'Never! Or it may be that he will come _too late_. Yet, even then,' she added, with a strange bright smile, that terrified her weeping cousin, 'even then I may see him, for it is among the possibilities of this world that the dead may return again!' 'Strange weird words! What does she--what _can_ she mean?' thought Herminia. Some days after this she became almost speechless; yet she was quite conscious, and looked so lovely with the dishevelled masses of her dark hair floating over her laced pillow and delicate neck, as she smiled tenderly on her mother, Herminia, and all who hovered about her. Yet ever she whispered to herself, 'Carl! Carl!' On his last visit the doctor looked very grave as he departed. 'Can nothing be done to save her?' implored the Countess, in a tremulous voice. 'Nothing in my power, Grafine. Her disease is of the mind--the mind alone. Your daughter--I deplore to say it--is dying!' 'Of what, Herr Doctor? Of what? 'To me, it seems--of a broken heart!' 'Impossible!' replied the Countess; 'people do not die of broken hearts, and grief does not kill.' CHAPTER XXI. AT AIX ONCE MORE. So, like Heinrich, Charlie had fallen into the 'enemy's hands;' but fortunately for him, they were the soft and gentle ones of little Célandine de Caillé. The passage of the ball had seriously injured him internally; thus he was long in recovering, and the winter of the year was almost at hand ere he could venture to travel; but it now seemed imperative to Charlie that he should trespass on his host and hostess no longer. 'You would spoil any man with kindness, Mademoiselle de Caillé,' said he, one day; 'or any dog, too.' 'Often the most loving animal of the two,' replied the French girl, laughing. During that protracted convalescence how often, in the waking hours of the night, had he thought of Ernestine, and strove to sleep in the hope to dream of her; of their moonlight walks in the garden of the old Schloss, when she had held his arm, with her little hands interlaced so confidingly on his sleeve, and he used to pet and caress them as she leant with all her weight upon his wrist; or of the mad gallops they were wont to have through the glades and dingles of the lovely Reichswald, when the green woods seemed to sleep under the dusky purple of the summer sky; but one night he had a dream that startled, and, like that one in the bivouac, made a deep impression upon him by its vividness and the sense of pain it left. In imagination she bent over him sadly and caressingly; her dark eyes were tender and beautiful as of old; but the rose-leaf tint had left her cheeks, as if for ever. Her smile was full of sweetness. Then a change came suddenly over her; the soft light died out of her eyes; her cheeks became hollow, her lips pallid; her whole expression and aspect painful and ghastly; the grasp of her hands became cold and chilling, and her voice grew faint and husky, as she said,