er!'

'Poor little gnomes!' said she.

The homeliness of our resting-place arrested her for an instant, and
perhaps a touch of comic pity for things of such diminutive size as to
see nothing but knees where a man stood. Our heads were hidden.

'Adieu! no pledge is needed,' she said tenderly.

'None!' I replied.

She returned to the upper world with a burning blush.

Schwartz had borne himself with extraordinary discretion by forbearing
to spread alarm at the palace. He saluted his young mistress in the
regulation manner while receiving her beneath a vast umbrella, the
holiday peasant's invariable companion in these parts. A forester was in
attendance carrying shawls, clogs, and matting. The boat was turned and
launched.

'Adieu, Harry Richmond. Will you be quite patient till you hear
from me?' said Ottilia, and added, 'It is my question!' delightfully
recalling old times.

I was soon gazing at the track of the boat in rough water.

Shouts were being raised somewhere about the forest, and were replied to
by hearty bellow of the rower's lungs. She was now at liberty to join
my name to her own or not, as she willed. I had to wait. But how much
richer was I than all the world! The future owed me nothing. I would
have registered a vow to ask nothing of it. Among the many determined
purposes framing which I walked home, was one to obtain a grant of that
bit of land where we had sat together, and build a temple on it. The
fear that it might be trodden by feet of men before I had enclosed it
beset me with anguish. The most absolute pain I suffered sprang from
a bewildering incapacity to conjure up a vision of Ottilia free of
the glittering accessories of her high birth; and that was the pain of
shame; but it came only at intervals, when pride stood too loftily and
the shadow of possible mischance threatened it with the axe.

She did not condemn me to long waiting. Her favourite Aennchen brought
me her first letter. The girl's face beamed, and had a look as if she
commended me for a worthy deed.

'An answer, Aennchen?' I asked her.

'Yes, yes!' said she anxiously; 'but it will take more time than I can
spare.' She appointed a meeting near the palace garden-gates at night.

I chose a roof of limes to read under.

'Noblest and best beloved!' the princess addressed me in her own tongue,
doubting, I perceived, as her training had taught her, that my English
eyes would tolerate apostrophes of open-hearted affection.