'Your own sudden happiness, and the revulsion of feeling consequent to the great _dénouement_ of to-day, lead you to think so,' replied Ernestine, her smile brightening nevertheless, for she liked the idea. 'Nay, nay, his visit is to last some time; and time will prove that I am right,' persisted Herminia, twisting up her coils of golden brown hair. Ernestine sat for a time toying with a velvet slipper half on and half off her pretty foot, and then suddenly she said-- 'Oh, Herminia, how can such a man care for me?' 'Why not, cousin dear? who would not, or could not, fail to care for you?' 'But he seems so proud and cold, and so very English.' 'You quite mistake, and only wish to hear me contradict you. He is much less so than your special admirer, Baron Grünthal, the Director of the Upper Consistorial Court.' 'A hideous old frump!' said Ernestine, tossing her head. 'Old! He is only forty.' 'But that is more than twice my age. My husband must be young and handsome.' 'Like Carl Pierrepont?' 'Yes, like Carl Pierrepont.' 'He certainly seems to have impressed you,' said Herminia. 'You forget how often and how much Heinrich has written of him in his letters to me. He seems quite like an old friend. How strange it would be,' continued the girl, while a dreamy expression stole into her beautiful dark eyes, as she sat with her slender fingers interlaced over her knees, 'how very strange it would, if in him I should have met--met----' 'What, cousin? 'My fate.' 'Let him take heed, that, in meeting you, he has not met with his own,' said Herminia merrily. 'I have been longing to go to a wedding, and yours more than all, dear Herminia; for being aware of your betrothal, it was one to which I always looked forward. I shall be one of the bridesmaids, of course; and the two daughters of the Justiz-rath, and the two girls from Rheinberg, though their toilettes are odious, and Hermangilda's hair is always muffled up like a mop.' 'A golden mop, though; but, dearest cousin, how your tongue does run on! Does it never occur to you that no marriage can take place with this French war--oh, meine Gott!--before us?' And her eyes of violet blue suddenly filled with tears as she spoke, as vague images of death and battle rose before her. 'Forgive me, Herminia. Yet I was not jesting.' 'Forgive you, dear? Yes. I may as well do so,' replied the other girl, kissing her cousin on both cheeks; 'for to you and aunt I owe the love that Heinrich bears me--the love that I bear him.' 'And which Herr Mansfeld so nearly carried off!' 'And now, as we have our prayer's to say, good-night.' Herminia was right; the girl, indeed, a close observer, was seldom wrong in her deductions, for 'Herr Carl Pierrepont' was hopelessly smitten at last by Ernestine, who, like the lively blonde, her cousin, was rich in those charms, and mere than all, those pretty mannerisms, or tricks of women, that win and secure a man's love for ever.