Grant Allen.

L I N N E T

A  R O M A N C E

By GRANT ALLEN

Author of “UNDER SEALED ORDERS,”

“MISS CAYLEY’S ADVENTURES,” ETC.

New York : : : NEW AMSTERDAM

BOOK COMPANY : : : : MCM

Copyright, 1900

BY

NEW AMSTERDAM BOOK COMPANY

NOTE

This story was written in the midst of the scenery which

it describes; but the author desires to acknowledge his

obligations for many touches of local colour to Mr.

Baillie-Grohman’s admirable work on “Tyrol and the

Tyrolese.” The quatrain on p. 283 is quoted, with

some slight modifications (to adapt it to its place

in this novel), from a poem by Mr. William Watson.

CONTENTS

[I.] “TO INTRODUCE MR FLORIAN WOOD”

[II.] A FRESH ACQUAINTANCE

[III.] WITHIN SIGHT OF A HEROINE

[IV.] ENTER LINNET

[V.] THE WIRTH’S THEORY

[VI.] THE ROBBLER

[VII.] WAGER OF BATTLE

[VIII.] THE HUMAN HEART

[IX.] THE MAN OF THE WORLD

[X.] HAIL, COLUMBIA!

[XI.] PRIVATE INQUIRY

[XII.] THE MADDING CROWD

[XIII.] A FIRST NIGHT

[XIV.] AND IF FOR EVER

[XV.] A CRITICAL EVENING

[XVI.] SCHLOSS TYROL

[XVII.] CAUGHT OUT

[XVIII.] TAKEN BY SURPRISE

[XIX.] SPIRITUAL WEAPONS

[XX.] FLORIAN ON MATRIMONY

[XXI.] FORTUNE’S WHEEL

[XXII.] A WOMAN’S STRATAGEM

[XXIII.] A PROPHET INDEED!

[XXIV.] THE ART OF PROPHESYING

[XXV.] A DRAMATIC VENTURE

[XXVI.] A WOMAN’S HEART

[XXVII.] AULD LAND SYNE

[XXVIII.] SIGNORA CASALMONTE

[XXIX.] FROM LINNET’S STANDPOINT

[XXX.] AN UNEXPECTED VISITOR

[XXXI.] WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK

[XXXII.] WEDDED FELICITY

[XXXIII.] PLAYING WITH FIRE

[XXXIV.] AN OLD ACQUAINTANCE

[XXXV.] GOLDEN HOPES

[XXXVI.] AN ECCLESIASTICAL QUESTION

[XXXVII.] BEGINNINGS OF EVIL

[XXXVIII.] HUSBAND OR LOVER?

[XXXIX.] DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE

[XL.] OPEN WAR

[XLI.] GOD’S LAW⁠—OR MAN’S?

[XLII.] PRUDENCE

[XLIII.] LINNET’S RIVAL

[XLIV.] AND WILL’S

[XLV.] BY AUTHORITY

[XLVI.] HOME AGAIN!

[XLVII.] SEEMINGLY UNCONNECTED

[XLVIII.] THE BUBBLE BURSTS

[XLIX.] THE PIGEON FLIES HOME

[L.] ANDREAS HAUSBERGER PAYS

[LI.] EXIT FRANZ LINDNER

[LII.] A CONFESSION OF FAITH

LINNET

CHAPTER I

“TO INTRODUCE MR FLORIAN WOOD”

’Twas at Zell in the Zillerthal.

Now, whoever knows the Alps, knows the Zillerthal well as the centre of all that is most Tyrolese in the Tyrol. From that beautiful green valley, softly smiling below, majestically grand and ice-clad in its upper forks and branches, issue forth from time to time all the itinerant zither-players and picturesquely-clad singers who pervade every capital and every spa in Europe. Born and bred among the rich lawns of their upland villages, they come down in due time, with a feather in their hats and a jodel in their throats, true modern troubadours, setting out on the untried ocean of the outer world⁠—⁠their voice for their fortune⁠—in search of wealth and adventures. Guitar on back and green braces on shoulders, they start blithely from home with a few copper kreuzers in their leather belts, and return again after a year or two, changed men to behold, their pockets full to bursting with dollars or louis or good English sovereigns.

Not that you must expect to see the Tyrolese peasant of sober reality masquerading about in that extremely operatic and brigand-like costume in the upper Zillerthal. The Alpine minstrel in the sugar-loaf hat, much-gartered as to the legs, and clad in a Joseph’s coat of many colours, with whom we are all so familiar in cosmopolitan concert-halls, has donned his romantic polychromatic costume as an integral part of the business, and would be regarded with surprise, not unmixed with contempt, were he to appear in it among the pastures of his native valley. The ladies in corset-bodices and loose white lawn sleeves, who trill out startling notes from the back attics of their larynx, or elicit sweet harmonies from mediæval-looking mandolines in Kursaals and Alcazars, have purchased their Tyrolese dress direct from some Parisian costumier. The real cowherds and milkmaids of the actual Zillerthal are much more prosaic, not to say commonplace, creatures. A green string for a hat-band, with a blackcock’s plume stuck jauntily or saucily at the back of the hat, and a dirty red lappel to the threadbare coat, is all that distinguishes the Tyrolese mountaineer of solid fact from the universal peasant of European Christendom. Indeed, is it not true, after all, that the stage has led us to expect far too much⁠—in costume and otherwise⁠—from the tillers of the soil everywhere? Is it not true that the agricultural and pastoral classes all the world over, in spite of Theocritus and Thomas Hardy, are apt, when one observes them impartially in the flesh, to be earthy, grimy, dull-eyed, and unintelligent?

Florian Wood didn’t think so, however, or affected not to think so⁠—which in his case was probably very much the same thing; for what he really thought about anything on earth, affectation aside, it would have puzzled even himself not a little to determine. He was a tiny man of elegant proportions: so tiny, so elegant, that one felt inclined to put him under a glass case and stick him on a mantelpiece. He leant his small arms upon the parapet of a wall as they were approaching Zell, shifted the knapsack on his back with sylph-like grace, and murmured ecstatically, with a side glance at the stalwart peasant-women carrying basketfuls of fodder in huge creels on their backs in the field close by, “How delicious! How charming! How essentially picturesque! How characteristically Tyrolean!”

His companion scanned him up and down with an air of some passing amusement. “Why, I didn’t know you’d ever been in the Tyrol before,” he objected, bluntly. And, in point of fact, when they started together from Munich that morning on their autumn tour, Florian Wood had never yet crossed the Austrian frontier. But what of that? He had got out of the train some five hours back at Jenbach station, and walked the sixteen miles from there to Zell; and in the course of the tramp he had matured his views on the characteristics of the Tyrol.

But he waved one lily-white hand over the earth none the less with airy dismissal of his friend’s implied criticism. “How often shall I have to tell you, my dear Deverill,” he said blandly, in his lofty didactic tone⁠—the tone which, as often happens with very small men, came most familiarly of all to him⁠—“that you unduly subordinate the ideal to the real, where you ought rather to subordinate the real to the ideal. This, you say, is the Tyrol⁠—the solid, uncompromising, geographically definite Tyrol of the tax-gatherer, the post-master, and the commercial traveller⁠—⁠bounded on the north by Bavaria, on the south by Italy, on the east by the rude Carinthian boor, and on the west by the collection of hotels and pensions marked down on the map as the Swiss Republic. Very well then; let me see if there’s anything Tyrolese at all to be found in it. I have instinctive within me a picture of the true, the ideal Tyrol. I know well its green pastures, its upland slopes, its innocent peasantry, its fearless chamois-hunters, its beautiful, guileless, fair-haired maidens. Arriving by rail to-day in this its prosaic prototype⁠—⁠cast up, as it were, from the train on the sea-coast of this Bohemia⁠—⁠I turn my eyes with interest upon the imitation Tyrol of real life, and strive earnestly to discover some faint points of resemblance, if such there be, with the genuine article as immediately revealed to me.”

“And you find none?” Deverill put in, smiling.

Florian waved that dainty Dresden china hand expansively once more over the landscape before him, as if it belonged to him. “Pardon me,” he said, sententiously; “in many things, I admit, the reality might be improved upon. The mountains, for example, should be higher, their forms more varied, their peaks more jagged, their sides more precipitous; the snow should drape them with more uniform white, regardless of the petty restrictions of gravity; the river should tear down far rockier ravines, in more visible cataracts. But Nature has sometimes her happy moments, too. And I call this one of them! Those women, now, so Millet-like in their patient toil⁠—⁠how sympathetic! how charming! A less primitive society, a less idyllic folk, would have imposed such burdens upon a horse or a donkey. The Tyrol knows better. It is more naïve, more picturesque⁠—⁠in one word, more original. It imposes them on the willing neck of beautiful woman!”

“It’s terribly hard work for them,” Deverill answered, observing them with half a sigh.

“For them? Ah, yes, I admit it, of course, poor souls!⁠—⁠but for me, my dear fellow⁠—⁠for me, just consider! It gives me a thrill of the intensest sensibility. In the first place, the picture is a beautiful one in itself⁠—⁠the figures, the baskets, the frame, the setting. In the second place, it suggests to the observant mind an Arcadian life, a true Dorian simplicity. In the third place⁠—⁠which is perhaps the most important of all⁠—⁠it affords me an opportunity for the luxury of sympathy. What is the trifling inconvenience of a heavy load on their backs to these poor ignorant creatures, compared with the refined and artistic pleasure⁠—⁠of an altruistic kind⁠—⁠which I derive from pitying them?”

“Florian!” his friend said, surveying him comically from head to foot, “you really are impayable. It’s no use arguing with you; it only flatters you. You know very well in your heart you never mean a word of anything you say; so stop your nonsense and put yourself in marching order again. Let’s get on to Zell, and see what sort of quarters we can find in the village.”

Florian Wood came down at once from his epicurean clouds, and strode out with his little legs in the direction of their resting-place. In spite of his tininess, he was a capital walker. If Nature, as he averred, has sometimes her happy moments, she certainly had one when she created her critic. Florian Wood was a young man of a delicate habit of mind and body⁠—⁠a just and pleasing compromise between a philosopher and a butterfly. His figure was small but extremely graceful; his limbs were dainty but well-knit and gazelle-like; his face, though small-featured, was very intelligent, and distinctly good-humoured; his voice was melodious and exquisitely modulated. And what Nature had left undone, his godfathers and godmothers did for him at his baptism when they christened him Florian. As plain John Wood, to be sure, he would have been nobody at all; as William or Thomas or Henry or George, he would have been lost in the multitudinous deep sea of London. But his parents had the glorious inspiration of dubbing him Florian, and it acted like a charm: all went well in life with him. A baronetcy would have been a far less valuable social passport⁠—⁠for there are many baronets, but only one Florian. Before the romantic rarity of that unique Christian name, the need for a surname paled and faded away into utter nothingness. Nobody ever dreamt of calling him “Wood”: they spoke of Florian as they once spoke of “Randolph.” On this somewhat illogical but very natural ground, he became from his schooldays upward the spoiled child of society. He was a toy⁠—⁠a plaything. Clubs hung on his clear voice; women petted and made much of him. When you talk of a man always by his Christian name alone, depend upon it, he becomes in the end as one of the family: mere association of ideas begets in you at last a friendly⁠—⁠nay, almost a fraternal feeling towards him.

They walked along briskly in the direction of Zell, Florian humming as he went a few stray snatches of Tyrolese songs (or what pass in the world for such), by way of putting himself in emotional harmony with the environment. For Florian was modern, intensely modern. He played with science as he played with everything else; and he could talk of the environment by the hour with the best of them, in his airy style, as if environments and he had been lifelong companions. But Zell itself, when they got to it, failed somehow to come up to either of their expectations. Florian would have made the valley narrower, or transplanted the village three hundred feet higher up the slope of the hill. As for Will Deverill, less critical of Nature’s handicraft, he found the inns over-civilised; the Post and the Bräu were too fine for his taste: they had come thus far in search of solitude and Alpine wilds, and they lighted instead on a sort of miniature Grindelwald, with half-a-dozen inns, a respectable café, experienced (or in other words extortionate) guides, and a regular tourist-trap for the sale of chamois-horns and carved models of châlets. “This will never do!” Will Deverill exclaimed, gazing round him in disgust at the Greiderer Hotel and the comfortable Welschwirth. “This is pure civilisation!”

And Florian, looking down instinctively at his dust-encumbered boots, murmured with a faint sigh, “A perfect Bond Street!” For Florian loved to do everything “consummately,”⁠—⁠’twas his own pet adverb; he aimed at universality, but he aimed quite as much at perfection in detail of the most Pharisaical description. In Piccadilly, he went clad in a faultless miniature frock-coat, surmounted by the silken sheen of Lincoln and Bennet’s glossiest; but if he made up his mind to Alps and snow-fields, then Alps he would have, pure, simple, and unadulterated. No half-way houses for him! He would commune at first hand with the eternal hills; he would behold the free life of the mountain folk in all its unsophisticated and primitive simplicity.

So he gazed at his Tom Thumb boots with a regretful eye, and murmured pensively once more, “A perfect Bond Street!”

“What shall we do now?” Will Deverill asked, stopping short and glancing ahead towards the glaciers that close the valley.

“See that village on the left there,” Florian answered, in a rapt tone of sudden inspiration, seizing his arm theatrically; “⁠—⁠no, not the lower one on the edge of the level, but that high-perched group of little wooden houses with the green steeple by the edge of the ravine: what a magnificent view of the snow-fields to the south! From there, one must look at a single glance over all the spreading fingers and ramifications of the valley.”

“Perhaps there’s no inn there,” Will responded, dubiously.

“No inn! You prate to me of inns?” Florian exclaimed, striking an attitude. “In full view of these virgin peaks, you venture to raise a question of mere earthly bedrooms⁠—⁠landlord, waiter, chambermaid! Who cares where he sleeps⁠—⁠or whether he sleeps at all⁠—⁠in such a village as that?” He struck his stick on the ground hard to enforce and emphasise the absoluteness of his determination. “The die is cast,” he cried, with the Caesaric firmness of five-feet-nothing. “We cross the stream at once, and we make for the village!”

