"Forty-eight hours of torment!" he cried. "I shall not leave you again until you are securely mine."
He proceeded to drop vague, adroit hints of the perils that beset a fascinating actor's life, of the women that had come and gone in his life. And Lena, all a-tremble with jealous anxiety, was in the parlor of a Lutheran parsonage, with the minister reading out of the black book, before she was quite aware that she and her cyclonic adorer were not still promenading near the green-house in the park. "Now," said Feuerstein briskly, as they were once more in the open air, "we'll go to your father."
"Goodness gracious, no," protested Lena. "You don't know him—he'll be crazy—just crazy! We must wait till he finds out about you—then he'll be very proud. He wanted a son-in-law of high social standing—a gentleman."
"We will go home, I tell you," replied Feuerstein firmly—his tone was now the tone of the master. All the sentiment was out of it and all the hardness in it.
Lena felt the change without understanding it. "I bet you, pa'll make you wish you'd taken my advice," she said sullenly.
But Feuerstein led her home. They went up stairs where Mrs. Ganser was seated, looking stupidly at a new bonnet as she turned it slowly round on one of her cushion-like hands. Feuerstein went to her and kissed her on the hang of her cheek. "Mother!" he said in a deep, moving voice.
Mrs. Ganser blinked and looked helplessly at Lena.
"I'm married, ma," explained Lena.
"It's Mr. Feuerstein." And she gave her silly laugh.
Mrs. Ganser grew slowly pale. "Your father," she at last succeeded in articulating. "Ach!" She lifted her arm, thick as a piano leg, and resumed the study of her new bonnet.