'The time will come anon—but here he is,' and he led in Adolphe, who approached Célandine, whose eyes were fixed on Charlie, pale, wan, and propping himself on a cane of M. de Caillé's.
At such a crisis, Adolphe Guerrand had vague ideas—from what he had read in novels and seen at the theatre of the Porte St. Martin, when he was a student in Paris, at the Ecole de Medicin—that he should drop on his knees, or at least on one knee; but the floor was very slippery, and Célandine not being much in love with him, and very much inclined to laugh, he didn't attempt a melodramatic posé at this betrothal, which Charlie saw as in a dream; for his thoughts were at Burtscheid, and the heart-stirring parting words of Ernestine were lingering in his ear.
CHAPTER XX.
ERNESTINE.
As the reader may suppose, some time elapsed ere the quiet little household at Frankfort realized—they could not for long recover from—the catastrophe recorded by the German papers; but when it was actually stated that a prisoner taken in a skirmish, a captain, was roasted alive, nothing seemed too horrible to happen now. That Heinrich might be wounded unto death, or slain outright in battle, seemed but a too probable contingency; but that he should be taken prisoner, and suffer an end of such enforced ignominy, was beyond the category of all their speculations.
The whole family were utterly prostrated by an event so inexplicable, and Ernestine felt the shock in her own peculiar way. She loved her only brother dearly, and all the more dearly that he was the friend and defender of her lover Carl—her betrothed husband, for as such she always viewed him. Now that her beloved Heinrich was gone, the links between her and Carl—the means of communication—were broken, and she could hear of him no more.
And, meanwhile, where was Carl? Alive or dead?
The Gazette, so grudging in words, so meagre in detail, had simply said that he was severely wounded. Where, and in what fashion, was he wounded? By steel or lead? Was he mutilated, disfigured for life? Perhaps he had since perished in his agony, or when undergoing some terrible operation!
So, for days and nights, the girl tormented herself till she became seriously ill with agonizing conjectures, over which she was compelled to brood in silence and tears.
At last, to the astonishment, to the wild joy of all, there came a letter from Heinrich himself—a letter dated ten days subsequent to the catastrophe recorded in the Extra Blatt!