“Well, there’s probably somewhere we can put up for the night and reconnoitre the neighbourhood,” Will Deverill answered, as he followed his friend’s lead. “If the worst comes to the worst, we can fall back upon Zell; but the priest will most likely find us a lodging.”

No sooner said than done. They mounted the steep slope, and rose by gentle zig-zags towards the upland hamlet. At each step they took, the view over the glacier-bound peaks that close the glen to southward, opened wider and wider. Near an Alpine farmhouse they paused for breath. It was built of brown wood, toned and darkened by age, with projecting eaves and basking southern front, where endless cobs of Indian corn in treble tiers and rows hung out drying in the sunshine. Florian drank in the pretty picture with the intense enjoyment of youth and health and a rich sensuous nature. There was a human element, too, giving life to the foreground. Three Tyrolese children, a boy and two girls, in costumes more obtrusively national than they had yet observed, stood playing with one another on the platform in front of the farmhouse. Florian beamed on them, enchanted. “What innocence!” he cried, ecstatically. “What untrammelled forms! What freedom of limb! What Hellenic suppleness! How different from the cramped motions of our London-bred children! You can see in a moment those vigorous young muscles have strengthened themselves from the cradle in the bracing air of the mountains⁠—⁠so fresh they are, so lithe, so gracious, so lissom! I recognise there at once the true note of the Tyrol.”

As he spoke, the younger girl, playing roughly with the boy, gave him a violent push which nearly sent him over into a neighbouring puddle. At that, the elder sister clutched her hard by the wrist and gave her a good shaking, observing at the same time in very familiar accents:

“Naow then, Mariar-Ann, if you do like that to ’Arry agin, I’ll tike you stright in, an’ tell your mother.”

It was the genuine unmistakable Cockney dialect!

In an agony of injured nerves, Florian seized the elder girl by the collar of her dress, and, holding her at arm’s-length, as one might do some venomous reptile, demanded of her, sternly, in his severest tone: “Now, where on earth did you ever learn English?”

The little Tyrolese, trembling violently in his grasp, stammered out in deadly fear: “Wy, o’ course, in London.”

“Pa was a waiter at the Criterion,” the younger sister volunteered in a shrill little voice from a safe distance; “and ma’s an Englishwoman. We’ve come ’ere to retire. Pa’s tiken the farm. But we can’t none of us speak any German.”

Florian relaxed his grasp, a dejected, dispirited, disappointed mannikin. “Go, wretched little mudlark!” he exclaimed, with a frank gesture of discomfiture, flinging her from him as he spoke. “There isn’t, there never was, any objective Tyrol!”

The child retreated prudently to the safe shelter of the doorway, before venturing on a repartee. Then she put out her tongue and took up a stone in her hand. “Who are you a-callin’ a mudlark?” she answered, with the just indignation of injured innocence. “If my pa was ’ere ’e’d punch yer bloomin’ ’ead for yer.”

It ill became Florian Wood, that man of taste, to bandy words before the eternal hills with social waifs from the slums of Drury Lane. He strode on up the path in moody silence. It was some minutes, indeed, before he had sufficiently recovered from this crushing blow to murmur in a subdued voice: “What an incongruous circumstance!”

“Not so unusual as you’d suppose, though,” his companion answered with a smile; for he knew the Tyrol. “There are no people on earth so vagrant in their ways as the Tyrolese. They go away as pedlars, musicians, or waiters; but when they’ve made their pile, almost without exception, they come back in the end to their native valleys. I’ve more than once met hunters or farmers in these upland glens who spoke to me in English, not always without a tinge of American accent. Perhaps it’s not so much that these people emigrate as that they always come back again. They think other countries good enough to make money in, but the Zillerthal’s the one place where they’d care to spend it.”

Florian answered nothing. He strode on, sore distressed. The only Tyrol worth tuppence, he now knew to his cost, was the one he had erected, anterior to experience, in his own imagination.

CHAPTER II

A FRESH ACQUAINTANCE

It was a steep pull up to the little village on the hill, which Florian had selected by pure intuition for their immediate headquarters. But once they had arrived there the glorious panorama which disclosed itself in one burst to their enchanted eyes made them forget the fatigues of their long tramp to reach it. The village was a tiny one, but comely and prosperous; composed of great farm-houses with big boulders piled high on their shingled roofs to keep them in place, and a quaint old church, whose tall and tapering spire was prettily tiled with bright green slates, after the country fashion. Moreover, what was more important just then to the footsore travellers, a hospitable wirthshaus or village inn occupied a place of honour on the small green in the centre. It was cheerful though homely, and clean in a certain rough countrified way; and it faced due south, toward the sun and the snow-fields. Florian saw at a glance there would be a ravishing outlook from the bedroom windows; and Will Deverill, more practical, and better accustomed to these out-of-the-way nooks, felt inclined to believe they might count at least on decent beds, plain wholesome fare, fresh trout from the stream, and sweet venison from the mountains.

The name over the door was Andreas Hausberger. Will entered the inn with a polite inclination of the head, and inquired in his very best German of the first man he saw if he could speak with the landlord.

“I am he,” the stranger said, drawing himself up with much dignity. “This inn is my Schloss. My name is Hausberger.”

Will Deverill surveyed him with a critical air. He had seen such men before; they are not uncommon in the rural Tyrol. Tall, powerful, big-built, with a resolute face and a determined mien, he looked like a man well able to keep order among the noisy frequenters of his rustic tavern. For the wirth or innkeeper of these remote villages is often, after the priest, the most important personage of the little community: he represents the temporal as the pfarrer represents the spiritual authority. The owner of four or five horses, the entertainer of strange guests, the dispenser of liquor to the countryside, the organiser of festivals, marriage-feasts, and dances, the proprietor of the one club and assembly-room of the village, the wirth is necessarily a man of mark and of local position, beyond anything that is usual with his kind elsewhere. In the communal council his voice is supreme; the parlour is his court-house: he settles all quarrels, attests all deeds, arranges all assemblies, and assists, as a matter of course, at all rural ceremonies.

“Can we have rooms here for a week?” Will inquired, still in German.

The landlord led them upstairs and showed them two bedrooms on the first floor, roughly furnished, but neat, and, as Florian had foreseen, with a glorious outlook. Will proceeded to inquire, as interpreter for the party, about various details of price, possibilities as to meals, excursions in the neighbourhood, and other practical matters. The landlord answered all in the same self-respecting and almost haughty tone as before, assuring him in few words as to the excellence of the bread and the meat, the cleanliness of the beds, the soundness of the beer, and the advantages and respectability of his establishment in general. “You will be as well here,” he said, summing up, “as in New York or London⁠—⁠a little less luxury, perhaps, but quite as much real and solid comfort.”

“What does he say?” Florian asked, languidly, as the landlord finished. For, though in his capacity as man of culture, the philosopher of taste was prepared to give a critical opinion offhand at any moment, on Goethe or Heine, the Minnesänger, or the Nibelungenlied, he was innocent of even the faintest acquaintance with the German language. Two words in it amply served his turn: with wieviel and ja wohl, he made the tour of the Fatherland.

Will explained to him in brief, and in the vulgar tongue, the nature of the landlord’s somewhat high-flown commendations.

By way of answer Florian unslung his knapsack, which he flung on the bed with as much iron determination as his height permitted. “This’ll do,” he said, decisively⁠—⁠this time in his character as the man of impulse. “I like the house; I like the place; I like the view; I like the landlord. He’s a dignified looking old boy in his way, the landlord, with that independence of mien and that manly chivalry which forms an integral part of my mental conception of the Tyrolese character. No bowing and scraping there; no civilised flunkeydom. And that scar on his face, you observe; what a history it conceals: some free fight on the hills, no doubt, or some tussle with a wounded bear in his native forest!”

“Wal, no; not pre-cisely that,” the landlord answered, in very Teutonic English, strangely tinged with an under-current of a most Western flavour. “I got that mark in a scrimmage one day on a Mississippi steamer. It was a pretty hard fight, with a pretty hard lot, too⁠—⁠he was a real rough customer⁠—⁠one of these professional monte-sharpers that go up and down on the boats on the lookout for flats; but I settled him, anyway. He didn’t want another when we’d squared accounts over that gash on my face. He retired into private life at the St Louis hospital for the next few voyages.”

Poor Florian collapsed. This was too, too much! He sank on the sofa with a dejected face, drew a very long breath from the innermost depths of his manly bosom, and at last gasped out with a violent effort: “Are there no Tyrolese in the Tyrol at all, then?”

The landlord smiled, a restrained and cautious smile. He was a self-contained sort of man, very large and roomy. “Why, I’m a Tyroler, myself,” he said, opening the second window, and bustling about the room a little⁠—⁠“as Tyrolese as they make ’em; but I’ve been around the world a bit, for all that, both in Europe and America.”

“You play the zither?” Will inquired, guessing at once what quest was most likely to have taken him there.

The landlord shook his head. “No; I sing,” he answered. “It was in charge of a troupe that I went over the water. You know Ludwig Rainer?”

“Who has an hotel on the Achensee?” Will replied. “The well-known jodel singer? Yes; I’ve stayed there and heard him.”

“Wal, he set the thing going,” Herr Andreas Hausberger continued, still bustling about the room; “he took over a troupe to New York and Chicawgo. The first time, he fell in with a pack of scoundrels who cheated him of everything he made by the trip. The second time, he came back with a few hundred dollars. The third time, he got into a very good thing, and made money enough out of his tour to start the Seehof. So I followed suit, but I only saved enough on my first venture to set me up here in this house in the village. It’s a one-horse affair for a man like me. Next time, I hope I shall make a little capital to start a big hotel for foreign tourists and kur-guests at Meran or Innsbruck.”

“Then you mean to go again?” Will Deverill asked, sitting down.

“Why, certainly,” the landlord answered, retreating to the door, “as soon as ever I can get another good troupe together again.” And with a ceremonious bow, like a courtly gentleman that he was, he retired downstairs to superintend the preparation of those fresh mountain trout he had promised them for dinner.

As soon as he was gone, Florian raised himself on one elbow like a startled butterfly, with an air of studious vacancy, and stared hard at Will Deverill. “What an extraordinary country,” he murmured, with a pensive sigh. “It’s Babel reversed. Everybody seems to speak and understand every European language. The very babes and sucklings call one names as one passes, in vile gutter English. It’s really quite uncanny. Who’d have thought, now, of meeting in an out-of-the-way lost corner of earth like this, a village innkeeper who’s a man of the world, a distinguished traveller, an accomplished linguist, and an intelligent impresario? The ways of Providence are truly mysterious! What a place to bury such a shining light! Why dump him down so, in this untrodden valley?”

“Oh, it’s not by any means such a singular case as you suppose,” Will answered, looking up from the knapsack he was engaged in unpacking⁠—⁠“above all, in the Zillerthal. I’ve never been here before myself, but I’ve always been told in other parts of the Tyrol that the Zillerthalers, men and girls, are every one of them born musicians. And as for our landlord here, the Tyrolese wirth is always a man of light and leading in his own society. He opposes the priest, and heads the liberal party. All the popular leaders in the war of independence in the Tyrol were monks or innkeepers. Andreas Hofer, himself, you know, had an inn of his own in the Passer valley.”

“Ah, to be sure,” Florian ejaculated, in an acquiescent tone of a peculiar calibre, which showed his friend at once he hadn’t the remotest idea who Andreas Hofer was, or why one should be expected to know anything about him. Now, want of knowledge on such a point is, of course, most natural and pardonable in a stranger; but there was no sufficient reason, Will Deverill thought, for Florian’s pretence at its possession where he really knew nothing. That, however, was poor Florian’s foible. He couldn’t bear to have it thought he was ignorant of anything, from mathematics or music to esoteric Buddhism. If a native of Siberia had addressed him casually in the Ostiak dialect of the Tungusian language, Florian would have nodded and smiled a non-committing assent, as though Ostiak had always been his mother-tongue, and he had drunk in Tungusian at his nurse’s bosom.

“You know who Andreas Hofer was, of course?” Deverill went on, persistently. He was a devil of a fellow for not letting you off when he caught you out in an innocent little piece of social pretension, was Deverill.

Florian, thus hard pressed, found himself compelled to do what he hated most in the world⁠—⁠confess his ignorance. “I remember the gentleman’s respected name, of course!” he said, dubiously, with a sickly smile and a little forced pleasantry; “but his precise claims to distinction, as Men of the Time puts it in its cheerful circular, entirely escape my memory for the moment.”

“He was the leader of the spontaneous Tyrolese peasant movement, you know, for the expulsion of the French and their Bavarian allies in 1808 or thereabouts,” Will went on, still unpacking. “Napoleon caught him at last, and had him shot at Mantua. You’ll see his tomb when you go to Innsbruck, and lots of other mementos of him all over the country everywhere. He pervades the place. He’s the national hero, in fact⁠—⁠the martyr of independence⁠—⁠a sort of later and more historical William Wallace.”

“Dear me, yes; how stupid of me!” Florian cried, clapping his hand to his head in a sudden burst of pretended recollection. “It comes back to me now, of course. Good old Andreas Hofer! How could I ever forget him? The Tyrolese William Tell! The Hampden of the Alps! The undaunted Caractacus of these snow-clad mountains!”

Deverill pulled off his coat. “If I were you,” he said, drily, “instead of rhapsodising here, I’d go into my own room, have a jolly good wash, and get ready for dinner. We must have walked about twenty-two miles since we got out at Jenbach, and this bracing air gives one a positively Gargantuan appetite.”

Florian roused himself with a yawn, for though vigorous enough for his size, he was a lazy creature, and when once he sat down it was with difficulty he could be prevailed upon to put himself in motion again. Ten minutes later they were seated at the white-covered table in the tidy little salon, doing the fullest justice to the delicious broiled trout, the foaming amber ale, the fresh laid eggs, and the excellent home-made bread, provided, according to promise, by Herr Andreas Hausberger.

