'Now!'
'Now—at this hour, mein Herr?'
'Now, I repeat—instantly—thanks; you may go.'
The old butler, who had served as man and boy in the Frankenburg family from shortly after the days of Waterloo and Ligny, who had attended Marshal Blucher when on a visit, and had made the fortunes and honour of the denizens of the Schloss his own, as hereditary retainers of the Caleb Balderstone type occasionally do, even in this age of iron, opened his grey eyes very wide, alike at the fierce energy and the order of Charlie Pierrepont, but vanished at once to rouse the grooms and comply.
So he was actually turned out of the house, however politely, at last; thrust out from her home as if his presence there degraded it. He thought of the old arms of the Pierreponts carved about his father's gate—the lion rampant sable, between two wings, the mullets semée, and the motto 'Pie repone te,' though he had never valued such things much; and his anger boiled up—nor did it cool down till he found himself on the eve of departure.
Why did Heinrich not appear? for good or for evil? Had he also been informed, and, like his father, mounted a high horse? It seemed so. The carriage was duly announced, at last.
As Charlie descended to it, the silver-haired butler appeared again with a salver, on which were a decanter and glass, saying:
'The Herr Graf requests that mein Herr will take a little glass of cognac, before leaving the Schloss; the night is cold.'
To have declined to accept this last act of old German hospitality would have been churlish, and the cause of comment among the domestics; so Charlie, with the name of her he loved on his lips, drained a petit verre, and sprang into the carriage.
'Aachen,' said the butler to the driver, as he closed the door, and bowing, said—