'That I wish you every joy; but I must own, that when proposing to "have out" this Herr Mansfeld, your reply about shooting at yourself in a mirror puzzled me,' said Pierrepont, laughing heartily at the whole situation, and enchanted with the happy scene amid which he was introduced to two such beautiful girls as the famous Belles of Frankenburg.
But now the bell clanged for dinner. The Countess took his arm, the Count leading with his niece, Heinrich and his sister following, all laughter and smiles.
The only silent one there was the radiant Herminia, who had been, as her affianced said, 'so pleasantly tricked.'
CHAPTER IV.
CHARLIE IN LOVE.
That night, at the very time the three gentlemen were in the smoking-room busy with their china-bowled pipes, and with silver tankards of beer before them—Heinrich full of happy dreams about his fair-haired cousin and the trick they had played her; the old Count full of memories of Waterloo and the coming war, French insolence, the Vaterland, and all the rest of it; Charlie thinking how divinely Ernestine sang and played, how sweet her downcast lashes looked, how bright her upward glances, how lovely were the white hands that wandered over the ivory keys, and made the said keys look very dark and yellow by comparison, and while to him and Heinrich it seemed that life at Frankenburg would be almost insupportable without the two 'belles' thereof. While all this was being thought of in the smoking-room, we say, the two young ladies were comparing their notes in their mutual dressing-room before retiring for the night to their beds—those most uncomfortable couches which, in 'the Vaterland,' are mere wooden boxes with pillows half-way down, and so arranged that one can neither sit nor lie at full length therein.
That Charlie was handsome, agreeable, pleasant, and so forth, was voted and carried nem. con., and Ernestine was full of fun and pleasure at the success of her scheme—for with her it originated—for luring Herminia into love with her brother by having him introduced to her as a stranger.
'But oh, Herminia!' she exclaimed, 'to think of you getting the start of me!'
'In what way?' asked Herminia, putting the whitest of feet into the daintiest of slippers.
'In getting engaged first; it is most unkind!' continued Ernestine, laughing, as she let down the masses of her dark silky hair.