Sometimes it struck Lilly rather forcibly that she herself was now not much better than the poor girl who had been sent away from the castle in disgrace. CHAPTER XXII Fraeulein von Schwertfeger had said "Good-night" and gone out of Lilly's room about half an hour before midnight one November evening. The colonel had driven off to the town, and close to Lilly's pillow sat the hero, wet and frozen, for he had been waiting a long time in the drizzling rain below before the signal--a double click of the shutter bolt--had been given to summon him to her side. Now, however, all was going smoothly. The house slept, the watchmen had gone by, and the ladder, which he for greater safety dragged after him on to the balcony, reposed peacefully in its corner. The blue-shaded lamp bathed the warm, perfumed atmosphere of the room with a midsummer brilliance. Showers of drops dripped softly from the bars of the shutters, and the November wind whimpered in the chimney like a beggar. Lilly lay comfortably stretched beneath the pale blue satin quilt. She held his hand and gazed dreamily up into his face, which even in moments of self-abandonment never quite lost its expression of schoolboy sheepishness. She gazed at the freckled bridge of his nose, the blinking pale-lashed eyes, and the sharply pointed unshaven chin, half hidden in the turned-up collar of his green Norfolk jacket. He dared not brush himself up for her any more, or it would have excited remark from his colleagues. They did not talk much. It was enough that he was there, he who belonged to her in life and death, with whom she had been cast adrift in this cold, strange world. She drew his head down to hers and stroked the forehead, on which his easy-going career had left no lines. A few raindrops still hung on his temples. The clock ticking on the wall drew breath for a gentle chiming of the hour, the hanging lamp swung a little, casting long wavering shadows on the ceiling, like rocking cradles, or the flapping of ravens' wings. Then there came from the courtyard the sound of the dull rumble of wheels. Whether the sound was advancing or receding was not easy to decide.