girl by the hand. The eyes of the three goddesses grew as big as saucers, and Röschen pressed her hand to her heart and nearly fainted from excitement.
“Mr. Grover,” said the Frau Professorin, making a most elaborate bow, “allow me to present—Miss Jones.”
Under ordinary circumstances the introduction to Miss Jones would have been an agreeable incident in Mr. Grover’s career, and nothing further. He had met, he did not know how many hundred charming young ladies, several of whom had borne the name of Jones, and he had never been in the least disconcerted. In the present instance, however, he showed but imperfect control of his emotions. A guilty blush sprang to his cheeks, and he groped vainly in his embarrassment for the proper phrase wherewith to express his pleasure at making the lady’s acquaintance. Miss Jones, too, somehow, seemed ill at ease, and gazed at him with flaming cheeks and a puzzled, half-anxious look in her eyes. The Frau Professorin, who had probably expected a different denouement, looked disappointed, and the goddesses whispered to each other and tittered.
“You will excuse me for a few moments,” said the Frau Professorin; “the house needs my attention.”
Having learned all that she wished to know, she could afford to be generous. It was plain that the goddesses had displaced Miss Jones in her lover’s heart. Hence his annoyance and embarrassment. She could well appreciate his position and in her heart she began to relent toward him. Miss Jones had evidently, under the pretence of studying music, come to Leipsic, to look after her recreant adorer, whose silence had begun to alarm her. The goddesses, too, who had been initiated into the secret, arrived at similar conclusions, and proceeded to dislike the innocent Miss Jones with much vehemence. It was but with reluctance that they heeded their mother’s significant scowl and withdrew in her wake.
“Perhaps,” said Miss Jones, drawing a breath of relief as the last of the trains vanished in the doorway, “perhaps you would now have the kindness to tell me what this comedy means.”
Grover lifted his eyes and gazed at her; she was surpassingly lovely. A pair of frank, dark American eyes, half humorously challenging, put at once his embarrassment to flight, and made him feel a delicious nearness and kinship to their fair possessor.
“Miss Jones,” he said, answering promptly the humorous gleam in her eyes, “I shall have to make you a regular confession. I didn’t have the remotest idea of your existence.”
“Nor I of yours,” she responded quickly; “but what has that got to do with the comedy?”
“Everything. You know, I invented you.”
“You invented me?”
“Yes, in my dire need, in order to escape from matrimonial persecutions, I invented a fiancée in America named Miss Jones. But to be frank, I did not expect you to take me at my word, and turn up over here, in order to regulate my conduct.”
“Oh, I see it all,” cried Miss Jones, merrily. “You are in the position of a novelist whose heroine suddenly steps out of the book and takes him to task for his fictions.”
“But I hope you won’t prove a hard task-master,” he retorted, gayly. “In consideration of my generosity in making you beautiful and rich, you ought not to betray me.”
“Do you mean that I ought to remain your fiancée?” she asked, laughing. “I think that is to ask too much of my indulgence.”
“You are at liberty to break with me whenever you choose; but until further notice allow the family to suppose that they are right in their conjecture. You need simply say nothing about it. You know our engagement is secret, and we are not expected to show how fond we are of each other.”
“That is very fortunate. However,” she continued, lightly, as if pleased with the absurdity of the thought, “my fondness for you will probably never demand any very extravagant expression.”
“No, but mine may,” was his daring reply; “therefore, perhaps, as a measure of self-defence, you ought to break with me at once. Make a scene of some sort, revile me; do anything you choose, only so that the eavesdroppers, who are sure to misunderstand everything except vehemence, get a notion that we have been engaged, but are so no more.”
Miss Jones, who had seated herself in the sofa-corner, leaned her head in her hand and meditated.
“Do you know,” she said, raising the same pretty head abruptly, “your proposition is a very original one? I wonder if a girl was ever before requested to break with a man to whom she had never been engaged. However, Mr. Grover, I am not quite as accommodating as you think. On the whole it suits my purpose very well to be engaged. I have come here for study and have no desire to be courted by students or musicians, of whom there is said to be quite a colony here.”
It was now Grover’s turn to be amazed. He stared at the sweetly demure and sensible little face in bewilderment.
“Then you mean to—you mean to say——” he stammered.
“Yes, I mean to say,” she finished, suppressing the little mischievous gleam in her eye, “that I prefer not to break with you. We will remain engaged.”
The young man’s countenance fell. He began to look unhappy; perhaps Miss Jones was an unscrupulous adventuress who would turn the joke into earnest and sue him for breach of promise after they got home. To be sure, she looked as innocent as an angel, but it is a notorious fact that women are just the most dangerous in that guise. In escaping Scylla he had plunged headlong into Charybdis. He got up with a painful sense of indecision, walked toward the window, and concluded, after a moment’s thought, that he could not, as a man of honor, withdraw from a bargain which he had himself proposed. It would be wiser to abide by it, and to trust to his own ingenuity to extricate him at the proper moment.
“Miss Jones,” he said, rather ceremoniously, “I thank you for your kindness.”
“Not at all,” she retorted, carelessly; “it is an arrangement for mutual convenience. But remember,” she added, lifting her index finger in playful threat, “that we are extremely well-bred and undemonstrative.”