Fräulein von Schwertfeger measured her with a glance of pitying scorn.
"I knew everything, child, from the very beginning. The first moment you met him here I saw what was coming. I could reckon it all up as I do the cost of dinner. I just let things go as they were bound to go. I could do it without lowering myself in my own self-esteem. Besides, what end would have been served by interfering? You were simply bent on rushing headlong to your ruin."
"What have I ever done," faltered Lilly, "that you should hate me so? I have never tried to upset your position in the house. I submitted to you from the first moment I arrived. I put myself entirely in your hands and now you treat me like this!"
"My dear, if I had hated you," replied Fräulein von Schwertfeger, "you would not be here now. You would probably at this very minute be wandering on the high-road. A dozen times or more I might have crushed you like dust in the palm of my hand, and I haven't done it. But I'll be honest.... Yes, I did hate you--that is to say, before I knew you. I pictured you a little pert, designing minx, who had drawn the colonel on, out of mercenary motives, to resort to that extreme measure which is the last resource of old libertines when they are thwarted. But when you came and I saw what you were, a dear, ingenuous child, without suspicion of evil, full of good intentions towards him and myself, I had to pocket my hate. Then you became to me nothing more than a harmless little pet dog that one uses so long as it is any pleasure to one and then kicks aside. I have done with you, my dear child, long ago. You're not in it. I and the colonel alone are playing the game. I have to reckon with him now, and then my work is over."
Lilly's soul was full of a dull sickening wonder. She felt as if doors were being thrown open and blinds drawn up, and she was looking straight into human hearts as into a fiery abyss.
"I thought that you and he were so much to each other," she said. "I thought----" Then suddenly it occurred to her that her first idea had been the right one. This imperious and hardened old maid, of whose beauty there were still traces, had ten or fifteen years ago been admired by her employer, after a time neglected, and now wished to be revenged.
Fräulein von Schwertfeger guessed her thoughts and speedily dispelled the delusion.
"If that had been it," she said, "I should have known how to keep silent, and have regarded the castle as my sanctuary had I been allowed to remain in it. No, no, my child; things are not always so simple in this world, and there are worse hells than you dream of."
Then Lilly heard a story which filled her with horror and pity, the story of which she was the last chapter.
The colonel, always a man of tyrannical will, with a mad infatuation for young girls, had, under the pretext that when he was at home on leave he liked to have youth and gaiety about him, advertised for pupils to learn housekeeping. He selected the successful applicants himself, having known beforehand whom they were to be. For a long time Fräulein von Schwertfeger suspected nothing, till the servants began to talk. They came to her with stories of secret orgies at the top of the house, of wild races up and down stairs after frightened girls clothed in silver spangles--transparent garments of silver being apparently an old weakness of the colonel's. Her eyes were fully opened to these disgraceful goings-on when one of the girls attempted suicide, and she left the house. But she was poor and used to ruling. She could not keep subordinate posts, and sank into poverty and wretchedness. The colonel did not lose sight of her, and when he thought she had suffered sufficient punishment for her independent line of action, he asked her to return once more to the castle as his lady-housekeeper. He promised her that there would be nothing more to complain of, so she crept back to his house like a starved dog. He soon broke his word, however; the orgies were resumed, but she hadn't any longer the courage to protest. She learnt to be blind and deaf when amorous glances were exchanged at table, and late at night shrill cries and laughter reached her bedroom. She even went so far as to keep the scandal from the curious servants, and thus to screen the house's reputation, while she offered his girl friends a motherly interest and affection.