It was likely enough that he was afraid of raising the old lady's ire by giving his mistress the run of his office, so she had to content herself by taking interest from a distance in the welfare of the little kingdom.
On the evenings that she was left alone, she was in the habit of making ten-o'clock pilgrimages to the Alte Jakobstrasse on her own account.
She would take up a position on the opposite side of the street and gaze reverentially across at the old grey house, with its wonderful modern embellishments. She admired the imitation marble pillars, which now gave an air of splendour, in the style of the Renaissance, to the entrance. She stared up at the floor where his mother made her home, and withdrew timorously into the darkness of a doorway when a woman's threatening shadow was cast on the drawn curtains. When it grew late and people ceased to come in and out of the house, she would boldly cross the street, slip up the steps to the front-door, and with her face pressed against the iron gate peep at the interior of the staircase landing, whence came the sheen of laurels, the milky radiance of the Clytie bust, and the dark, rich chequered glow of the stained-glass windows, an impressive combination that recalled the dim religious light of a chapel.
Those front-door steps grew to be a sort of sacred pilgrims' way, along which penitents crawled on their hands and knees; the stained-glass became a heavenly glory; the Clytie a benedictory saint.
Towards autumn Richard was called out to serve at the manœuvres. His letters were curt and few, and their tone could not disguise his bad temper. The last was dated from the hospital, as he was on the sick list, owing to a fracture of the knee-joint caused by a fall from his horse. It would prevent his riding again for a long time, perhaps for ever.
When he came back in October he was still compelled to wear a knee-cap, and sent in his resignation. The accident really proved a piece of good fortune, for rumours of his relations with the divorced wife of the commander of the regiment had got afloat, and in consequence he was being cut by his fellow-officers. His superiors were only waiting for confirmatory evidence to call him before a court-martial, a proceeding which would certainly have deprived him of his commission in the Reserves. He thus escaped by the skin of his teeth public disgrace, and his surly reproachful manner to Lilly was meant to show how much he had sacrificed for her sake.
The news of the colonel, which he had gathered indirectly, filled her with dismay. The old martinet had turned Fräulein von Schwertfeger out of the castle, having become obsessed by the suspicion that she had acted in collusion with the guilty lovers. He now lived the life of a misanthropic recluse, and it was feared he might go out of his mind. A message of evil indeed from that past of sunshine.
As winter approached, one of Frau Jula's prophecies seemed as if it were coming to pass. Richard began to discuss his matrimonial prospects with Lilly, not to annoy her, it is true, but simply because it had become a habit to unburden his mind to her about everything that troubled him.