"Who's there, in the devil's name?" he called again.
There she stood, ashen-hued, red about the mouth, her lids quivering.
"The colonel has just driven off to Baron von Platow. He will return in three hours. He charged me to tell you, Lilly, that when he comes back he doesn't want to find you on his premises."
"And what did he charge you to tell me?" sneered Walter von Prell.
Miss von Schwertfeger, without regarding him, took Lilly's hand.
"Come. You haven't much time. We must pack."
"But--but where am I to go?" she asked, helplessly, suffering herself to be drawn to her feet.
When she got to the door of the lodge, she saw the carriage that was to convey her from the castle already rolling up the driveway.
In the divorce proceedings there had been no attempt at dissimulation or concealment, and the case moved along rapidly. Lilly alone was found guilty, and, upon the colonel's deposition, was deprived of the right to use her married name.
"There is nothing to be saved from the ruins," wrote Mr. Pieper, "except the jewels which I hope you diligently accumulated by following my advice and standing in front of fine shop-windows. The pearl necklace your ex-husband put about your neck on your wedding day--owing in part, I may now say, to my suggestion--which I will try to get back for you, is in itself sufficient to keep your head above water several years."
The result of this letter was that Lilly took the pearl necklace, which after her flight she had found in one of her trunks among the laces and evening gowns, carried it to a jeweller, had him pack it up, and addressed it to Miss von Schwertfeger.
She felt justified in considering the less valuable trinkets to be her personal property. She had already disposed of a considerable number of them, and what was left would scarcely suffice for more than half a year. Then poverty.
But her material condition gave her little concern.
Her regret for what she had lost was too profound, her consciousness of the shame she had undergone too lively, but that her future should not have been hidden from her perceptions behind a veil of tears.
Yes, tears, tears--oh, she learned to shed tears.
She learned to swallow tears like salt sea water; she sucked them into her mouth with her lower lip thrust out, she shook them from her cheeks like drops of rain. And they kept welling up again, finally without cause, even after the pain had subsided--awake or asleep, they just came.