CHAPTER III

WITHIN SIGHT OF A HEROINE

Next morning early, aroused by the cloister bell, Will Deverill rose, and looked out of his window. Oh, such an exquisite day! In that clear, crisp air the summits of the Floitenspitze, the Löffler, and the Turnerkamp glistened like diamonds in the full morning sunlight. ’Twas a sight to rejoice his poetic soul. For Will Deverill, though too modest to give himself airs, like Florian, was a poet by birth, and a journalist by trade. Nature had designed him for an immortal bard; circumstances had turned him into an occasional leader-writer. He stood there entranced for many minutes together. He had pushed the leaded window open wide when he first rose, and the keen mountain air blew in at it most refreshingly. All, all was beautiful. He looked out on the fresh green pastures, the deep glen below, the white stream in its midst, the still whiter tops of the virgin mountains beyond it. A stanza for his new poem rose spontaneous in his mind as he leaned his arms on the low sill and gazed out upon the great glaciers:

“I found it not where solemn Alps and grey

Draw crimson glories from the new-born day,

Nor where huge sombre pines loom overhanging

Niagara’s rainbow spray.”

He was just feeling in his pocket for a pencil to jot down the rough draft of these few lines, when of a sudden, at the window in the next room at the side, what should he see but Florian’s pale face peeping forth most piteously.

“What’s the matter? Haven’t you slept?” Will inquired of his disconsolate friend with a sympathetic nod.

The epicurean philosopher shook a sad, slow head with a painfully cheerful air of stoical resignation. “Not a wink since three o’clock,” he answered, gloomily. “Those dreadful creatures have bothered me without ceasing.”

“Surely,” Will began, somewhat surprised, “not⁠——”

Florian shook his head wearily. “No, no; not them,” he murmured with melancholy emphasis. “I don’t mind about them. They, at least, are silent, and, besides, if you like, you can get up and catch them. Bells, bells! my dear fellow; bells, bells, all the morning. They’ve been tinkling in my ear every blessed minute since the clock struck three. It’s unendurable, horrible.”

“Oh, the cow-bells!” Will answered, laughing. “Why, for my part, I like them. They’re a feature of the place; they sound so countrified. I hardly hear them at all, or if I hear them, they come to me drowsily through the haze of my dreams like the murmur of water or a nurse’s lullaby. I find them, to tell you the truth, positively soothing. Besides,” he added, mischievously, with a malicious little smile, “in such a village as this, who cares where he sleeps, or whether he sleeps at all? He should be able to subsist here on scenery and the affections.”

At the words, Florian’s head disappeared incontinently. That, surely, was the unkindest cut of all. Thus convicted out of his own mouth, by his familiar friend, he could but retire abashed to complete his toilet. That Deverill should have slept all night long, while he lay awake, and tossed, and turned, and wished ill to the whole ill-omened race of cows, was bad enough in all conscience; but that he should pretend he liked those disgusting bells was nothing short of atrocious.

He descended a little later to the homely parlour. Will was down there before him, and had succeeded in ferreting out an old violin from a corner cupboard. He was musical, was Will⁠—⁠not, to be sure, in the grand perceptive and critical way, like Florian himself, who played no instrument and understood all perfectly, but, after the inferior fashion of the mere dexterous executant, who possesses a certain physical suppleness and deftness of fingers to elicit from dumb strings the most delicate fancies of a Mendelssohn or a Chopin. In pursuance of this lesser gift of his⁠—⁠“the common faculty of the fiddler,” as Florian called it⁠—⁠Will was just then engaged by the open window in playing over to himself a pretty little song by some unknown composer. He played it very well, too, Florian admitted, condescendingly; Will had a capital ear, indeed, and was not without feeling of a sort, for the finer touches in musical composition⁠—⁠up to a certain point, you know; not quite, of course, to the high and delicate level of Florian’s own cultivated and refined perceptions. It was a charming piece, however⁠—⁠a very charming piece⁠—⁠and, after a while, Will began singing the words to it. Florian listened with pleasure and a forgiving smile to the clever twists and turns of that well-arranged melody.

As he stood there, listening, a little behind, one impressive forefinger held up in an attitude of discriminative attention, he was aware of two voices in the street outside catching up the tune naturally, and fitting it as if in sport to shapeless syllables of their own invention. They were women’s voices, too, young and rich and powerful; and what was odder still, to Florian’s immense surprise, they took up their proper parts as second and third in a concerted piece, like trained musicians. Strange to find such finished vocalists in a mere peasant hamlet!⁠—⁠but, there, no doubt they were some of Herr Hausberger’s Transatlantic performers. Florian moved closer to the window to observe the unknown but silvery-tongued strangers. As he did so, two plump and rosy-cheeked mountain lasses, in homespun kirtles, fled, blushing and giggling, with their hands to their mouths, away from the close scrutiny of the foreign Herrschaft. Accustomed as he was by this time to marvellous incongruities in this land of surprises, Florian could hardly believe his own eyes when he further observed that the two girls with the divine voices were driving cows home from the pasture to the milking shed. Great heavens, yes! there was no gainsaying it. Shade of Wagner, incredible! The accomplished vocalists whose fine sense of melody so delighted his acute and critical ear were nothing but a pair of common country milkmaids!

Will Deverill, too, had risen, and, with a friendly nod, was gazing out appreciation at his unknown accompanists. Florian turned to him, all amazement. “They must have practised it before,” he cried. “They must know it all of old. It must certainly be one of their own national pieces.”

“Oh, no,” the poet replied in a very confident voice. “They can’t possibly have heard it. It’s quite, quite new. I’m sure about that. It’s never yet been published.”

“But, my dear fellow,” Florian exclaimed, with much argumentative heat, “I assure you, none but the most instructed musicians could possibly take up the right chords like that, and sing them second and third, without having practised them beforehand. Allow me to know something of the musical art. Even Patti herself⁠——”

“Why, the song’s my own,” Will broke in, much amused, and unable to restrain himself. “I ought to know; it was I who wrote it.”

“The words! ah, yes, to be sure; the words are nothing. They didn’t sing them, of course; ’twas the melody they caught at. And the melody, I venture to assert, without fear of contradiction⁠—⁠the melody, from the peculiar way it modulates into the sub-dominant, must certainly be one of their own love songs.”

“But I composed the tune too,” Will made answer with a quiet smile. “It’s never been played before. It came up into my head in the railway carriage yesterday, and seeing this old fiddle in the cupboard this morning, I thought I’d try it over before scoring it down, just to hear how it sounded.”

“You wrote it!” Florian repeated, dazzled and stunned at the news. “You compose as well as rhyme! You set your own songs to music, do you? Well, upon my soul, Deverill, I hadn’t till this moment the slightest idea you had such an accomplishment.”

“Oh, I’m only a beginner,” Will answered, with a faint blush, laying down the violin,⁠—⁠“or rather an amateur, for I’ve always dabbled in it. But I’ve only published one song. I just strum to amuse myself. Good morning, Herr Hausberger; what an exquisite day! We’d better take advantage of it for a climb up the Rauhenkopf.”

The landlord, dish in hand, bowed his courteous and courtly bow. There was deference in it, without a tinge of servility. Florian noted with approbation that mixture of independence and a just self-respect which formed a component part of his preconceived idea of the Tyrolese character. Andreas Hausberger was “right,” because he was very much as Florian would have pictured him. “Yes; a very good day for the ascent,” the landlord said, quietly. “We will put up some lunch⁠—⁠cold meat and Pilsener. You’ll get a fine view, if you start in good time, over the Zementhal glaciers.”

Florian sat down to the table, a trifle crestfallen; but the poached eggs were excellent, and the coffee fragrant; and he consoled himself for the cow-bells and the mishap about the song by the reflection that, after all, these idyllic milkmaids, with the voice of a prima donna and the manners of Arcadia, were in exact accordance with the operatic ideal of his own imagined Tyrol. They sang like the Chorus of Happy Peasants; they behaved as the mountain lass of poetry ought always to behave, and as the mountain lass of reality often utterly fails to do.

That morning on the Rauhenkopf was to Florian a day of unmixed delights. He was At Home with Nature. In a vague sort of way, without troubling himself much to know anything about them, the town-bred philosopher loved the fragrant fields, the beautiful flowers, the mossy rocks, the bright birds, the chirping insects. And Will Deverill knew them all⁠—⁠their names, and where to find them. The ragged, sweet-scented pinks still loitered late in deep clefts of the glacier-worn rock; a few stray sky-blue gentians still starred the rich patches of Alpine pasture; emperors and orange-tips still flaunted their gaudy wings in full autumn sunshine. Florian drank in all these things with pure sensuous delight; the sweet sounds of the fields, the smell of tedded kine filled his æsthetic soul, not so much with direct pleasure, as with some faint afterglow of literary reminiscence.

At one of the little alp-huts among the higher pastures, Will Deverill murmured a cheerful “Guten Morgen,” as he passed, to a buxom peasant lass in a woollen kirtle, who stood busy at her churn by the door of her châlet. The girl curtseyed, and looked back at them with such a good-humoured smile that Florian, as an admirer of female beauty, couldn’t resist the temptation of standing still for a moment to take a good long gaze at her. “What’s she doing up here alone?” he asked at last, turning curiously to Will, as the girl still smiled at him. “Does she come up here every day? It’s a fearful long pull for her. But then⁠—⁠this charming air! such strength! such agility!”

“Why, she lives here,” Will answered, surprised that anyone shouldn’t know what to him was such an obvious and familiar fact. “She doesn’t come up at all, except once in the spring; and in autumn she goes down again. It must be nearly time for her to go down now, I should say. There’s not much fodder left in these upper alps here.”

“Lives here!” Florian exclaimed, taken aback. “What?⁠—⁠and sleeps here as well? You don’t mean to say she sleeps in that little wooden box there?”

“Certainly. She’s a sennerin, you know; it’s her business to do it. All the alp girls live like that; they’ve been born and brought up to it.”

In his innermost soul, Florian was dying to know what manner of wild beast a sennerin might be⁠—⁠being undecided in his own mind as to whether it was most probably the name of a race, a religion, a caste, or a profession. But it would have been treason to his principles to confess this fact, so he compromised with his curiosity by murmuring blandly in reply, “Oh, ay, to be sure, a sennerin! I might have guessed it! Do you think now, Deverill, if we asked her very nicely, she’d let us go in and inspect her châlet?”

“I’m sure she would,” Will answered, half repressing a smile. “They see so little of any outsiders while they’re up here on their alps that they’re only too glad, as a rule, when a stranger visits them. We’ll give her a couple of kreuzers for a glass of milk; that’ll serve as an introduction.”

He raised his hat jauntily, and approached the hut with a few words of apology. The sennerin smiled in return, bobbed, curtseying low, and welcomed them affably to her hospitable shelter. After a minute’s parley with Will, the good-humoured young woman brought out a jug of fresh milk, still frothy from the cow, and poured it out for them liberally in a blue stoneware mug. Will drank his off at a draught; Florian hated milk, but as admirer of female beauty⁠—⁠she was a good-looking wench⁠—⁠he gulped it down to the dregs without even a grimace, and handed the mug back again. Then Deverill talked for a while with their sunburnt entertainer in that unknown tongue which Florian didn’t understand; though he could see from their laughing faces and their quick tones of repartee that she was a merry brown lass, shy and bashful indeed before the foreign gentlefolk, but frank and fearless for all that as his soul could wish, and absolutely free from the absurd conventionalities and mauvaise honte of the women who dwell in our too civilised cities. She was no more afraid of men than of oxen. Florian liked that well. Here, at least, was true freedom; here, at least, was ancestral simplicity of life; here the woman held her own on equal terms with the man; here love was unfettered by law or by gold, untrammelled by those hampering inconvenient restraints of parental supervision, society, or priestcraft, which impede its true course in our too complex communities. Florian’s lungs breathed freer in this rarified air: he had risen above the zone of Mrs Grundy.

At the end of their brisk colloquy, which he followed but in part, the sennerin, with a gesture of countrified courtesy, turned to the door with a pretty smile and waved Florian into her châlet. “She says you may look over it and welcome,” Will Deverill explained, interrupting. Florian, nothing daunted, entered and gazed around. It was a rough log hut, divided into two rooms by a wooden partition⁠—⁠a big one, with a door behind, for the cows and calves; and a little one, with a door in front, for the sennerin’s own bedchamber, kitchen, and parlour. The chief article of furniture seemed to him to consist of a great black cauldron, suspended from a crane over the open fireplace, and used⁠—⁠so Will assured him⁠—⁠as the principal utensil in the manufacture of cheese. The fire itself blazed in a hole, dug roughly in the floor of native turf; the edge of this hole, cut out into a rude seat, did duty as sofa, couch, chair, and chimney-corner. Florian sniffed somewhat dubiously. “And she sleeps here all alone?” he said, with a suppressed shudder. This was Arcadian simplicity, he felt, with quite too much of the bloom off.

“Yes; she sleeps here all alone,” Will answered, undisturbed. “Comes up in May, when the snow first melts, and goes down in October, when it begins to lie thick again.”

The sennerin, laughing aloud, confirmed his report with many nods and shrugs, and much good-humoured merriment. It amused her to see the stranger’s half-incredulous astonishment.

“And aren’t you frightened?” Florian asked, Will interpreting the question for him.

The sennerin laughed the bare idea to scorn. “Why should I be?” she exclaimed, brimming over with smiles of naïve surprise at such a grotesque notion. “There are plenty more girls in all the other huts on the alps round about. This hut’s Andreas Hausberger’s, and so are that and that. He owns all these pastures; we come up and herd cows for him.”

“Isn’t it terribly lonely, though?” Florian inquired with open eyes, reflecting silently to himself that after all there were advantages⁠—⁠of a sort⁠—⁠in Bond Street.

“Lonely!” the sennerin cried, in her own country dialect. “We’ve no time to be lonely. We have to mind the cows, don’t you see, worthy well-born Herr, and give milk to the calves, and make cheese and butter, and clean our pots and pans, and do everything ourselves for our food and washing. I can tell you we’re tired enough when the day’s well over, and we can creep into our loft, and fall asleep on the straw there.”

“And she has no Society?” Florian exclaimed, all aghast at the thought. For to him the companionship of his brother man, and perhaps even more of his sister woman, was a necessary of existence.

