After taking rooms at Bozen, the colonel came to Lilly and said: "Look here, my dear girl, this can't go on. I am tired of the unpleasantness to which I am subjected day after day. How far your appearance and behaviour or my age are accountable, I cannot say. We will not discuss the point. I have no charge of glaring misconduct and bad taste to bring against you. One does not expect the manners of a _grande dame_ from anyone who a few months ago was serving behind a counter. It requires time to instruct you in such, and I can with confidence hand over your further education to our excellent Fraeulein von Schwertfeger. So, if you please, we will change our plans and return to Germany by the midday train. On the evening of the day after to-morrow, perhaps earlier, we shall reach my estate." Lily was too crushed and miserable to make any objection. And the land of promise, the goal of her dreams, sank beneath the waves. CHAPTER XV They arrived at Lischnitz in the small hours of Sunday morning. The colonel had forbidden any ceremonious reception, so that there was nothing to be seen in the faint moonlight as they drove up but the dark mass of shadows cast by the castle and its outbuildings. A couple of maid-servants stood on the steps with lanterns in their hands, and a tall lady, with a too slight figure, a wasp-like waist and a flaming aureole of red-gold hair sprinkled with grey, threw two thin arms round Lilly's neck, and in a plaintive, discordant voice spoke motherly words of welcome, which instead of warming Lilly's heart filled it with shyness and dread. Worn out, Lilly sank on to a billowy white bed, on the gilded posts of which pale-blue satin bows were perched like strange and wonderful butterflies. On the wings of these butterflies Lilly was carried out of a restless sleep into the new day of a new life. A gold lamp, with opalescent glass and pale-blue silk shade, hung from the ceiling. The walls were wainscoted with white enamelled woodwork, and between were panels of brocade in the same shade of pale blue as the counterpane, hangings, and lamp-shade. Through the heavy curtains a ray of sunlight revealed all this on its way over the old-gold Persian carpet, patterned with pale-blue wreaths. Lilly, with an ecstatic exclamation, jumped out of bed and tripped about on the soft carpet, the pile rising like waves of velvet over her feet. Nothing was to be seen or heard of the colonel. He had told her long ago that they would have separate rooms, but his must be somewhere near, perhaps on the other side of that glossy white carved door.