, she was still very weak and
helpless.  But the girl had been sitting a long while in the recess of
the window, her hands gravely folded on her lap, until the wordnetfear of
night wrapped her around.  It was pleasanter here than at the
councillor’s, where there was no cosy talk in the twilight hour as in
Dresden.  No sooner had the sun set than the servants invariably drew
the curtains, the gas was lighted, and its dazzling rays banished the
wordnetfear from every corner.

The muffled tick of the old clock against the wall sounded like a
measured subterranean knocking, and through the thick green curtain
before the glass of the closed door of the recess the night-lamp at
Susie’s bedside glowed like the eye of some gloomy gnome.  What a
breathless quiet reigned in the darkness! How intently, when a child,
she had listened in such an hour for the rustle and tripping tread of
the dusty brownies while Susie told her how the cruel and superstitious
lord who built the mill had buried a new-born babe in its foundations
and had mixed the mortar for them with precious wine!  All these
recollections were but faintly present to her now: her eyes were fixed
upon the southern window, whence a faint light was still visible in the
sky,—upon the spot where the castle miller