The girl’s eye brightened with an unwonted fire as Will explained the remark to her. “Ah, yes,” she said half-saucily, with a very coquettish toss of her pretty black head; “when Saturday night comes round then sure enough our mountain lads climb up from the valley below to visit us. We have Sunday to ourselves⁠—⁠and them⁠—⁠till Monday morning; for you know the song says⁠—⁠” and she trilled it out archly in clear, quick notes⁠—

“With my pouch unhung,

And my rifle slung,

And away to my black-eyed alp-girl!”

She sang it expressively, in a rich full voice, far sweeter than could have been expected from so stalwart a maiden. Florian saw an opportunity for bringing out one stray phrase from his slender stock of German. “Das ist schön,” he cried, clapping his hands; “sehr schön! So schön!” Then he relapsed into his mother-tongue. “And you sing it admirably!”

Their evident appreciation touched the alp-girl’s vanity. Like most of her class she had no false modesty. She broke out at once spontaneously into another native song, with a wild free lilt, which exactly suited both her voice and character. It was excellently rendered; even Florian, that stern critic, admitted as much; and as soon as she ended both men clapped their hands in sincere applause of her unpremeditated performance. The sennerin looked down modestly when Will praised her singing. “Ah, you should just hear Linnet!” she cried, in unaffected self-depreciation.

“And who’s Linnet?” Will asked, smiling at the girl’s perfect frankness.

“Oh, she’s one of Herr Hausberger’s cow-girls,” the sennerin answered, with a little shake of her saucy head. “But you needn’t ask her; she’s a great deal too shy; she won’t give you a chance; she never sings before strangers.”

“That’s a pity,” Will replied, lightly, not much thinking what he said; “for if she sings better than you, worthy friend, she must be well worth hearing.”

The sennerin looked down again. Her ruddy cheek glowed ruddier. Such praise from such lips discomposed her serenity. Will glanced at his watch. “We must be going, Florian,” he said. “Half-past twelve already! I’ve no coppers in my pocket. Have you anything you can offer this lady gay for her agreeable entertainment?”

Florian pulled out his purse, and took from it gingerly a well-worn twenty-kreuzer piece⁠—⁠one of those flimsy silvered shams which the Austrian Government in its paternal stinginess imposes as money upon its faithful lieges. The sennerin accepted it with a profusion of thanks, and smothered the generous donor’s hand with unstinted kisses. So much happiness may a man diffuse in this world of woe with a fourpenny bit, bestowed in due season! But Florian mistook that customary symbol of thanks on the alp-girl’s part for an expression of her most heart-felt personal consideration; and not to be outdone when it came to idyllic courtship, he lifted her hand in return to his own gracious lips and kissed it gallantly. Will raised his hat and smiled, without commenting on this misconception, and with a cheery “Auf wiedersehen!” they went on their way rejoicing once more up the slopes of the mountain.

CHAPTER IV

ENTER LINNET

Lunch on the summit was delicious that day, and the view was glorious. But when they returned in the evening to the inn at St Valentin⁠—⁠that was the name of their village⁠—⁠and described to Andreas Hausberger how an alp-girl had sung for them in a mountain hut, the wirth listened to the description with a deprecatory smile, and then said with a little shrug: “Ah, that was Philippina; she can’t do very much. Her high notes are too shrill. You should just hear Linnet!”

“Is Linnet such a songstress then?” Florian cried, with that dubious smile of his.

The wirth looked grave. “She can sing,” he said, pointedly. His dignity was hurt by the young man’s half-sceptical, half-bantering tone. And your Tyroler is above all things conservative of his dignity.

These repeated commendations of this unknown Linnet, however, with her quaintly pretty un-German-sounding name, piqued the two Englishmen’s curiosity in no small degree as to her personality and powers, so that when the wirth next morning announced after breakfast, with a self-satisfied smile, “Linnet’s coming down to-day,” Florian and Will looked across at each other with one accord, and exclaimed in unison, “Ah, now then, we shall see her!”

And, sure enough, about five o’clock that afternoon, as the strangers were returning from a long stroll on the wooded heights that overhang the village, they came unexpectedly, at a turn of the mountain footpath, where two roads ran together, upon a quaint and picturesque Arcadian procession. A long string of patient cows, in the cream-coloured coats of all Tyrolese cattle, wound their way with cautious steps down the cobble-paved zig-zags. A tinkling bell hung by a leather belt from the neck of each; garlands of wild flowers festooned their horns; a group of peasant children assisted at the rude pageant. In front walked a boy, with a wreath slung across his right shoulder like a sash, leading the foremost cow most unceremoniously by the horns; the rear was brought up by a pretty sunburnt girl, with a bunch of soft pasque-flowers stuck daintily in her brown hair, and a nosegay of bluebells peeping coquettishly out of her full round bosom. Though vigorous-looking in figure, and bronzed in face by the sun and the open air, she was of finer mould and more delicate fibre, Will saw at a glance, than most of the common peasant women in that workaday valley. Her features were full but regular; her mouth, though large and very rich in the lips (as is often the case with singers), was yet rosy and attractive; her eyes were full of fire, after the true Tyrolese fashion; her rounded throat, just then trembling with song, had a waxy softness of outline in its curves and quivers that betrayed in a moment a deep musical nature. For she was singing as she went, to the jingling accompaniment of some thirty cow-bells; and not even the sweet distraction of that rustic discord could hide from Will Deverill’s quick, appreciative ear the fact that he stood here face to face with a vocalist of rare natural gifts, and some homespun training.

He paused, behind the wall, as the procession wound round a long double bend, and listened, all ears, to a verse or two of her simple but exquisite music.

“This must be Linnet!” he cried at last, turning abruptly to Florian.

And the boy at the head of the procession, now opposite him by the bend, catching at the general drift of the words with real Tyrolese quickness, called out with a loud laugh to the singer just above: “Sagt er, das musz ja Linnet seyn!” and then exploded with merriment at the bare idea that the Herrschaft should have heard the name and fame of his companion.

As for the girl herself, surprised and taken aback at this sudden interruption, she stood still and hesitated. For a moment she paused, leaning hard on the long stick with which she guided and admonished her vagrant cows; then she looked up and drew a long breath, looked down and blushed, looked up once more and smiled, looked down and blushed again. They had overtaken her unawares where the paths ran together; but as each was enclosed with a high wall of granite boulders, overgrown with brambles, she had no chance of perceiving them till they were close upon her. She broke off her song at once, and stood crimson-faced beside them.

“Ah, sing again!” Florian cried, folding two dainty palms in a rapture on his breast, and putting his delicate head on one side in a transport of enchantment “Why, Deverill, how she sings! what a linnet, indeed! and how pretty she is, too! For the first time in my life, I really regret I can’t speak German!”

The singer, looking up, all tremulous to have overheard this unfeigned homage, made answer, to Florian’s equal delight and surprise, “I can speak a little English.”

It would be more correct, perhaps, to put it that what she actually said, was: “Ei kann schpiek a liddle Ennglisch”; but Florian, in his joy that any means of inter-communication existed between them at all, paid small heed at the time to these slight Teutonic defects in her delivery of our language.

“You can speak English!” he exclaimed, overjoyed, for it would have been a real calamity to him to find a pretty girl in the place, with a beautiful voice, and he unable to converse in any known tongue with her. “How delightful! How charming! How quite too unexpected! I’m so glad to know that! For had it been otherwise, I should really have had to learn German to talk with you!”

This overstrained compliment, though it rose quite naturally to Florian’s practised lips, and was far more genuine than a great deal of his talk, made the girl blush and stammer with extreme embarrassment. She was unaccustomed, indeed, to such lavish praise, above all from the gentlefolk. Was the gnädige Herr making fun of her, she wondered? She grew hot and uncomfortable. Fortunately for her self-possession, however, Will Deverill intervened with a more practical remark. “You speak English, do you?” he repeated. “That’s odd, in these parts. One would hardly have thought that! How did you come to learn it?”

“My father was a guide,” the girl answered, slowly, making a pause at each word, and picking her way with difficulty through the insidious pit-falls of British pronunciation. (She called it fahder.) “He taked plenty Ennglish gentlemen up the mountains before time. I learn so well from him, as also from many of the Ennglish gentlemen. Then, too, I take lesson from Herr Hausberger in winters, and from Ennglish young lady at the farm by Martinsbrunn.”

Florian gazed at his companion with an agonised look of mingled alarm and horror. “Do you know who she means?” he cried, seizing Will’s arm. “This is too, too terrible! The girl on the hillside who sticks out her tongue! that horrible little Cockney! She’ll teach this innocent child to say ‘naow,' and ‘lidy'! At last I feel I have a mission in life. We must save her from this fate! We must instruct her ourselves in pure educated English!”

“And how do you come to be called Linnet?” Will inquired with some interest, a new light breaking in upon him. “That’s surely an English name. Who was it first called you so?”

“An Ennglish gentleman when I was all quite small,” the girl replied, with much difficulty, searching her phrases with studious care. “He stop at my father’s hut on our alp many nights⁠—⁠I know not how man says it⁠—⁠so must he go up the mountains. I sing to him often when he come down at evening. My right name is called in German, Lina; but the gentleman, says he, that I sing like a bird. A linnet, that is in Ennglish a singing-bird. Therefore, Linnet he call me. The name please my father much, who make a great deal of me; so from that time in forwards, all folk in the village call me also Linnet.”

Will broke out into German. “They’re quite right,” he said, politely, though with less ecstasy than Florian; “for you do indeed sing like a real song-bird. I’m so sorry we interrupted you; pray go on with your song again.”

But Linnet hung her head. “No, no,” she answered, hastily, in her own native tongue, glad to find he spoke German. “I didn’t know I was overheard. If I’d been singing for such as you, I’d not have chosen a little country song like that. And besides”⁠—⁠she broke off suddenly, with a coy wave of her brown hand, “I can’t sing before strangers the same as I can before my own people.” And she tapped the hindmost heifer with her rod as she spoke, to set the line in motion; for the cows, after their kind, had taken advantage of the pause to put down their heads to the ground, and browse placidly at the green weeds that bordered the wayside.

At one touch of her wand the bells tinkled once more; the long string got under way; the children by the side recommenced their loud shouts of rustic merry-making. For the return of the cows from the alp is a little festival in the villages; it ends the long summer’s work on the mountain side, and brings back the unmarried girls from their upland exile to their homes in the valley. Linnet drove her herd now, however, more soberly and staidly. The free merriment of Arcadia had faded out of the ceremony. One touch of civilisation had dispelled the dream. She knew she was observed; she knew the two strangers were waiting to hear if she would trill forth her wild song again, for they followed close at her heels, talking rapidly among themselves in their own language⁠—⁠so rapidly, indeed, that Linnet could hardly snatch here and there by the way a single word of their earnest conversation. Once or twice she looked back at them, half-timidly, half-provokingly.

“Sing again!” Florian cried, clasping his hands in entreaty.

But the wayward alp-girl only laughed her coy refusal.

“No, no,” she said in her patois, with a little shake of her beautiful head; “that must not be so. I sing no more now. I must drive home my cows. They are tired from the mountains.”

“But, I say,” Florian cried at last, bursting in upon his mountain nymph with this very colloquial and unpoetic adjuration; “look here, you know, Fräulein Linnet, you say you learn English from our landlord, Herr Hausberger. Now, what does he want to teach you for?”

Linnet turned round to him with a naïve air of unaffected surprise. “Why, when he teach me Ennglish songs,” she said, “I will know what mean the words. Also, I have remembered a little⁠—⁠a very little⁠—⁠since the Ennglish gentleman teach me at my father’s. Besides, too, shall I not need it when I go to Enngland?”

“Go to England!” Florian repeated, all amazed at the frank remark. She seemed to take it for granted they must know all her plans. “When you go to England! Oh, he means to take you there, then! You’re one of his troupe, I suppose; or you’re going to be one.”

“I am not gone away yet,” Linnet answered, not a little abashed to find herself the centre of so much unwonted interest; “but I go next time; I will sing with his band. All summers, I stop on the mountain and milk; with the winter, come I down to the house to practise.”

“But you don’t mean to say,” Will put in, in German (it was easier so for Linnet to answer him), “he lets a singer like you live out by herself in a châlet on the hills with the cows all summer?”

Linnet held up her hands, palm outward, with a pretty little gesture of polite deprecation. Her movements were always naturally graceful. “Why not?” she said, brightly, in German, with no little suppressed merriment at his astonished face. “That’s Andreas Hausberger’s plan; he believes in that way; he calls it his system. He says we Zillerthalers owe our beautiful voices⁠—⁠for they tell us we can sing a great deal better than the people in any other valley about⁠—⁠to our open-air life on the very high mountains. The air there is thin, and it suits our throats, he says.” She clasped her hand to her own as she spoke, that beautiful, well-developed, clear-toned organ, with a natural gesture of unconscious reverence. “It develops them⁠—⁠that’s his word; he believes there’s nothing like it. Entwickelung; entwickelung! I get more good, he thinks, for my voice in the summer on the alp than I get from all my lessons in the winter in the valley. For the throat itself comes first⁠—⁠that’s what Andreas holds⁠—⁠and afterwards the teaching. Not for worlds would he let me miss my summer life on the mountains.”

“And how long has he been training you?” Will inquired with real interest. This was so strange a page of life thus laid open before him.

“Oh, for years and years, gnädige Herr,” Linnet answered, shyly, for so much open attention on the young man’s part made her awkwardly self-conscious. “Ever since my father died, he has always been teaching me.”

“Has your father been dead long?” Will inquired.

Linnet crossed herself devoutly. “He was killed eight years ago on the 20th of August last,” she said, looking up as she spoke towards the forest-clad mountains. “May Our Dear Lady and all holy saints deliver his honoured soul from the fires of purgatory!”

“But your mother’s alive still, I suppose, Fräulein,” Florian put in with a killing smile; he had been straining his ears, and was delighted to have caught the general drift of the conversation.

“Yes; thanks to the Blessed Virgin, my mother live still,” Linnet answered in English. “And I keep her comfortable, as for a widow woman, from that which Andreas Hausberger pay me for the summer, as also for the singing. But for what, mein Herr, do you make to call me Fräulein? Do you wish to mock at me? I am only an alp-girl, and I am call just Linnet.”

