To that city, surfeited with pleasure, a new sensation had come, and while Winn Hardy was aimlessly gathering news items, too disconsolate to read the amusement notes even, and caring not at all what happened in stage-land, it was slowly spreading. A little ripple at first, when the few who could appreciate the exquisite nature of Mona's simple music, heard her to go away charmed and come again, the while telling all whom they knew of it, until the "Alhambra" was packed each night and "Mlle. Mona in Scotch Melodies," as the sign that flanked either side of the stage read, was all the rage. Then the papers picked it up and the musical critics exhausted their vocabularies about her. They extolled her pose, expression, and inflection; they went into raptures over technique, time, and timbre; they lauded her classic profile, her arm, her throat, her eyes; while Mona, unmindful of all their clatter, forgot herself each night as she threw her very heart and soul into her playing.
And Fritz grew mad with love!
She practised still, hours each day on new and classic music; he insisted that she should, and when some soulless sonata, some delirious composition full of leaps and quivers and trills was learned, she executed it at night.
But it was the simple and sweet old songs of Bonnie Scotland that won applause.
And when, as happened almost nightly, some admirer gave a basket or bouquet of costly flowers to an usher to be passed up over the footlights to her, they were usually tied with tartan ribbon.
And the little German teacher had almost lost his reason.
Twice he had been on his knees before her, and with hand on heart and in broken English, disclosed his love for "Mein Fraulein Liebchen."
But Mona only shook her head.
He wept, he raved, he smote his breast, and would have kissed the shoes she wore, if she would have but stood still and allowed it.
There were others who sent her notes tucked in baskets of flowers, they begged for an interview, for just one word of reply. They covered pages with wild declarations of love, they sent her costly jewels tied to love missives, in the vain hope of an answer, and gathered at the stage door to see her pass in and out. But Jess, like an old watch dog, was always on guard. He went with her to the "Alhambra" each night and waited until she had "done her turn," and after she had changed her garb, helped her into a carriage and rode home with her.