"The whole world!" said Ernestine; "you are a large proprietor!" I thought there was a tone of pique in her quiet remark--pique at my ungrateful wish to be gone. I gazed upon her, and her beauty seemed as perfect as female loveliness could be--as perfect as any that ever smiled on Raffaello da Urbino in the midst of his happiest reveries. "Ernestine," said the count, raising his eyebrows, "you know who is coming with Tilly?" "No," replied the daughter, over whose fair face there flitted a perceptible shadow, which belied her negative. "His aide-de-camp, the Count Albert Kœningheim--Halbert Cunninghame, a cadet of the house of Glencairn," he added to me, "who has been a successful soldier in the wars of the Empire." "Ah--indeed!" I murmured, walking to the window. "Receive him well, Ernestine," I heard the count saying in a low voice, as he smoothed the beautiful braids of her hair; "receive him as one who deserves your utmost esteem, and has my best regard." "Oh, father----" "My countryman--rich, young, handsome, powerful, high in favour with the Emperor, with Tilly and the army; covered with orders and honours, you will soon learn to love him, Ernestine--will you not?" "I will try." I thought I heard a sigh. "Thou art a good girl--I love thee dearly," said the frank noble, as he kissed his daughter's brow; "and I will send for that magnificent set of diamonds you fancied at Vienna. I gave my word to Kœningheim, when he saved my life at Lütter, that I would make him my kinsman if I could. Ah! for my sake he ran a deadly peril there, and gave me his own horse when mine was torn almost asunder beneath me, by a cannon-shot." Not a word of this had escaped me, and I felt something rising in my heart. "Pshaw!" said I; "what is Ernestine to me? I shall never see her again. Yet she has been so kind, that I hope this Scoto-German count will make a good husband to her." I think there is a sentiment--shall we call it pique or jealousy--in the minds of most young men, when they behold a beautiful young woman placed, or about to be placed, beyond their reach. "Yes--yes!" thought I; "it is just this jealousy that animates me at present." "You are admiring my mansion," said the count, approaching me. "It is magnificent," said I, turning from the beautiful garden to the equally beautiful apartment, through the painted windows of which a deluge of warm morning light was shed upon the floor of polished oak, and the gilded carving of the wainscoting. "I shall build a pretty summer-house at the end of that walk. I have received the whole place as a free gift from the Emperor." "My poor friend, the baron Karl, has not been consulted on this transfer," said I; "but by what right does Ferdinand II. gift away these lands in Luneburg?"