'You know my views of all this matter, and I am certain they will be fully shared by the Count,' said the old lady, with intense hauteur. 'You also know the measures we expect you to take with as little delay as possible.' She made a brief and haughty half-contemptuous bow, and taking her daughter by the hand, and, without permitting her to give even one farewell glance, led her away. Charlie stood for a moment as if rooted to the spot. He then very quietly extinguished the moderator lamp, in a mechanical kind of way, and, taking his taper, ascended the great gaunt staircase to his room, where, with his heart torn by the contending emotions of love and sorrow, rage and mortification--for the insult to which he, an English gentleman, had been subjected by that intolerant and insufferable old German woman--he sat for a time without thinking of undressing. Were she not the mother of Ernestine, he would have scattered a few pretty hard adjectives with reference to her. He then suddenly began to pack his portmanteau. He had but one desire and craving--to get as far away from Frankenburg as possible, though it was the cage that held his love-bird! And as if his wish had been anticipated, just as twelve o'clock was struck by the sonorous timepiece in the echoing hall, a knock came to his door. 'It is Heinrich,' thought he; 'come in!' The visitor was not Heinrich, but the old family butler, who entered, bowing low, and looking very sleepy, cross, and very much surprised. 'The Herr Graf's compliments to the Herr Lieutenant. At what time would he require the carriage to take him to Aix?' (He called it Aachen.) 'Now!' 'Now--at this hour, mein Herr?' 'Now, I repeat--instantly--thanks; you may go.' The old butler, who had served as man and boy in the Frankenburg family from shortly after the days of Waterloo and Ligny, who had attended Marshal Blucher when on a visit, and had made the fortunes and honour of the denizens of the Schloss his own, as hereditary retainers of the Caleb Balderstone type occasionally do, even in this age of iron, opened his grey eyes very wide, alike at the fierce energy and the order of Charlie Pierrepont, but vanished at once to rouse the grooms and comply. So he was actually turned out of the house, however politely, at last; thrust out from _her home_ as if his presence there degraded it. He thought of the old arms of the Pierreponts carved about his father's gate--the lion rampant _sable_, between two wings, the mullets _semée_, and the motto '_Pie repone te_,' though he had never valued such things much; and his anger boiled up--nor did it cool down till he found himself on the eve of departure. Why did Heinrich not appear? for good or for evil? Had he also been informed, and, like his father, mounted a high horse? It seemed so. The carriage was duly announced, at last. As Charlie descended to it, the silver-haired butler appeared again with a salver, on which were a decanter and glass, saying: