'Gute nacht—leben sie wohl, mein Herr.'
And Charlie, as he thought, turned his back on Frankenburg for ever.
Ernestine was as much, if not more, than any only daughter could be to Count Ulrich. He was selfish enough to have looked with stern, black, and utter discouragement on any swain who had no high rank; then how much more with anger on a penniless soldier of Fortune—a sub. of the Thuringians, like Charlie Pierrepont.
'All is at an end between the Frankenburgs and me,' thought the latter, as the carriage bowled on in the dark; 'but the war once over, if I escape it, I shall carry her off at all hazards—by Heaven, I shall.'
As a soldier accustomed to change of quarters, billets, camps, and barracks, Charlie could make himself at home anywhere; but nowhere (save his father's house) had he found himself so much at home as in that old German castle: a shrine he deemed it—a shrine of which Ernestine was the idol; and now he was exiled from it.
CHAPTER VIII.
CHARLIE'S VISITOR.
The carriage deposited Charlie Pierrepont at an hotel in Aix-la-Chapelle, where he meant to remain for a little to make some attempt to see Ernestine once more—to arrange, if possible, about their future correspondence, and then to rejoin the Thuringians.
The dawn stole in over the city, and the Rhine began to glitter in light—the dawn of that day on which the Baron Grünthal was to return to Frankenburg, and 'the final arrangements' were to be made. What would they be?
Five o'clock tolled from the great bell of the Dom Kirche. But five hours since she had been in his arms, with her head resting on his breast; how long it seemed ago; what storm of alarm, bitterness, and mortification had agitated his heart since then! The bell of the Dom Kirche brought instantly back to memory that day in the stair of the Hoch Munster, when the returned pressure of her little hand, though ever so lightly, nearly put him beside himself with joy, and lured him to divulge the great secret of his heart.