She flushed as she spoke, and turned hastily to Will. “Tell him,” she said in German, with an impatient little toss of one hand towards Florian, “that it isn’t pretty of him to make fun of poor peasant girls like that. Why does he call me such names? He knows very well I am no real Fräulein.”

Florian raised his hat at once in his dimpled small hand, with that courtly bow and smile so much admired in Bond Street. “Pardon me,” he said, with more truth and feeling than was usual with him; “you have a superb voice; with a gift like that, you are a Fräulein indeed. It extorts our homage. Heaven only knows to what height it may some day lead you.”

CHAPTER V

THE WIRTH’S THEORY

In the evening, while they dined, the landlord came in to see how they fared, and wish them good appetite: ’tis the custom with distinguished guests in the Tyrol. The moment he entered, Florian, all agog, attacked him at once on the subject of their wonderful find that afternoon on the hillside. “Well, Herr Hausberger,” he cried in his high-flown way, “we’ve seen and heard your Linnet⁠—⁠heard her warbling her native wood-notes wild, to the tune of her own cow-bells on her lonely mountains. Now, what do you mean, sir, by turning out a divine singer like that⁠—⁠I’m a musical critic myself, and I know what I’m talking about⁠—⁠what do you mean by turning her out to make butter and cheese in a solitary hut on an Alpine pasture? It’s sheer desecration, I tell you⁠—⁠sheer wicked desecration; there’s nothing, almost, that girl couldn’t do with her voice. She’s a genius⁠—⁠a prodigy; she ought to be clothed in purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day on champagne and turtle. And you, sir⁠—⁠you send her up to herd cows all alone, in an inclement clime, on a barren hill-top!”

Andreas Hausberger gazed at him with a self-contained smile that was extremely characteristic. He bowed a sarcastic bow which Florian misinterpreted for polite subservience. “Are you running this show or am I?” he asked, after a fresh pause, with a quaint reminiscence of his Western experience.

“You are, undoubtedly,” Florian answered, taken aback at this unexpected assault. “But you ought to run it, all the same, on rational and humane and intelligent principles. You owe this girl’s voice, as a delight and a treasure, to US, the enlightened and critical connoisseurs of two eager continents. Nature produced it that we might enjoy it. It was intended to give us some of those exquisite moments of artistic pleasure which are the sole excuse creative caprice can plead for the manifold defects of the Universe.”

Andreas Hausberger looked down at him with a half-pitying curl on those stern thin lips of his. Florian had attacked him lightly where his position was strongest. “That’s all right,” he said, slowly, with a chilly drawl⁠—⁠’twas his favourite expression. “And do you think then,” he went on, bursting forth almost scornfully, in spite of his outward deference, “we Zillerthalers get our fine singing voices and our musical ears by pure chance and accident? Not so, you may be sure of it. It’s no mere coincidence that our men and women can almost without exception sing like birds from their childhood upwards by the light of Nature. What gives them this power? Why, they live their lives long, in summer especially, in the thin clear atmosphere of our higher mountains. There isn’t much sour-stuff in it⁠—⁠what do you call it in English?⁠—⁠oh, oxygen, don’t you? Wal, there isn’t much oxygen in that thin upper air⁠—⁠rarefied, I think you say⁠—⁠and therefore they’re obliged to fill their lungs well and expand their chests”⁠—⁠he swelled himself out as he spoke, and showed off his own splendid girth to the fullest advantage⁠—⁠“and that gives them large reservoirs and rich, pure-toned voices.”

“I never thought of that before,” Will Deverill interposed, much struck by the landlord’s plausible reasoning. “I suppose that’s why mountain races, like the Welsh and the Tyrolese, are so often musical. The rarefied air must tend to strengthen and develop the larynx.”

“No; you never thought of that before,” Andreas Hausberger echoed. “You haven’t had to think of it. And you haven’t had to select and train a choir of our Tyrolese peasants. But I have thought of it for years, and satisfied myself it’s true. Is it for nothing, do you suppose, that on our cold mountain tops the vocal chords, as they say, are braced up and tightened? Is it for nothing that in that clear, pure, limpid air the very nerves of the ear, strained hard to catch quickly at distant sounds, are exercised and educated? Do you think, if I wanted to pick out voices for a musical troupe, I would go for them to Holland, or to Lombardy, or to Hamburg? No, no; I would go right away to the gründe there, the upper forks of the Zillerthal, in the crystal air just below the glaciers, and pick out my best singers from the cow-boys and the alp-girls.”

He spoke of what he knew and had long reflected upon. Acquaintance with his subject supplied in part the unimportant deficiencies of his English vocabulary; and, besides, he had said the same things before a dozen times over, to other English travellers.

“Perhaps you may be right,” Florian responded, blandly, as the wirth paused for breath in his eager harangue. It was a way of Florian’s to be bland when he saw he was getting the worst of an argument.

“Right!” Andreas Hausberger repeated. “Never mind about that! You’d know I was right if only you’d seen as much of these people as I have. Look here, Mr Wood, you say it’s desecration to send a girl like Linnet after butter and cheese in a sennerin’s hut on the lonely mountains. You say I owe her voice as a treasure to humanity. Wal, I acknowledge the debt, and I try to discharge it to the best of my ability. I send her to the hills⁠—⁠the free open hills⁠—⁠where she will breathe fresh air, develop her throat and lungs, eat wholesome food, grow strong and brown and hearty. If I clothed her in purple and fine linen, as you wish, and fed her every day on champagne and turtle, do you really imagine I’d be doing her a good turn? I’d be ruining her voice for her. In the summer, she gains breath and good health on the grassy mountains; in the winter, she gets training and advice and assistance from Lindner and myself, and whatever other teachers we can find in the Zillerthal.”

“I surrender at discretion,” Florian answered, with a yawn, rising up and flinging his small person lazily on the home-made sofa. “I admit your contention. You interest me strangely. Your peasants and your country girls have finely developed ears and capital voices. No doubt you’re correct in attributing these splendid gifts to the clearness of the atmosphere and the wild life of the mountains. I’m a musical critic in London myself, and I know what a voice is the moment I hear it. Indeed, after all, what does it matter in the end if these divine creatures spend a joyless life for years in sordid and squalid surroundings, provided only, when they burst forth at last in the full effulgence of their musical prime, they afford us, who can appreciate them, and for whose sake they exist, one vivid thrill of pure artistic enjoyment?” And he stroked his own smooth and girlish cheek with one plump hand, lovingly.

“You’re a musical critic, are you?” Andreas Hausberger repeated, with marked interest, disregarding the last few words of Florian’s flowing rhapsody. “Then you shall hear Linnet sing. You can say after that whether I’m right in my system or not.” He opened the door hastily. “Linnet, Linnet,” he called out in the Tyrolese dialect, “come in here at once. I want the Herrschaft to hear you singing.”

For a minute after he spoke, there was a flutter and a rustling at the door outside; somebody seemed to be pushing some unwilling person bit by bit along the passage. A murmur of whispered voices in the local dialect floated faintly to Will’s ears. “You must!” “But I can’t.” “You shall!” “I won’t.” “He says you are to.” “Ah, no; I’m ashamed! Not before those gentlemen!”

In the end, as it seemed, the first voice had its way. The door opened brusquely, and Linnet, all trembling, her face in her hands, and crimson with shame, was pushed bodily forward by unseen arms into the strangers’ presence. For a moment she stood there like a frightened child. Will’s cheek burned hot with sympathetic tingling. Florian leaned back philosophically as he lay, and regarded this pretty picture of beauty in distress with observant complacency. She was charming, so, to be sure! That red flush became her.

“Sing to the gentlemen,” Andreas Hausberger said, calmly, in a tone of command. “Take your hands from your face at once; don’t behave like a baby.”

He spoke in German, but Florian followed him all the same. ’Twas delicious to watch this pretty little comedy of rustic ingenuousness.

“Oh, I can’t!” Linnet cried, all abashed, removing her hands for a second from her burning cheeks, and clasping them hard on her throbbing breast for one fiery moment before she clapped them up hastily again. “To bid one like this! It’s so hard! It’s so dreadful!”

“Don’t ask her just now,” Will Deverill put in pleadingly. “One can see she has such a natural shrinking and disinclination at first. Some other night, perhaps. When we’ve been here a little longer, she may be less afraid of us.”

Linnet let her hand drop once more, and gave him a grateful glance, sidling away towards the door like a timid child in her misery. But Andreas Hausberger, for his part, was not so to be put off. “No, no,” he said, sternly, fixing his eye with a determined gaze on the poor shrinking girl; “she must sing if I tell her to. That’s all right. This shyness is absurd. How can she ever appear on a platform, I should like to know, before a couple of hundred people, if she won’t sing here when she’s told before just you two Englishmen? Do as I bid you, Linnet! No nonsense, my girl! Stand here by the table, and give us ‘The Bride of Hinter-Dux.’ ”

Thus authoritatively commanded, poor Linnet took her stand where Andreas Hausberger motioned her, steadied herself with one trembling little fist on the edge of the table, raised her eyes to the ceiling away from the two young men, and, drawing a deep breath, with her throat held out and her mouth opened tremulously, began to trill forth, in her rich, silvery voice, a deep bell-like song of her own native mountain. For the first minute or two she was nervous, and quivered and paused unduly; after awhile, however, inborn artistic instinct overcame her nervousness: she let her eyes drop and rest in a flash once or twice on Will Deverill’s. They were kindly eyes, Will’s; they reassured and encouraged her. “Bravo!” they seemed to say; “you’re rendering it admirably.” Emboldened by his friendly glance, she took heart and went through with it. Towards the end, her courage and self-possession returned, for, like all Tyrolese, she was brave and self-reliant in her inmost soul, though shy at first sight, and bashful on the surface. The two last stanzas she sang to perfection. As she finished, Will looked up and said simply, “Thank you; that was beautiful, beautiful.” But Florian clapped his hands in obtrusive applause. “Well done!” he cried; “well done! you have given us such a treat. We can forgive Herr Hausberger now for insisting on a performance.”

“And you must accustom yourself to an audience,” the wirth said in German, with that same quiet air of iron resolution Will had already marked in him. “If ever you’re to face a whole roomful of people, you must be able first to come in upon the platform without all this silly fuss and hang-back nonsense.”

Linnet’s nostrils quivered. She steadied herself with her hand on the table once more, and made answer boldly, “I think I could more easily face a roomful of people I’d never seen than sing before two in the parlour of the inn here; that seems less personal. But,” she added shyly, with half an appealing glance towards Will, “I’m not so nervous now. If this gentleman wishes, I⁠—⁠I would sing another song to him?”

And so she did⁠—⁠a second and a third. As she went on, she grew braver, and sang each time more naturally. At last the wirth dismissed her. Linnet curtsied, and disappeared. “Well, what do you say to her now?” the landlord asked in a tone of triumph, turning round to the young men as the door closed behind her.

Florian assumed his most studiously judicial air. The perfect critic should, above all things, be critical. Before Linnet’s face, indeed, he had been enthusiastic enough, as politeness and due respect for her sex demanded; but behind her back, and in her teacher’s presence, regard for his reputation compelled him to adopt the severest tone of incorruptible impartiality. “I think,” he said slowly, fingering his chin in one hand, and speaking with great deliberation, like a recognised authority, “with time and training she ought to serve your purpose well for popular entertainments. Her organ, though undeveloped, is not wholly without some natural power and compass.”

“And I think,” Will Deverill added, with a glow of generous enthusiasm, “you’ve lighted on one of the very finest voices in all Europe.”

CHAPTER VI

THE ROBBLER

A day or two passed, and the young men from time to time saw, by glimpses and snatches, a good deal of Linnet. For now the summer season on the hills was over, and the cows had come back to their stall-fed existence, the musical alp-girl had leisure on her hands for household duties. In the morning she helped in the general work of the inn; in the afternoon she practised much in the parlour upstairs with Andreas Hausberger and his little company. But in the evenings,⁠—⁠ah, then, the landlord brought her in more than once, by special request, to sing her native songs to Will Deverill’s accompaniment on the lame old fiddle from the corner cupboard. Those were pleasant meetings enough. Gradually the mountain lass grew less afraid of the strangers; she talked German more freely with Will Deverill now, and considerably enlarged her English vocabulary by listening to Florian’s richly-worded harangues on men, women, and things, and the musical glasses. It surprised Florian not a little, however, to see that this child of Nature, unlike the ladies of culture in London drawing-rooms, positively preferred Will’s society to his own, if such a fact seems credible; though he explained away in part this unaccountable defect of taste and instinct in one female heart by the reflection that, after all, Will was able to converse with her in her own language. His own finer points she could hardly understand; his words were too deep, his thoughts were too high for her. Still, it annoyed him that even an unsophisticated alp-girl should display so singular and so marked a predilection for any other man when he was present. Indeed, he half made up his mind, irksome as he felt sure the task would prove, to learn German at once, as a safeguard against so humiliating a contretemps in future.

In the early part of the next week, Will proposed one day they should mount the hills behind St Valentin, in search of a rare fern he was anxious to secure before the snows of winter. Andreas Hausberger, nodding his head, had heard of it before. It was a well-known rarity; all botanists who came to the Zillerthal, he said, were sure to go in search of it. “But I’m not a botanist,” Will burst out deprecatingly, for to admit that fell impeachment is to number yourself outright in the dismal roll of scientific Dryasdusts; “I only want the plants because I love them.”

“That’s all right,” Andreas answered, in his accustomed phrase. “You want the plant, anyway. That’s the chief thing, ain’t it? Wal, there’s only one place anywhere about St Valentin that it ever grows, and that’s the Tuxerloch; without somebody to guide you there you’d never find it.”

“Oh, I won’t have a guide,” Will responded, hastily. “I hate to be guided. It’s too ignominious. If I can’t find my own way about low mountains like these, in the forest region, I’d prefer to lose it; and I certainly won’t pay a man to show me where the fern is.”

