Suddenly there was a sound of wheels and horses' hoofs without, then of several feet ringing on the hard and frozen churchyard path. Ernestine started, and exclaimed in a voice husky, as it seemed, with alarm-- 'They are coming--my father and that dreadful Baron! I must leave you, beloved Carl--but only for a time; we shall meet again where even they can separate us no more!' She turned, and flying like a phantom, hurried through the little door by which she had entered the church; and Charlie Pierrepont, feeling certain that their interview had been discovered--that they had come in pursuit of her in ire and indignation, and that there would be a scene which he was most anxious to avoid--looked hastily round the little church for a place of concealment. There was none; so he resolved to make the best of it, and turned to the doorway just as the portly old Count of Frankenburg, the Baron Grünthal, limping as usual with gout, and Heinrich entered the church together. CONCLUSION. They were all in evening costume--that sombre attire in which the modern gentleman may attend a funeral by day, and a ball by night, without change; and they all looked pale, harassed, and grave. 'Oh, Herr Graf von Frankenburg, if you have a human heart----' Charlie was beginning, anxious to propitiate the father of her he loved so dearly, when the Count, waving his hand, interrupted him, and said: 'Herr Lieutenant, I can well afford to forgive the past now, and your rash love for my daughter.' 'Herr Graf, I thank you--I thank you!' exclaimed Charlie, with warmth and gratitude; for he expected high words, anger, and fierce reproaches. 'Carl, my dear friend,' said Heinrich, taking his hand kindly in both of his, while his eyes filled with genuine emotion, 'you here!--you here after all!' 'You got my letter and gave it to her--to Ernestine?' 'To her--yes; but alas! Carl, it came too late.' 'Too late!--too late! How?' 'Do you not know? have you not heard? Poor Carl! poor Carl!' said Heinrich, in a voice full of sympathy. 'What do you mean?' asked Charlie, in great perplexity. 'He means, Mein Herr,' said the Count, in a broken voice, 'that our beloved Ernestine died at noon yesterday.' Charlie passed a hand across his brow, and looked wildly in their faces, as if doubting their sanity or his own. 'Died!' he repeated mechanically. 'It is incomprehensible your being here,' said the Count, in a still more broken voice, and few could have seen that old man weeping unmoved, 'as her last words were, "Meet me at Burtscheid--at Burtscheid, dearest Carl."' 'And I _have_ met her, seen her, spoken with her not two minutes since.' 'My poor friend,' said Heinrich, 'grief, or your wound, has turned your brain.' 'What madness is this?' asked Charlie, with a kind of bitter laugh in his voice, as he felt in no humour for jesting. 'Herr Graf, Herr Baron, Heinrich, my friend, Ernestine has been here with me, in this lonely church, for fully two hours!'