So the lovely little gipsy pretended, and cast her eyelids down, while her soft bosom heaved so much with emotion that her diamond brooch sparkled like prisms. After a pause, the tender eyes were again uplifted to Charlie, and as if she rather liked the sound of the avowal, she said timidly, 'And so you love me--love me, Carl?' How Charlie's heart now leaped to hear his Christian name uttered by her lips for the first time! 'Ernestine, my own darling!' (et cetera, and so forth). They remained--as the sacristan who was patiently waiting for his fees said--quite long enough to have made an acute archaeological investigation of the whole place; but somehow their minds were otherwise occupied. Singularly enough, they had forgotten all about the throne of Charlemagne, and actually descended--slower than they had ascended--the stairs of the Hoch Munster without having seen it. They were both very silent on the drive homeward, but their young hearts were brimming over with joy, and deep blushes suffused the face of Ernestine, and her lips were trembling; and as if her mother's eye might read how they had been occupied in the Dom Kirche, she hurried upstairs to her own room, to seek in solitude the power of reflecting over all that had passed, and her new position, for within an hour she had passed a certain rubicon in life. Charlie, too, desired to be alone, and ascended into the recess of the ruined Schloss, where, among the owls and the ivy, he slowly lighted a cigar, and while his heart was full of love and happiness, and of gratitude to Ernestine for returning his passion, he began to consider what was to be done next. He first abandoned himself to a dream of joy. In imagination Ernestine was with him still; her hands so soft and small yet lingered in his; her lips were still before him, and the perfume of her dark hair came back to him, as he rehearsed, over and over again, all that episode in the Dom Kirche. The secret that had trembled so long on his tongue--the secret that cold prudence and dread of German pride withheld so long, had escaped him at last. His love had been avowed; that love was accepted and reciprocated. But now, alas! there came home to Charlie's heart those thoughts that had occurred to him before--thoughts that had not, as yet, entered the mind of Ernestine. The future--how and what was it to be? How cold and miserable was reflection--miserable, but for a time only. Was not the fact of mutual love and perfect trust existing between them enough to make all seem glorious, and the path of life most flowery? She loved him--that bright and beautiful girl! Beyond that love she might never be his; but with that love for him, she would never be the wife of another. Yet, as he before asked himself, was it just or generous that her young life should be wasted, and for him?