Then one or two young Counts, friends of Heinrich, were among the frequent visitors, and Charlie gnawed his moustache viciously, as he pictured to himself, perhaps meeting her years hence, as the wife of one of these, when he was getting grey, weary of waiting for the promotion that never came; or if it did, he would value so little then: for with her, the glory of life would depart.
Getting grey? But she would be a matron then in years; and does not Jean Jacques Rousseau tell us that a pair of grey-haired lovers were never known to sigh for each other? But Charlie thrust that thought aside; he preferred to live in the pleasant present than to picture the gloomy future. No romantic incident, no runaway horse, no death averted from accident, or other melodramatic episode to draw largely on the young lady's gratitude, as in novels, led to Charlie's avowal of his love.
It all came about suddenly, in the most unromantic way, a quick outpouring of passion, a rush, as it were, of the heart to the lips, through the influence of which he told her that he loved her, her only, and craved her love in return; and it all came to pass in this fashion.
One day—Charlie Pierrepont never forgot it—they had contrived to get away alone, to visit the great Dom Kirche at Aix, the shady aisles and vast depths of which, with all its sequestered chapels, were as well calculated to lure them into sweet and earnest converse as the leafy alleys of a forest.
They had visited the tomb of Charlemagne, where, as Ernestine, while leaning on Charlie's arm, and looking up in his face, from under one of the prettiest of hats, told him with bated breath, that when it was opened in the tenth century, the Emperor was not found in the usual fashion of the dead, reclining in his coffin, but seated on a throne as if alive, clothed in imperial robes, a sceptre in his hand, and the gospels on his knee. On his fleshless brow was a crown, and by his side his famous sword, Joyeuse.
'And now,' added his charming guide, 'I shall show you the throne on which he was seated; it stands in the Hoch Munster.'
Now the said Hoch Munster is a gallery running round the octagon, facing the choir, and to reach it a narrow stair had to be traversed. Charlie, who, strange to say, had drawn off his gloves, held out a hand to guide Ernestine, who, by another coincidence, had drawn off one of hers, and when Charlie's fingers closed on her soft and velvet-like little hand, the desire to press it naturally occurred to him, but a thrill, as if of electricity, went to his heart, when he felt—with the gentlest assurance in the world—the pressure returned!
The stair to the Hoch Munster was surely steeper than usual, they ascended it so slowly. Amid its obscurity, Charlie pressed to his lips twice the accorded hand, which was not withdrawn, and ere they gained the upper step that led to the gallery, the great secret of Charlie's heart had escaped him, and flushed and palpitating; Ernestine heard him with downcast eyes.
The vehemence with which the avowal was made, though his voice was low and earnest, and the tender expression with which he regarded her, when they did emerge into daylight, bewildered her a little, which, perhaps, was the reason that she permitted Charlie to take prisoner her other hand; but after a time she regained her composure, and, looking up at him with a most bewitching expression in her tender brown eyes and pouting lip, said, as if she had doubted her ears, in a whispered voice,
'You—you love me?'