"Why should I do mischief?" stammered Lilly, once more humiliated. "I have never done anyone any harm."
Fräulein von Schwertfeger smiled. "The one good thing about you is that you are ignorant of what you are," she said, and drew her by the arm out into the corridor and down the creaking old staircase to the dining-room.
There, with the colonel, drawn up in line, stood four dark manly figures ready to greet her. He of the pointed grey beard was introduced as "Herr Leichtweg, our head steward." He of the stout form and sunburnt coppery skin as "Herr Messner, our book-keeper"; and then another, and then--"Lieutenant von Prell, agricultural pupil," said the colonel.
A slight inclination of her head to him as to the others. She dared not let it be more.
"But, oh!" she thought, "my poor merry comrade, what have you done to yourself?"
A long frock-coat fell to his knees, his small pointed head was lost in the high collar. All was correct to a fold. His expression, gestures, bearing, everything about him was marked by obsequious formality and rigid propriety.
Lost in pitying amazement, she contemplated him. Had she not seen him that very morning so different!
"You should shake hands with them," the Schwertfeger voice prompted behind her.
She collected herself, and returned the pressure of the two honest countrymen's sun-tanned palms with more warmth, perhaps, than became a stately young chatelaine; but from Prell's freckled but still carefully kept hand she withdrew hers quickly.
"What a blessing! I needn't be afraid of his giving me away," she reflected.