"Spare me, Richard, I beg of you," laughed the young host, half angrily.
"Isn't it true?" asked the judge. "Only think of your celebrated poem on the gypsy girl. I was there when you saw the brown maiden on the Römerberg, and in the evening it was already written down in your note-book that she wandered through the streets with winged feet, with straying hair, and shy black eyes in which a longing for the moorland lay and for the wind which through the reed-grass sweeps--and so on. Ha, ha! And she really came from the Jew's quarter and went begging from house to house for old rags."
They all three laughed, Gertrude the most heartily; then she became suddenly grave.
"You are a malicious fellow," declared Frank, rising to light a candle. "It is late, Richard, and we are early risers here."
As the friends bade each other good-night at the door of the guest-chamber, the judge said,
"Well, Frank, I congratulate you. You have won a prize--such a dear, sensible little woman!
"As for the other--my dear fellow, what did I tell you about that man? Well, good-night! That Uncle Henry is a good old soul, too,--now take yourself off."
Gertrude was standing by the open window in her room, looking out into the night. The lamplight from the next room shone in faintly. Dark clouds were gathering, far away over the mountains there were flashes of lightning and in the garden a chorus of nightingales was singing.
"Gertrude," said a voice behind her.
"Frank," she replied, leaning her head on his shoulder.