"Am I to consider this as a rejection?" asked he, dejectedly.
"If you choose to call it so. At all events it is the answer to your offer put so respectfully and with such uncommon tenderness."
The doctor's face lengthened considerably. He had, most assuredly, not deemed it necessary to impose a bridle upon his well-known bluntness, and to make any circumlocution in his courtship. He knew very well that, in spite of his years and his gray hairs, he was "a good match," and that more than one lady of his acquaintance was ready to share his station in life and his property, and here where his offer was doubtless a great, hardly-dreamed-of, piece of good fortune for the portionless girl, he was unceremoniously discarded! He believed that he had not heard aright.
"You actually then reject my offer?" he asked.
"I regret to have to decline the honor destined for me."
There ensued a brief pause. Hagenbach looked alternately upon Leonie and upon the desk, or rather the portrait over it, but then his restrained vexation got the better of him.
"Why?" asked he brusquely.
"That is my affair."
"Excuse me, it is my affair, if I am discarded: I want, at least, to know wherefore."
At every question put, he took one step forward, and at last made such demonstrations against the portrait, that Leonie planted herself in front of it, as if for a shield.