“Certainly not,” the wirth answered, with true Tyrolese thrift. “I didn’t mean that. Why waste your money on one of the regular guides, who charge you five florins for eating half your lunch for you? But Linnet knows the way as well as any trained guide of them. It’s not a hard road; she’ll go along with you and show you it.”

“Oh, dear no,” Will replied, with a little hurried embarrassment, for he felt it would be awkward to be thrown all day into the society of a young girl in so equivocal a position. “I’m sure we can find the way all right ourselves. There are woodcutters on the hills we can ask about the path; and if it comes to that, I really don’t mind whether I find it or not⁠—⁠it’s only by way of goal for a day’s expedition.”

Andreas Hausberger, however, was an imperious soul. “Linnet shall go,” he said, shortly, without making more words about it. “She has nothing else to do. It’s bad for her to be cooped up in the house too much. A long walk on the hills will be no end of good for her. That’s what I always say; when young women come down from the mountains in winter, they do themselves harm by changing their mode of life all at once too suddenly, and living in close rooms without half the exercise they used to take on the alp with their milking and churning.”

So, whether they would or not, the two young men were compelled in the end to put up as best they might with Linnet’s guidance and company. No great hardship either, Will thought to himself, as Linnet, bare-headed, but in her Sunday best, led the way up the green slopes behind the village inn, with the bounding gait of a holiday alp-girl. As to Florian, his soul was in the seventh heavens. To see that Oread’s light foot trip gracefully over the lawns was to him pure joy⁠—⁠a stray breath of Hellas. What Hellas was like, to be sure⁠—⁠the arid Hellas of reality⁠—⁠with its dusty dry hills and its basking rocks, Florian had not in his own soul the very faintest conception. But still, the Hellenic ideal was none the less near and dear to him. From stray scraps of Theocritus and his inner consciousness he had constructed for himself an Arcadia of quite Alpine greenness, and had peopled it with lithe maidens of uncircumscribed affections. So, whenever he wanted to give anything in heaven or earth the highest praise in his power, he observed with an innocent smile that it was utterly Hellenic.

Linnet led them on, talking unaffectedly as she went, by long ridge-like spurs, up vague trails through the woods, and over spongy pastures. As elsewhere on their walks, Florian noted here and there little whitewashed shrines at every turn of the road, and endless rude crucifixes where ghastly white limbs seemed to writhe and struggle in realistic torture. Of a sudden, by one of these, Linnet dropped on her knees⁠—⁠all at once without a word of warning; she dropped as if mechanically, her lips moving meanwhile in muttered prayer. Florian gazed at her curiously; Will stood by expectant, in a reverent and mutely sympathetic attitude. For some minutes the girl knelt there, murmuring low to herself. As she rose from her knees, she turned gravely to Will. “Here my father has died,” she said, with solemn slowness in her broken English. “He has slipped from that rock. The fall has killed him. Will you say, for his soul’s repose, before you go, a Vaterunser?”

She looked up at him pleadingly, as if she thought the prayers of so great a gentleman must carry weight of their own in Our Lady’s councils. With infinite gentleness, Will bowed his head in acquiescence, and, after a moment’s hesitation, not to hurt her feelings, dropped on his knees himself and bent his neck in silent prayer before the tawdry little oratory. It was one of those rough shrines, painted by unskilled fingers, where naked souls in rude flames of purgatory plead for aid with clasped hands and outstretched arms to placidly unheeding blue-robed Madonnas. Underneath, an inscription, with N’s turned the wrong way, and capitals mixed with smaller letters, informed the passer-by that, “Here, on the 20th of August 188-, the virtuous guide and experienced woodcutter, Josef Telser of St Valentin, perished by a fall from a slippery rock during a dangerous thunderstorm. The pious wanderer is hereby implored to say three Paternosters, of his charitable good-will, to redeem a tortured soul from the fires of purgatory.”

Will knelt there for a minute or two, muttering the Paternosters out of pure consideration for Linnet’s sensitive feelings. When he rose from his knees again, he saw the girl herself had moved off a little way to pick a few bright ragworts and Michaelmas daisies that still lingered on these bare heights, for a bouquet to lay before the shrine of Our Lady. Like all her countrywomen, she was profoundly religious⁠—⁠or, if you choose to put it so, profoundly superstitious. (’Tis the point of view alone that makes all the difference.) Florian, a little apart, with his hand on his cheek and his head on one side, eyed the oratory sentimentally. “How sweet it is,” he said, after a pause, with an expansive smile, “to see this poor child, with her childlike faith, thus throwing herself on her knees in filial submission before her father’s cenotaph! How delightful is the sentiment that prompts such respect for the memory of the dead! How eloquent must be the words of her simple colophon!” Florian was fond of colophons; he didn’t know what they were, but he always thought them so very Hellenic!

Will’s face was graver. With one finger he pointed to the uncompromising flames of that most material purgatory. “I’m afraid,” he said, seriously, “to her, poor child, this act of worship envisages itself in a very different fashion. She prays to hasten the escape of her father’s soul from what she takes to be a place of very genuine torture.”

Florian looked closer. As yet, he had never observed the subsidiary episode of the spirits in their throes of fiery torment, which forms a component part of all these wayside oratories. He inspected the rude design with distant philosophical interest. “This is quaint,” he said, “most quaint. I admire its art immensely. The point about it all that particularly appeals to me is the charming superiority of Our Lady’s calm soul to the essentially modern vice of pity. There she sits on her throne, unswerved and unswerving, not even deigning to contemplate with that marked squint in her eye the extremely unpleasant and uncomfortable position of her petitioners beneath her. I admire it very much. I find it quite Etruscan.”

“To you and me⁠—⁠yes, quaint⁠—⁠nothing more than that,” Will responded, soberly; “but to Linnet, it’s all real⁠—⁠fire, flames, and torments; she believes what she sees there.”

As he spoke, the girl came back, with her nosegay in her hand, and, tying it round with a thread from a little roll in her pocket, laid it reverently on the shrine with a very low obeisance. “You see,” she said to Will, speaking in English once more, for Andreas Hausberger wished her to take advantage of this unusual opportunity for acquiring the language, “my poor father is killed in the middle of his sins; he falls from the rock and is taken up dead; there is no priest close by; he has not confessed; he has not had absolution; he has no viaticum; no oil to anoint him. That makes it that he must go straight down to purgatory.” And she clasped her hands as she spoke in very genuine sympathy.

“Then all these shrines,” Florian said, looking up a little surprised, “are they all of them where somebody has been killed by accident?”

“The most of them,” Linnet answered, as who should say of course; “so many of our people are that way killed, you see; it is thunderstorms, or snow-slides, or trees that fall, or floods on rivers, things that I cannot say, for I know not the names how to speak them in English. And, as no priest is by, so shall they go to purgatory. For that, we make shrines to release them from their torments.”

They had gone on their way by this time, and reached a corner of the path where it turned abruptly in zig-zags round a great rocky precipice. Just as they drew abreast of it, and were passing the corner, a young man came suddenly on them from the opposite direction. He was a fiery young man, dressed in the native Tyrolese costume of real life; his hand held a rifle; his conical hat was gaily decked behind, like most of his countrymen’s, with a blackcock’s feather. The stranger’s mien was bold⁠—⁠nay, saucy and defiant. He looked every inch a typical Alpine jäger. As he confronted them he paused, and glared for a moment at Linnet. Next instant he raised his hat with half-sarcastic politeness; then, in a very rapid voice, he said something to their companion in a patois so pronounced that Will Deverill himself, familiar as he was with land and people, could make nothing out of it. But Linnet, unabashed, answered him back once or twice in the same uncouth dialect. Their colloquy grew warm. The stranger seemed angry; he waved his hand toward the Englishmen, and appeared, as Will judged, to be asking their pretty guide what she did in such company. As for Linnet, her answers were evidently of the sort which turneth away wrath, though on this hot-headed young man they were ineffectually bestowed. He stamped his foot once or twice; then he turned to Will Deverill.

“Who sent you out with the sennerin?” he asked, haughtily, in good German.

Will answered him back with calm but cold politeness. “Herr Hausberger, our wirth,” he said, “asked the Fräulein to accompany us, as she knew the place where a certain fern I wished to find on the hills was growing.”

“I know where it grows myself,” the jäger replied, with a defiant air. “Let her go back to the inn; it is far for her to walk. I can show you the way to it.”

“Certainly not,” Will retorted, in most decided tones. “The Fräulein has been good enough to accompany us thus far; I can’t allow her now to go back alone to the village.”

“She’s used to it,” the man said, gruffly, with half a sneer, his fingers twitching.

“That may be,” Will retorted, with quiet self-possession; “but I’m not used to allowing her to do so.”

For a minute the stranger put one sturdy foot forward, held his head haughtily, with his hat on one side, and half lifted his fist, as if inclined to rush forthwith upon the offending Englishman, and settle the question between them then and there by open violence. But Linnet, biting her lip and knitting her brow in suspense, rushed in to separate them. “Take care what you do,” she cried hurriedly in English to Will. “Don’t let him strike. Stand away of him. He’s a Robbler!”

“A what?” Will replied, half smiling at her eagerness, for he was not at all alarmed himself by her truculent fellow-countryman.

“A Robbler,” Linnet repeated, looking up at him pleadingly. “You know not what that is? Then will I tell you quickly. The feather in his hat, it is turned the wrong way. When a Tyrolese does so, he wills thereby to say he will make himself a Robbler. Therefore, if any one speaks angry to him, it is known he will strike back. It is⁠—⁠I cannot say what it means in English, but it invites to fight; it is the sign of a challenge.”

“Well, Robbler or no Robbler, I’m not afraid of him,” Will answered, with quiet determination; “and if he will fight, why, of course, he must take what he gets for it.”

“Perhaps,” Linnet said, simply, gazing back at him, much surprised, “in your own country you are also a Robbler.”

The naïveté of her remark made Will laugh in spite of himself. That laugh saved bloodshed. The Tyrolese, on his part, seeing the absurdity of the situation all at once, broke into a smile himself; and, with that unlucky smile, his sole claim to Robblerhood vanished incontinently. Linnet saw her advantage. In a moment, she had poured into the young man’s ear a perfect flood of explanatory eloquence in their native dialect. Gradually the Robbler’s defiant attitude relaxed; his face grew calmer; he accepted her account. Then he turned to Will with a more mollified manner: “You may go on,” he said, graciously, with a regal nod of his head; “I allow the sennerin to continue her way with you.”

As for Will, he felt half inclined, at first, to resent the lordly air of the Robbler’s concession. On second thoughts, however, for Linnet’s sake, in his ignorance of who the young man might be, and the nature of his claim upon her, he judged it better to avoid any quarrel of any sort with a native of the valley. So he raised his hat courteously, and let the stranger depart, with a very bad grace, along the road to the village.

“What did you tell him?” he asked of Linnet, as the Robbler went his way, singing defiantly to himself, down the grassy zig-zag.

“Oh, I told him,” Linnet answered, with a little flush of excitement, “Andreas Hausberger had sent me that you might teach me English.”

“Is he your brother?” Will asked, not that he thought that likely, but because it was less pointed than if he had asked her outright, “Is this young man your lover?”

Linnet shook her head. “Ah, no,” she answered, with a very decided air; “he’s nothing at all to me⁠—⁠not even my friend. I do not so much as care for him. He’s only Franz Lindner. But then, he was jealous because he see that I walk with you. He has no right of that; I am not anything to him; yet still he must be jealous if somebody speak to me. It is because he is a Robbler, and must do like that. A Robbler shall always fight if any man shall walk or talk with his maiden. Though I am not his maiden, but he would have me to be it. So will he fight with anyone who shall walk or talk with me. But when I tell him Andreas Hausberger send me that I may learn English, then he go away quietly. For Franz Lindner, or any other Robbler, will not fight with a stranger so well as with a Tyroler.”

CHAPTER VII

WAGER OF BATTLE

That evening at the Wirthshaus, as things turned out, Will and Florian had an excellent opportunity afforded them of observing for themselves the manners and customs of the Tyrolese Robbler. There was a dance at the inn⁠—⁠a prodigious dance, of truly national severity. It was the eve of a wedding, and, as is usual on such occasions, the peasants of the neighbourhood had assembled in full force to drink good luck to the forthcoming union. The Gaststube or bar-room was crowded with a gay throng of bright and merry faces. The young men were there, jaunty, bold, and defiant; the old men, austere and stern of feature from the hardships of long life among the grim-faced mountains. Groups of black-eyed lasses stood about the room and bandied repartee with their gaily-dressed admirers; matrons, unspoilt by conventional restraint, instead of checking their mirth, looked on smiling and abetting them. Through the midst, the Herr Vicar strolled, stout and complaisant, an easy-going man; not his to stem the tide of their innocent merriment; so long as they confessed twelve times a year, and subscribed to release their parents’ souls from purgatory, he sanctified by his presence the beer and the dances. Andreas Hausberger, too, flitted here and there through the crowd with an anxious eye; ’twas his task to provide for and protect the bodies of his guests, as ’twas the Herr Vicar’s to save their priceless souls from undue temptation.

