'Yes—oh yes! Dearest Ernestine, you must have known from the first—from the very first hour I saw you, that I loved you.'
'I always thought,' she continued, in the same low and certainly agitated voice, 'that you preferred my society to that of Herminia or the Rhineberg girls.'
'Preferred your society—oh, Ernestine!'
'I did think that you were very fond of me—yes, very fond of me; but that you actually loved me, I could not conceive.'
So the lovely little gipsy pretended, and cast her eyelids down, while her soft bosom heaved so much with emotion that her diamond brooch sparkled like prisms. After a pause, the tender eyes were again uplifted to Charlie, and as if she rather liked the sound of the avowal, she said timidly,
'And so you love me—love me, Carl?'
How Charlie's heart now leaped to hear his Christian name uttered by her lips for the first time!
'Ernestine, my own darling!' (et cetera, and so forth).
They remained—as the sacristan who was patiently waiting for his fees said—quite long enough to have made an acute archaeological investigation of the whole place; but somehow their minds were otherwise occupied.
Singularly enough, they had forgotten all about the throne of Charlemagne, and actually descended—slower than they had ascended—the stairs of the Hoch Munster without having seen it.