'So he has been. As for Aunt Adelaide, she is a tyrant, and I do believe would keep me in pinafores, if she could!' said Herminia bitterly.
'Herminia, dearest,' said the young man, while gazing at her lovingly, earnestly, and very keenly, 'you have never seen this wondrous cousin, to whom your family wish to assign you like a bale of goods?'
'Oh, never even once, Ludwig; and to me he is an object of abhorrence!' she exclaimed passionately.
'Excuse me, my love,' said Ludwig sadly; 'but I have a strange foreboding—a presentiment which comes to me unbidden, and seems to say that when you do see him, your present abhorrence may pass away, and—and a tender emotion take its place. The propinquity and charms given to a cousin are perilous for a secret lover like me.'
Herminia now wept bitterly.
'Ludwig, I could quarrel with you for such a cruel suspicion,' she sobbed out, 'but that we are, I fear me, now speaking together for the—the—the last time,' and, heedless of who might see the action, in the abandonment of her great grief, her head sank on his shoulder, and she nestled her sweet face in his neck.
'Your tears, my own darling,' said he, 'are a rebuke, and more than a sufficient rebuke, for my suspicion; and bitter, indeed, would this parting-time have been to me, but for the knowledge—the sure conviction—that, even if a thousand cousins came, still we shall meet at Aix.'
Herminia shook her head mournfully, and said, 'I pray to Heaven that it may be so, and with the hope these words inspire, I must now, dear, dear Ludwig, say—farewell!'
And so they parted, with hearts that doubtless were aching sorely, for their future seemed dark and dubious. Yet he seemed more hopeful than her. He kissed her very tenderly, and, though his naturally brown cheek looked pale, she thought he smiled at their temporary separation—if temporary it was to be—more than she could account for.
But doubtless, lover-like, he had some bold plan in view.