"Why haven't we done this before, my boy?" And the look he gave Lilly seemed to add, "There has really been no necessity for so much caution." After this, Prell's invitations to supper became more frequent as the September days grew chillier, and the colonel's gout made his visits to the town rarer. Groaning and swearing he mounted his horse with difficulty, but he would not listen to Lilly's entreaties to him to give up the early morning ride. "I might ride round the place instead of you," she said, "if you weren't so ridiculously nervous about my having an accident." The colonel and Anna exchanged glances. "It certainly is a disgrace," he remarked, "that the girl hasn't learnt yet to sit on a horse. She ought to be taught. What do you say, Anna? Can we trust that scamp Prell to give her riding lessons?" Lilly's face beamed with delight. Fraeulein von Schwertfeger's lids were lowered meditatively. After a few moments' silence she raised them, and said very slowly and emphatically: "If the harum-scarum young man brought our pet home one day with a broken arm or leg, what should we do? I think the proposal, at any rate, needs to be further considered." Lilly forbore from expressing her longing, and did not contradict Anna, who, however, must have divined her thoughts, for when they were alone together she suddenly said, taking Lilly's face between her hands: "Dismiss the idea from your mind, darling. Take my word for it, it will be best." It was about this time that Lilly, who loved to explore the spacious and only partly inhabited old castle, made a remarkable discovery that excited her curiosity not a little. In one of the guest chambers on the third floor, which was hardly ever used, she was rummaging one day in the drawers of a bureau when she came across a transparent garment of silver net, fringed with spangles and fastened at the shoulder by curious barbaric clasps. It resembled the one in which, in the Dresden days, she had danced at bedtime, and which now lay at the bottom of her wardrobe enjoying undisturbed repose. She had never shown it to Fraeulein von Schwertfeger, being somewhat ashamed of it. But this duplicate she folded up and took downstairs to her friend, for she was anxious to learn its history. Fraeulein von Schwertfeger looked up from her account-books abstractedly till she saw the glitter of spangles in the sun, and then a shudder convulsed her whole frame, her eyes became distended, and she seemed as paralysed with horror as if she had seen a ghost. "What's the matter? What's the matter?" laughed Lilly. "I thought I had thrown away all the rubbish," she said, and gave herself a little shake. She snatched the flimsy thing out of Lilly's hands, rolled it in a sheet of paper, and took it to the kitchen. Lilly, who followed, saw a thin cloud of smoke rise from the hearth, carrying with it a whirl of charred tinsel rags. Old Grete stood by, glancing first at Anna and then at Lilly in perturbed surprise.