'How can Ernestine be so heartless?' thought the girl; 'but, alas! she knows not what love is! To-morrow,' she exclaimed aloud—'to-morrow, I shall lose him, and perhaps for ever, my dear, dear Ludwig!'
Her handsome eyes were now welling over with hot, salt tears. She had her arms above her head, with her white slender fingers interlaced amid the coils of her beautiful brown hair; her eyes were cast mournfully upward; then she tore her fairy fingers asunder with a sob in her throat and let her hands drop by her side as she sank back in her chair.
'Would to Heaven that I had never known him—that we had never, never come to Cologne,' she exclaimed.
She felt that she must see Ludwig once again; but this dreadful cousin, how was he to be avoided?
These two ideas filled her whole soul as she sat, silent and motionless, looking out on the view that lay before the hotel windows: the broad waters of the famous Rhine, shining redly in the light of the setting sun, covered with sailing vessels and steamers shooting to and fro, its great pontoon bridge, through which the current surged, the wilderness of roofs that formed the city—that Rome of the north which Petrarch apostrophized to Colonna—stretching far away, with the great masses of the unfinished cathedral, the dome of St. Gereon, with its three galleries, and the stately tower of St. Cunibert rising high in the air and casting mighty shadows eastward. But Herminia surveyed them all as one who was in a dream, and kept repeating to herself, as she drew the rose from her breast and pressed it to her trembling lips with all a young girl's fervour:
'Yes—yes—I must see him once again, and then all will be over—over for ever!'
She glanced at her watch, took her hat and gloves from a console table close by, and hastily and noiselessly quitted the room. Descending the great staircase of the hotel, she issued into the beautiful garden attached to it, and proceeded at once to a certain fountain, near which a gentleman was lingering. He hurried towards her, and took both her tremulous little hands within his own. He gazed tenderly into her eyes, and then scanned the windows of the hotel. Alas! too many overlooked them, so the longed-for kiss was neither given nor taken; and neither knew that at this very time, they were both seen by the Countess and the laughing Ernestine.
Though in plain clothes, attired as a civilian, the soldier-like air of Ludwig Mansfeld would not conceal. He was dark-complexioned, especially for a German, with straight handsome features. He was closely shaven, all save a thick moustache, and he had tender brown eyes—tender, at least, when they looked into those of Herminia, who was now weeping freely.
'Tears?' said he, inquiringly.
'Yes, Ludwig, tears; I have much reason for them.'