"Hansen?--the Doctor?"--
"If he be not the man, and my story be not true, I give you leave to call me rogue. Just now I was in the little lumber room off the Meister's, where he keeps his samples of colors, and I was looking out some that we shall want to-morrow--for he blew me up about them yesterday--when I heard Mamsell Helene come into his room, and they had a long confabulation. I could not hear it all, but the upshot of it was, that she means to take him. Of course she made a fuss about it--but when he said: 'He is to dine with us to-day, and you can give him your answer,' she was mum as a mouse. If she did not mean it to be favorable, I much mistake her if she would not have declined the pleasure of eating her dinner with him first. She is not so fond of speaking up, and saying no to a fellow, as I know by my own experience."
"Surely you must have heard wrong, Peter;" and the young fellow fell into a fit of musing; "it can't be possible."
"Can't be possible!--but what's the use of talking of men's business to a baby. I only repeated the thing that I might not choke upon it. For a girl like that, to go and marry a rusty fusty lawyer--a scribbler of deeds and parchments! He has not a conception of what she is worth, except in thalers! Ha!--would not she be a delicate morsel for an artist, who looks farther than a trifle of white and red and those mincing ways that attract the crowd. What does a lawyer know about the lines of her face?--and that she has a figure fit to drive a fellow crazy? She does not show it off, to be sure--she wraps to the chin, as if she were a mummy,--more's the pity!--a stone might weep to see her! But for a man who has eyes in his head, one little finger is enough to construe the whole figure by, and you might search the world over, before you could find--"
"Silence!" interrupted Walter passionately--"I will not hear another word." He had sprung to his feet, with a flaming face. "Get out! I say, and never let me hear that you have spoken your foul thoughts to any other living soul--or else--"
And he struck his clenched fist upon the table, with a violence that made the very walls shake.
"Milksop! baby face!" and Peter gnashed his teeth, while he retreated from his immediate neighbourhood; "It shall go to its mother--it shall--and have its pap--and sit on its own mammy's lap, and have a smart new dress for her wedding-day. Ha! such a fellow as that is not worthy of a man's confidence. I did feel sorry to see you in a cunning woman's leading strings; and I pitied you--but now go to!--I despise you as much as I pitied you before. We two have had our last words together."
And with his most vicious look, Peter sauntered away, whistling.
Walter remained standing on the selfsame spot for half an hour, at least, without moving. His brain was reeling--he fetched his breath heavily, and shut his eyes, as though he felt ashamed to see himself by the light of day, while such thoughts were seething in his imagination. At last he heard Helen's step upon the stairs; he felt as if he had been scalded, and impelled by some inexplicable instinct, he seized his cap, and fled; through the garden, out into the open country.
She heard him go, but she had no suspicion that it was from her he fled; she went to the window and looked after him as long as she could catch a glimpse of his long light hair among the leafless shrubberies.