In lieu of this dissipation, they had quiet walks in the woods or visits to old ruins in the neighbourhood; and Ernestine, who was German enough to have a strong love of the mystic, the ethereal, and the romantic, and a desire to dabble with the unseen world, told Charlie many a strange weird story; and though with all an Englishman's mistrust of such things, it was impossible not to be charmed by her earnestness, the modulation of her voice, the bright expression of the dilated hazel eye, and the occasional but perfectly innocent pressure of her pretty hand upon his arm, when she sought to impress him by some remarkable episode.
In the old ivied tower at Frankenburg she showed him the window of the room in which the third wife of Charlemagne, Fastrada, daughter of Count Raoul, died, while the Emperor was absent at Frankfort; and told how he caused her body, which was so fair and beautiful, to the end that it might never decay, to be enclosed in a coffin of the purest crystal, which he kept in that chamber, and he never quitted it by day or by night, neglecting his empire and government, and forgetting all the concerns of war or peace, till Turpin the Wise resolved to cure him.
Watching his opportunity, while the Emperor slept, he opened the coffin, and took the golden wedding-ring from the finger of Fastrada, and cast it into the lake below the castle, and thus broke Charles' spell of sorrow. From that day the great lake into which the magic ring was cast, and which quite surrounded the Schloss, began to shrink, and nothing of it remained but the tiny horse-pond already mentioned.
And while she was telling this legend, a little grey owl sat in the window of the ruin, winking and blinking in the sunshine, as if he was weary of having heard the story so often.
The ruin, too, was haunted by the spectre of a former Count of Frankenburg, who, resolving to get rid of his Countess, to the end that he might marry again, invited her to share a dish of love-apples with him. These he divided with a silver-knife poisoned on one side; but by some mistake, he ate all the poisoned halves himself, and so fell dead at the table; and there in the upper story of the tower, his cries of pain and despair were sometimes heard on the wind in the stormy nights of winter.
So, amid this sweet intercourse—like one gathering beautiful flowers on the brink of a giddy precipice—did Charlie Pierrepont drift into a deep and hopeless passion.
He never spoke of it, but surely his eyes must have told, and his manner too, that he loved her. Oh yes, how he loved her, this earnest and warm-hearted young Englishman, yet was silent. He dared not seek to lead her into a promise to wait till the sun of Fortune shone on him, to waste her young and happy life till slow promotion came: and even were he a colonel, the Count might—nay, would—look for wealth or rank, or both; and while he—Charlie—was thus waiting, could he ask a girl so lovely to trust to the doctrine of chances, for a lucky spoke in the wheel of the blind goddess, and to grow fade and withered with the sickness of hope deferred?
Yet the sweet face, the dark shining hair, the tender, bright eyes, the pretty winning ways—oh, those pretty winning ways, that twine so round the heart of a man!—haunted him in the waking hours of the night, and in his tormenting, yet delicious, dreams by day.