At one end of the room, on a little raised platform, the music sat installed;⁠—⁠a trombone, a zither, and a wooden hackbrettle made up the whole orchestra. Scarcely had the performers struck up an enlivening tune when the men, selecting as partners the girls of their choice, began to dance round the hall in the very peculiar and (to say the whole truth) extremely ungraceful Tyrolean fashion. Will and Florian had heard from the landlord beforehand of the expected feast, to which they were not invited; but, “at the sound of the harp, sackbut, psaltery, and all kinds of music,” as Florian phrased it, their curiosity was so deeply aroused that they crept from their sitting-room and peeped cautiously in at the door of the Tanzboden. The sight that met their eyes in that close-packed hall was sufficiently striking. Even Florian allowed this was utterly Arcadian. For a minute or two, just at first, the young men and maidens, grasping each other wildly round the neck and waist with both their arms, in a sort of bear-like death-hug, whirled and eddied in a maze round and round the room, stamping their heavy boots, till Will almost trembled for the stability of the rafters. For some time that was all: they twisted and twirled in closely-coupled pairs, clasped breast to breast, like so many dancing dervishes. But, of a sudden, at a change of the music, as if by magic, with one accord, the whole figure altered. Each man, letting his partner go, began suddenly to perform a series of strange antics and evolutions around her, the relics of some pre-historic dance, of which the snapping of fingers and uttering of heuchs in a Highland fling are but a faint and colourless reminiscence. As the reel went on, the music grew gradually faster and faster, and the motions of the men still more savage and fantastic. The two Englishmen looked on in astonishment and admiration. Such agility and such verve they had never before seen or even dreamt of. Could these rustic cavaliers be really made of india-rubber? They twisted and turned and contorted themselves all the time with such obliviousness of their bones, and such extraordinary energy! They smacked their lips and tongues as they went; they jumped high into the air; they bent back till their heads touched the ground behind; they bounded upright once more to regain their position like elastic puppets, and, in between whiles, they slapped their resounding thighs with their horny hands; they crowed like cocks; they whistled like capercailzie; they stamped on the ground with their hob-nailed shoes; they shouted and sang, and clicked their tongues in their cheeks, and made unearthly noises deep down in their throats for which language has as yet no articulate equivalent. Florian gazed and glowered. And well he might; ’twas an orgie of strange sound, a phantasmagoria of whirling and eddying motion.

While all this was going on, the two young Englishmen stood undecided and observant by the lintel of the door, even Florian half-abashed at so much unwonted merriment. But after a while, the Herr Vicar, whose acquaintance they had already made among the stones of the churchyard, spied them out by the entrance, and, with one hospitable fat forefinger extended and crooked, beckoned them into the Tanzboden. “Come on,” he cried, “come on; there’s room enough for all; our people are still glad to entertain the Herr strangers: for some, unawares, have thus entertained angels.”

So encouraged by the authorised mouthpiece of the parish, Will and Florian stepped boldly into the crowded room, and watched the little groups of stalwart young men and nut-brown lasses with all the interest of unexpected novelty. The scene was indeed a picturesque and curious one. Every Tyrolese is, or has been, or wishes to be thought, a mountain hunter. So each man wore his hat, adorned with the trophies of his prowess in the chase; with some, ’twas a gamsbart, or so-called chamois’ beard⁠—⁠the tuft of coarse hair that grows high like a crest along the creature’s back in the pairing season; with others, ’twas the tail-feathers of the glossy blackcock, stuck saucily on one side, with that perky air of self-satisfied assurance so characteristic of hot youth in the true-born Tyroler. Glancing around the room, however, Will saw at a single look that two young men alone among that eager crowd wore their feathers with a difference⁠—⁠the “hook” being turned round in the opposite direction from all their neighbours’. One of these two was a tall and big-built young man of very florid complexion, with a scar on his forehead; the other was their fiery friend of that morning on the hills, Franz Lindner. From what Linnet had said, Will guessed at once by the turn of the feather that both young men went in for being considered Robblers.

As he turned to impart his conjecture to Florian, Linnet caught his eye mutely from a corner by the mantelpiece. She wasn’t taking part in the reel herself, so, undaunted by his experience of Franz Lindner that day, Will strolled over to her side, followed close at heel by Florian. “You don’t dance?” he said, bending over her with as marked politeness as he would have shown to a lady in a London drawing-room.

“No; I may not,” Linnet answered, in her pretty broken English, with a smile of not unnatural womanly pleasure that the strangers should thus single her out before all her folk for so much personal attention. “I have refuse Franz Lindner, so may I not dance this time with any one. It is our custom so. When a girl shall refuse to dance with a man first, she may not that turn accept any other. Nor may he, in turn, ask her again that evening.”

“How delightful!” Florian cried, effusively. “Franz Lindner’s loss is our gain, Fräulein Linnet. No; don’t frown at me like that; it must be Fräulein; I’ve too much respect for you to call you otherwise. But, anyhow, we’ll sit out this dance and talk with you.”

“And I,” Will put in with a quiet smile, “I’ll call you Linnet, because you prefer it.”

“Thank you,” Linnet said, shyly, with a grateful flash of her eyes, and a side glance towards Franz Lindner; “it seems less as if you mock at me.”

As they spoke, the figure changed of a sudden once more to a still stranger movement. The women, falling apart, massed themselves together in a central group, in attitudes expressive of studied indifference and inattention to the men; their partners, on the contrary, placing themselves full in front of them, began a series of most extraordinary twists and twirls, accompanied by loud cries or snapping of fingers, and endeavoured by every means in the power, both of lungs and limbs, to compel their disdainful coquettes to take notice of their antics. While they stood there and watched⁠—⁠Linnet with eyes askance on Franz Lindner’s face⁠—⁠Andreas Hausberger strolled up, and took his place beside them.

“Why, that’s the blackcock’s call!” Will exclaimed, with a start of recognition, as the dancers, with one accord, uttered all in a chorus a shrill and piercing note of challenge and defiance. “I’ve heard it on the mountains.”

“Yes,” the wirth assented; “that’s the blackcock’s call, and this, that they’re doing, is the blackcock’s love-dance. In the springtime, on the mountains, you know, the blackcocks and the grey hens assemble in their dancing place⁠—⁠their Tanzboden we call it, just the same as we call this one. There, the hens stand aside, and pretend to be coy, and take no notice of their mates, like the girls in this dance here; while the blackcock caper in front of them, and flap their wings, and fluff their necks, and do all they know to display their strength and beauty. Whoever dances the most and best, gets most of the hens to join his harem. So our young men have got up this love-dance to imitate them; they flap their arms the same way, and give the blackcock’s challenge. Nature’s pretty much the same above and below, I guess⁠—⁠especially here in the Tyrol, where we haven’t yet learned to hide our feelings under smooth silk hats as you do in England. But it’s all good for trade, and that’s the great thing. It makes them thirsty. You’ll see, after this bout, the beer will flow like water.”

And, sure enough, the wirth was right. As soon as the dance was ended, young men and maidens, with equal zest, betook themselves, all alike, to the consolations of the beer-jug. Their thirst was mighty. And no wonder, indeed, for this Tyrolese dancing is no drawing-room game, but hard muscular exercise. Andreas Hausberger looked on with a cynical smile on those thin, cold lips of his. “It’s good for trade,” he murmured again, half to himself, once or twice, as the girls at the bar filled the beer-mugs merrily; “very good for trade. So are all amusements. That’s the way the foolish get rid of their money⁠—⁠and the wise get hold of it.”

After the beer came a pause, a long, deep-drawn pause; and then two young men, standing out from the throng, began to sing alternately at one another in short Tyrolese stanzas. One of them was Franz Lindner; the other was the young man with the scar on his forehead, whom Linnet described as her cousin Fridolin. What they sang, neither Florian nor Will could make out, for the words of the song were in the roughest form of the mountain dialect; but it was clear from their manner, and the way they flung out their words point blank at one another’s heads, that they improvised as they went, like Virgilian shepherds, and that their remarks were by no means either polite or complimentary in substance or character. The rest stood round in a circle and listened, laughing heartily at times as each in turn scored a point now and then off his angry rival; while Linnet and the other girls blushed again and again at some audacious retort, though the bolder among the women only tittered to themselves or looked up with arch glances at each risky allusion. Andreas Hausberger too, stood by, all alert to keep the peace; it was plain from the quick light in his resolute eye, and the rapid upward movement of his twitching hand, he was ready at a moment’s notice to intervene between the combatants, and put a stop in the nick of time to the scoffing contest of defiance and derision.

The song, however, passed off without serious breach of the peace. Then more dances followed, more beer, and more bucolic contests. As the evening wore on, the fun grew fast and furious. On the stroke of twelve, the Herr Vicar withdrew⁠—⁠not one hour too early; his flock were fast getting beyond control of his counsels. Linnet and a few others of the more modest-looking girls now sat out from the dance; the rest continued to whirl round and round the room in still wilder and more fantastic movements than ever. Andreas Hausberger was now yet more clearly on the alert. A stray spark would raise a flame in that magazine of gunpowder. Suddenly, at the end of the first dance after the priest’s departure, the young man with the scar on his forehead, called Cousin Fridolin, came forward unexpectedly to where Linnet sat aside between Will Deverill and Florian. He had danced with her once before in the course of the evening, and Will observed that through that dance Franz Lindner’s eyes had never been taken off his rival and Linnet. But now the tall young man came forward with a dash, and without one word of warning, placed his conical hat, blackcock’s feather and all, with a jodel of challenge, on Linnet’s forehead. They had seen the same thing done before more than once that evening, and Linnet had explained to them that the custom was equivalent to a declaration of love for the lady so honoured⁠—⁠’twas as much as to say, “This girl is mine; who disputes it?” But as the tall young man stood back with a smile of triumph on his handsome lips, one hand on his hip, staring fixedly at Linnet, Franz Lindner sprang forth with a face as black as night, and a brow like thunder. Trembling with rage, he seized the hat from her head, and tore hastily from its band the offending plume. “Was kost die Feder?” he cried, in a tone of angry contempt, holding it up in his hand before the eyes of its owner; “Was kost die Feder?” which is, being interpreted, “How much for your feather?”

Quick as lightning, the answer rang out, “Fünf Finger und ein Griff”⁠—⁠“Five fingers and a grip.” It is the customary challenge of the Tyrolese Robbler, and the customary acceptance.

Before Will had time to understand what was happening next, in the crack of a finger, in the twinkle of an eye, the two young men had closed, with hands and arms and bodies, and were grappling with each other in a deadly struggle. All night long they had been watching and provoking one another; all night long they had vied in their attentions to Linnet, and their studious interchange of mutual insults. Sooner or later a fight seemed inevitable. Now, flown with insolence and beer, and heated from the dance, they flung themselves together, with one accord, like two tigers in their fury. Linnet clapped her hands to her ears, and shut her eyes in horror. For a minute or two, it seemed to every looker-on as though there would be bloodshed in the inn that evening. Florian observed this little episode with philosophic interest; ’twas pleasant to watch these simple dramas of the primary emotions⁠—⁠love, jealousy, passion⁠—⁠still working themselves out as on the stage of Hellas. He had never before seen them so untrammelled in their play; he stood here face to face with Homeric simplicity.

In five minutes, however, to his keen disappointment, the whole scene was finished. Andreas Hausberger, that cool, calm man of the world, perceiving at a glance that such contests in his inn were very bad for trade, and that ’twould be a pity for him to lose by a violent death so good a singer, or so constant a customer, interposed his heavy hand between the angry combatants. Your half-tipsy man, be he even a Tyrolese, though often quarrelsome, is usually placable. A short explanation soon set everything right again. Constrained by Herr Andreas, with his imperious will, the two Robblers consented, after terms interchanged, to drown their differences in more mugs of beer, and then retire for the evening. The young man with the scar, whom they called Cousin Fridolin, regretted that he had interfered with Franz Lindner’s maiden, but excused his act as a mere hasty excess of cousinly feeling. Franz Lindner in return, not to be outdone in magnanimity, though still with flashing eyes, and keen side-glance at Linnet, regretted that he had offered such indignity in his haste to the dishonoured symbol of his comrade’s championship. Hands were shaken all round; cuts and bruises were tended; and, almost as soon as said, to Florian’s infinite disgust, the whole party had settled down by the tables once more, on an amicable basis, to beer and conversation.

But before they retired from that evening’s revel, Linnet murmured to Will in a tone of remonstrance very real and aggrieved, “Franz Lindner had no right to call me his Mädchen.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE HUMAN HEART

Next morning Will woke of himself very early. He jumped out of bed at once, and crossed, as he stood, to the open window. The sun had just risen. Light wisps of white cloud crawled slowly up the mountains; the dewdrops on the grass-blades sparkled in the silent rays like innumerable opals. ’Twas the very time for an early stroll! But the air, though keen, had the rawness and chill of an autumn morning. Will sniffed at it dubiously. He had half a mind to turn in again and take an hour’s more sleep. Should he dress and go out, or let the world have time to get warmed and aired before venturing abroad in it?

As he debated and shivered, however, a sight met his eye which determined him at once on the more heroic course of action. It was Linnet, in her simple little peasant dress, turning up the hill-path that led behind the wirthshaus. Now, a chance of seeing Linnet alone without Florian was not to be despised; she interested him so much, and, besides, he wanted to ask her the whole truth about the Robblers. Without more ado, therefore, he dressed himself hastily, and strolled out of the inn. She hadn’t gone far, he felt sure; he would find her close by, sitting by herself on the open grass-slope beyond the belt of pinewood.

And so, sure enough, he did. He came upon her unseen. She was seated with her back to him on a round boulder of grey stone, pouring her full throat in spontaneous music. For a minute or two, Will stood still, and listened and looked at her. He could see from his point of vantage, a little on one side behind the boulder, the rise and fall of her swelling bosom, the delicate trills under her rich brown chin. And then⁠—⁠oh, what melody! Will drank it in greedily. He was loth to disturb her, so delicious was this outpouring of her soul in song. For, like her namesake of the woods, Linnet sang best when she sang of her own accord, delivering her full heart of pure internal impulse.

At last she ceased, and turned. Her eye fell upon Will She started and blushed; she had expected no such audience. The young man raised his hat. “You’re alone,” he said, “Linnet?”

The girl looked up all crimson. “Yes; I came out that I should be alone,” she answered, shyly, “I did not wish to see anyone. I wished for time to think many things over.”

“Then you don’t want me to stop?” Will broke in, somewhat crestfallen, yet drawing a step nearer.

“Oh, no; I do not mean that,” Linnet answered in haste, laying her hand on her bosom. Then she burst into German, which came so much easier to her. “I wanted to get away from all the others,” she said, looking up at him pleadingly⁠—⁠and, as she looked, Will saw for the first time that big tears stood brimming in her lustrous eyes; “I knew they would tease me about⁠—⁠about what happened last evening, and I didn’t wish to hear it till I had thought over with myself what way I should answer them.”

“Then you’re not afraid of me?” Will asked, with a little thrill. She was only an alp-girl, but she sang like a goddess; and it’s always pleasant, you know, to find a woman trusts one.

“I want you to stop,” Linnet answered, simply.

