They were both very silent on the drive homeward, but their young hearts were brimming over with joy, and deep blushes suffused the face of Ernestine, and her lips were trembling; and as if her mother's eye might read how they had been occupied in the Dom Kirche, she hurried upstairs to her own room, to seek in solitude the power of reflecting over all that had passed, and her new position, for within an hour she had passed a certain rubicon in life.
Charlie, too, desired to be alone, and ascended into the recess of the ruined Schloss, where, among the owls and the ivy, he slowly lighted a cigar, and while his heart was full of love and happiness, and of gratitude to Ernestine for returning his passion, he began to consider what was to be done next.
He first abandoned himself to a dream of joy. In imagination Ernestine was with him still; her hands so soft and small yet lingered in his; her lips were still before him, and the perfume of her dark hair came back to him, as he rehearsed, over and over again, all that episode in the Dom Kirche.
The secret that had trembled so long on his tongue—the secret that cold prudence and dread of German pride withheld so long, had escaped him at last. His love had been avowed; that love was accepted and reciprocated.
But now, alas! there came home to Charlie's heart those thoughts that had occurred to him before—thoughts that had not, as yet, entered the mind of Ernestine. The future—how and what was it to be? How cold and miserable was reflection—miserable, but for a time only. Was not the fact of mutual love and perfect trust existing between them enough to make all seem glorious, and the path of life most flowery?
She loved him—that bright and beautiful girl! Beyond that love she might never be his; but with that love for him, she would never be the wife of another. Yet, as he before asked himself, was it just or generous that her young life should be wasted, and for him?
If he suggested an elopement, in what light would such an episode place him with his friend Heinrich, with her whole family, with his regiment, and society, even, which was very, very doubtful, if she would accede to such a measure.
So long as he had not spoken of love to Ernestine, but lingered on the pleasant borderland that adjoins the realms of Cupid, Charlie felt that he was guilty of no breach of faith with her family, and no violation of the hearty hospitality extended to him. But now his position seemed entirely altered. Their love was a fact; he had won her heart without the consent of her parents, and that consent, in his subaltern rank in social and military life, he knew but too well would never be accorded to him.
'Well, well,' thought he, with something of grim joy, 'the war is before me, and who can foresee what honours I may win in defending Germany, or on the soil of France!'
When the party in the Schloss met at dinner that evening, there was a conscious expression in the faces of Charlie and Ernestine that they alone could read, and to which their hearts had alone the key; and to both there was something novel, joyous, and inexpressibly sweet in this secret understanding between them. Each felt a delicious interest and right of proprietary in the other.