"If you lay such great stress upon it," said she, suppressing her tears, "be it so, then. Yes, Engelbert was my betrothed, whom I shall eternally bewail. He stayed in the family as tutor where I was governess, our spirits were congenial and we plighted our troth."
"That must have been very touching," growled Hagenbach, fortunately so softly that Leonie did not hear him; she continued with quavering voice:
"Engelbert then went as traveling-companion to Egypt; there it came over him like a revelation, and he determined to devote the rest of his life to the conversion of the poor heathen. He magnanimously gave me back my word, which I would not accept, however, but declared myself ready to share with him his hard, self-sacrificing vocation. It was not to be! He wrote me once more before his departure for the interior of Africa, and then"--her voice broke into sobs--"then I heard nothing more of him."
Hagenbach did not at all share in this grief; he rather felt an extraordinary satisfaction over it, viz., that the aforesaid betrothed lover and converter of the heathen was really dead and out of the way; but the narration mitigated his displeasure. It took away every insulting feature of the rejection. He fell into a reconcilable mood, that extended even to his rival.
"Peace to his ashes!" said he. "But one day you will cease to bewail him, and not spend all your days grieving over him. That may have been the fashion in Werther's time, but at the end of the nineteenth century the betrothed sheds the usual tears over the departed lover, and then takes another one--if such an one, perchance, there be. In our case, he is here and repeats his offer. So, then, Leonie, will you have me? Yes or no?"
"No!" said Leonie, drawing herself up indignantly. "If I did not know what I possessed in the tender, devoted love of my Engelbert, your courtship would show me. Perhaps you would not have approached any other lady in such an--unceremonious fashion, but the lonely, faded girl, the poor, dependent teacher, must esteem it great good luck if a 'good support' is offered her. To what end use formalities? But I have too high a regard for matrimony to consider it only from this point of view. I would rather remain as I am, poor and dependent, than be the wife of a man, who, not even as a lover, thinks it worth his while to treat me with proper respect.--And now, Doctor, we may consider our interview as closed." She made him a bow and left the room.
Hagenbach stood there, confounded, watching her disappearing figure.
"That is what you call being lectured," said he. "And I have quietly submitted to it. As for the rest, she did not look bad in her excitement, with her crimsoned cheeks and flashing eyes. Humph! I didn't know how pretty she is.--Yes, these cursed bachelor-ways! One is utterly ruined by them."