sisters, was even at less pains to
disguise her designs upon him, but told him frankly that Minchen and
Roeschen were--well, not at all as nice as they might be.

In one of these bursts of frankness Gretchen also confided to him that
Roeschen had written to a lady friend in America--a former pupil at the
Conservatory who had boarded in the family--and had received from her
a complete biography of his humble self, besides a computation of his
income and economic prospects. It then required very little ingenuity,
on his part, to conjecture why the sisters, in spite of their somewhat
ostentatious amiability, frequently appeared to have been at
loggerheads just as he entered. He had often heard the word Phoenix
pass mysteriously between them, and much as his modesty rebelled, he
was forced to the conclusion that he was, himself, the brilliant bird
Phoenix, for the possession of which these fair enchantresses were
privately contending. He had never before had the audacity to regard
himself as a brilliant _parti_, and he had even had a grudge of long
standing against Fate for having equipped him so poorly. Measured by
the German standard, however, his modest patrimony suggested princely
opulence; and its possessor became conscious of a certain agreeable
expansion, peculiar to capitalists. Smile as he might at the smallness
of the social conditions which allowed him to play the _role_ of a
Croesus in the fancy of love-sick maids, he could not deny that he
found it a pleasant thing to be the object of such tender rivalry. It
seemed to add a cubit to his height and two to his self-esteem. He
revelled in the sense of his desirability and watched with amusement
the innocent manoeuvres by which his fair entertainers checkmated
each other, and in their zeal occasionally forgot that he, too, was a
rational being, endowed with the faculty of criticism. There was
another, however, who made this reflection for them; and that was
their mamma--the Frau Professorin. She was becoming alarmed at the
discord which prevailed in the family; for, being behind the scenes,
as it were, she knew a good deal which Grover could not know, and
which perhaps it would not have been well for him to know. Thus she
found one day in Minchen's room a drawing in which the American, in
the character of Paris, was holding above his head an apple, with the
inscription "$5,000 a year;" while three lovely goddesses in scanty
attire were stretching out their hands an