She would have given anything to learn riding, but there again Schwertfeger interference prevented her by discovering signs of motherhood, which invariably proved later to be a false alarm. She might not so much as cultivate her musical talent. The old tin-kettle of a piano, the rattling yellow keys of which looked like a set of teeth decayed from tobacco smoke--just as the colonel's were--was not to be replaced by a new one till they went to Danzig for the day in the autumn. So her life dragged on, half in bliss, half in regret. She felt like a pilgrim who against her will had strayed into paradise. She looked back on the time before her marriage as on a long, long vanished youth, and would have laughed at anyone who had pointed out to her that at barely nineteen most of her youth lay before her. It was well that opposite, in the bailiff's lodge, there was at least one person who could testify to her having been a girl once; otherwise she might have told herself that her girlhood was a dream, and she had been a full-fledged married woman and the colonel's wife before she was out of her cradle. All this time she had only met her merry comrade at dinner on Sunday, when, in his long frock-coat, with his reverential awed manner, he cut a rather comical figure. Neither of them by a single word or glance recalled the past. Often from her balcony, now completely secluded by its growth of rambling vines, she looked across to the gabled house and saw him gambolling with the red little fox of a puppy. Then it seemed to her that this blond-haired good-for-nothing, who flirted with all the pretty girls on the estate, so old Grete said, was the only creature with whom she had anything in common in this cold world. Grete told how he nearly rode the horses to death to get back from his secret outings before dawn; and then sometimes behind the closed shutters of his den---- Here old Grete could not proceed, and Lilly concluded that things too dreadful for words went on behind those closed shutters. CHAPTER XVII One hot August morning Lilly, with her arms full of dewy roses, herself besprinkled with dew from head to toe, entered the dining-room where Anna was making tea, looking lean and tall in her simple blue-grey linen gown. Her manner and greeting were the same as usual, yet Lilly divined instantly that something out of the ordinary had happened. She also noticed that Kaete, the maid who helped old Ferdinand with the waiting, had red eyes, and was biting her lips till they bled almost as she laid the table. Kaete was pretty and superior to the average servant-girl, also better educated, her father having been a schoolmaster. For this reason Fraeulein von Schwertfeger had chosen her from among the other maids to help Lilly with her toilette. When she had gone out of the room, Lilly began to ask questions. Anna von Schwertfeger kissed her with redoubled tenderness and affection.