She motioned him with one hand to a seat on a little heap of dry stones hard by. Will threw himself down on the heap in instant obedience to her mute command, and leaned eagerly forward. “Well, so this Robbler man wants to have you, Linnet,” he said, with some earnestness; “and you don’t want to have him. And he would have fought for you last night, against the man with the scar; and the girls in the inn will tease you about it this morning.”

“Yes; the girls will tease me,” Linnet answered, “and will say cruel things, for some of them are not fond of me, because, you see, Franz Lindner and the other man, my cousin Fridolin, are both of them Robblers, and would both of them fight for me. Now, a village that has a Robbler is always very proud of him; he’s its champion and head; and if a Robbler pays attention to a girl, it’s a very great honour. So some of the other girls don’t like it at all, that the Robblers of two villages should quarrel about me. Though Gott in Himmel knows I’ve not encouraged either of them.”

“And would you marry Franz Lindner?” Will asked, with genuine interest. It seemed to him a pity⁠—⁠nay, almost a desecration⁠—⁠that this beautiful girl, with her splendid voice, and all the possibilities it might enclose for the future, should throw herself away upon a Tyrolese hunter, whom the self-confidence engendered by mere muscular strength had turned for local eyes into a petty hero.

“No; I don’t think I would marry him,” Linnet answered, after a short pause, with a deliberative air, as though weighing well in her own mind all the pros and cons of it. “He’d take me if I chose, no doubt, and so also would Fridolin. Franz says he has left three other girls for me. But I don’t like him, of course, any better for that. He ought to have kept to them.”

“And you like him?” Will went on, drawing circles with his stick on the grass as he spoke, and glancing timidly askance at her.

“Yes; I like him⁠—⁠well enough,” Linnet responded, doubtfully. “I liked him better once, perhaps. But of late, I care less for him. I never cared for him much indeed; I was never his Mädchen. He had no right to say that, no right at all, at all⁠—⁠for with us, you know, in Tyrol, that means a great deal. How much, I couldn’t tell you. But I never gave him any cause at all to say so.”

“And of late you like him less?” Will inquired, pressing her hard with this awkward question. Yet he spoke sympathetically. He had no reason for what he said, to be sure⁠—⁠no reason on earth. He spoke at random, out of that pure instinctive impulse which leads every man in a pretty girl’s presence, mean he little or much, to make at least the best of every passing advantage. ’Tis pure virility that: the natural Adam within us. I wouldn’t give ten cents for the too virtuous man who by “ethical culture” has educated it out of him.

Linnet looked down at her shoes⁠—⁠for she possessed those luxuries. “Yes; of late I like him less,” she answered, somewhat tremulously.

“Why so?” Will insisted. His lips, too, quivered.

Linnet raised her dark eyes and met his for one instant. “I’ve seen other people since; perhaps I like other people better,” she answered, candidly.

“What other people?” Will asked, all on fire.

“Oh, that would be telling,” Linnet answered, with an arch look. “Perhaps my cousin Fridolin⁠—⁠or perhaps the young man with the yellow beard⁠—⁠or perhaps the gnädige Herr’s honoured friend, Herr Florian.”

Will drew figures with his stick on the grass for a minute or two. Then he looked up and spoke again. “But, in any case,” he said, “you don’t mean, whatever comes, to marry Franz Lindner?” It grieved him to think she should so throw herself away upon a village bully.

Linnet plucked a yellow ragwort and pulled out the ray-florets one by one as she answered, “I shan’t have the chance. For, to tell you the truth, I think Andreas Hausberger means himself to marry me.”

At the words, simply spoken, Will drew back, all aghast. The very notion revolted him. As yet, he was not the least little bit in his own soul aware he was in love with Linnet. He only knew he admired her voice very much; for the rest, she was but a simple, beautiful, unlettered peasant girl. It doesn’t occur, of course, to an English gentleman in Will Deverill’s position, to fall in love at first sight with a Tyrolese milkmaid. But Andreas Hausberger! the bare idea distressed him. The man was so cold, so cynical, so austere, so unlovable! and Will more than half-suspected him of avaricious money-grubbing. The girl was so beautiful, so simple-hearted, so young, and Heaven only knew to what point of success that voice might lead her. “Oh no,” he burst out, impetuously; “you can’t really mean that?⁠—⁠you never could dream⁠—⁠don’t tell me you could⁠—⁠of accepting that man Andreas Hausberger as a husband!”

“Why not?” the girl said, calmly. “He’s rich and well to do. I could keep my mother in such comfort then, and pay for such masses for my father’s soul⁠—⁠far more than if I took Franz Lindner or my cousin Fridolin, who are only jägers. Andreas Hausberger’s a wirth, the richest man in St Valentin; he has horses and cows and lands and pastures. And if he says I must, how can I well refuse him?”

She looked up at him with a look of childlike appeal. In a moment, though with an effort, Will realised to himself how the question looked to her. Andreas Hausberger was her master, and had always been her master. She must do as he bid, for he was very masterful. He was her teacher, too, and would help her to make her fortune as a singer in the world, if ever she made it. He was rich, as the folk of the village counted riches, and could manage that things should be pleasant or unpleasant for her, as it suited his fancy. In a community where men still fought with bodily arms for their brides, Andreas Hausberger’s will might well seem law to his sennerin in any such matter.

“Besides,” Linnet went on, plucking another ragwort, and similarly demolishing it, “if I didn’t want to take him, the Herr Vicar would make me. For the Herr Vicar would do, of course, as Andreas Hausberger wished him. And how could I dare disobey the Herr Vicar’s orders?”

To this subtle question of religion and morals Will Deverill, for his part, had no ready-made answer. Church and State, it was clear, were arrayed against him. So, after casting about for a while in his own mind in vain for a reply, he contented himself at last with going off obliquely on a collateral issue. “And you think,” he said, “Andreas Hausberger really wants to marry you?”

“Well, he never quite told me so,” Linnet replied, half-deprecatingly, as who fears to arrogate to herself too great an honour, “and perhaps I’m wrong; but still I think he means it. And I think it’ll perhaps depend in part upon how he finds the foreign Herrschaft like my singing. For that, he says little to me about it at present. But if he sees I do well, and am worth making his wife⁠—⁠for he’s the best husband a girl could get in St Valentin⁠—⁠in that case, ja wohl, I believe he’ll ask me.”

She said it all naturally, as so much matter of course. But Will’s poetic soul rebelled against the sacrifice. “Surely,” he cried, “you must love some one else; and why not, then, take the man you love, whoever he may be, and leave Andreas Hausberger’s money to perish with him?”

“So!” Linnet said quickly⁠—⁠the pretty German “so!” Her fingers trembled as she twitched at the rays of the ragwort. She plucked the florets in haste, and flung them away one by one. First love’s conversation deals largely in pauses. “The man one might love,” she murmured at last with a petulant air, “doesn’t always love one. How should he, indeed? It is not in nature. For, doesn’t the song say, ‘Who loves me, love I not; whom I love, loves me not?’ But what would the Herr Vicar say if he heard me talking like this with the foreign gentlefolk? He’d tell me it was sin. A girl should not speak of her heart to strangers. I have spoken too much. But I couldn’t help it, somehow. The gnädige Herr is always so kind to me. You lead me on to confess. You can understand these things, I think, so much better than the others.”

She rose, half-hesitating. Will Deverill, for his part, rose in turn and faced her. For a second each paused; they looked shyly at one another. Will thought her a charming girl⁠—⁠for a common milkmaid. Linnet thought him a kind, good friend⁠—⁠for one of the great unapproachable foreign Herrschaft. Will held out one frank hand. Linnet gave him the tips of her brown fingers timidly. He clasped them in his own while a man might count ten. “Shall you be here . . . to-morrow . . . about the same time?” he inquired, before he let them drop, half hesitating.

“Perhaps,” Linnet answered, looking down demurely. Then blushing, she nodded at him, half curtsied, and sprang away. She gave a rapid glance to right and left, to see if she was perceived, darted lightly down the hill, and hurried back to the wirthshaus.

But all that day long, Will was moody and silent. He thought much to himself of this strange idea that Andreas Hausberger, that saturnine man, was to marry this beautiful musical alp-girl.

CHAPTER IX

THE MAN OF THE WORLD

For some four or five mornings after this hillside interview, Florian noticed every day a most unaccountable fancy on Will Deverill’s part for solitary walks at early dawn before breakfast. Neither dew nor hoar-frost seemed to damp his ardour. Florian rose betimes himself, to be sure, but Will had always already distanced him. And on every one of those five mornings, when Will said farewell to Linnet by the big grey boulder, he used the same familiar formula of leave-taking, “You’ll be here again to-morrow?” And every time, Linnet, thrilling and trembling inwardly, answered back the same one conscience-salving word, “Perhaps,” which oracular and highly hypothetical promise she nevertheless most amply fulfilled with great regularity on the following morning. For, when Will arrived at the trysting-place, he always found Linnet was there before him; and she rose from her rocky seat with a blush of downcast welcome, which a less modest man than he might easily have attributed to its true motive. To Will, however, most unassuming of men and poets, she was only an interesting alp-girl, who liked to meet him on the hillside for a lesson in English. Though, to be sure, why it was necessary to give the lesson alone in the open air at six o’clock in the morning, and, still more, why the professor should have thought it needful to hold the pupil’s hand in his own for many minutes together, to enforce his points, Will himself would no doubt have been hard put to explain on philological principles. Moreover, strange to say, for Linnet’s sake, the conversation was conducted mostly in German.

Lookers-on, however, see most of the game. On the sixth such morning, it occurred casually to Florian as he lay abed and reflected, to get up early himself and go out on the hillside. Not that the airy epicurean philosopher was by any means afflicted with the essentially vulgar vice of curiosity. He was far too deeply occupied with Mr Florian Wood to think of expending much valuable attention on the habits and manners of less-interesting personalities. But in this particular case he felt he had a positive Duty to perform. Now, a Duty had for Florian all the luxury of novelty. He was troubled with few such, and whenever he found one, he made the most of it. Just at present, he was persuaded Will Deverill was on the eve of “getting himself into an entanglement” with the beautiful milkmaid who so paradoxically preferred his society to Florian’s. Plain Duty, therefore, to Will himself, to Mrs Deverill mère, to the just expectations of the ladies of England (who had clearly a prior claim on Will’s fortune and affection), compelled Florian to interfere before things went too far, so as to save his friend from the consequences of his own possible folly. Animated by these noble impulses, Florian did not even shrink from leaving a very snug bed at five o’clock that cold morning, and waiting at the window, like a private detective, till Will took his way up the path to the hillside.

About six, Will emerged from the door of the inn. Florian gave him law, five minutes law⁠—⁠just rope enough to hang himself. Then, marking from the back window which way Will had gone, he followed the trail up hill with all the novel zest of an amateur policeman. Skulking along the pinewood, he came upon them from behind, by the same path which Will himself had taken on the morning when he followed Linnet first to the boulder in the pasture. Then, treading softly over the green turf with muffled footfall, he was close upon the unconscious pair before they knew or suspected it. The ill-advised young people were seated side by side on a little ledge of rock that protruded from the green-sward. Will leant eagerly forward, holding Linnet’s hand, and looking hard into her eyes; the girl herself drew back, and cast down her glance, as if half fearing the ardour of his evident advances. Respect for the conventions made Florian cough lightly before disturbing their interview. At the sound, both looked up. Some five feet nothing of airy observant humanity beamed blandly down upon them. Linnet gave a little cry, started up in surprise, hid her crimson face hurriedly between two soft brown hands, and then, yielding to the first impulse of her shy rustic nature, fled away without one word, leaving Will face to face with that accusing moralist.

The epicurean philosopher seated himself, like stern justice in miniature, beside his erring friend. His face was grave: when Florian did gravity, he did it, as life did everything else, “consummately.” For a minute or two he only stared hard at Will, slowly nodding his head like an earthenware mandarin, and stroking his smooth chin in profound meditation. At the end of that time, he delivered his bolt, point blank. “Tomorrow,” he said, calmly, “we go on to Innsbruck.”

“Why so?” Will asked, with a dogged air of dissent.

“Because,” Florian answered, with crushing dialectic, “we never intended to spend our whole time on the upper Zillerthal, did we?”

This sudden flank movement took Will fairly by surprise. For Florian was quite right. Their plan of campaign on leaving London included the South Tyrol, Verona, and Milan. “But a day or two longer,” he put in, half-imploringly, thus caught off his guard. “Just a day or two longer to . . . to settle things up a bit.”

Stern justice was inexorable. “Not one other night,” Florian answered, severely. “The lotus has by this time been sufficiently eaten. I see what this means. I know now why you’ve kept me here so long at St Valentin. With Innsbruck and Cortina and the untrodden Dolomites beckoning me on to come, you’ve planted me plump in this hole, and kept me here at your side⁠—⁠all for the sake of one Tyrolese cow-girl. In the name of common morality,” and Florian frowned like a very puisne judge, “I protest against these most irregular and improper proceedings.”

“I never meant the girl any harm,” Will answered, with a faint flush.

“That’s just it, my dear fellow. I know very well you didn’t. That’s the head and front of your offending. If you had meant her harm, of course I could much more readily have forgiven you.”

“Florian,” Will said, looking up, “let’s be serious, please, for once. This is a serious matter.”

Florian pursed his thin lips, and knitted his white brow judicially. “H’m, h’m,” he said, with slow deliberateness. “It’s as bad as that, is it? Why, Deverill, I assure you, I’ve rarely⁠—⁠if ever⁠—⁠been as serious as this in all my life before. Don’t look at me like that. I mean just what I say. I’m not thinking about the girl, but about you, my dear fellow. The morals of these parts, as you very well know, are primitive⁠—⁠primitive. It won’t do her much harm, even if it gets noised about, to have been seen on the hills, alone in the grey dawn, hand in hand with an Englishman. This is no place for Oriental seclusion of women. Indeed, from what I hear, the Arcadian relations of these unchaperoned alp-girls with their lovers from the plains must be something truly sweet in their unaffected simplicity. Herr Hausberger was telling me last night that when an alp-girl marries, all the hunters and peasants, her discarded lovers, whom she has admitted to the intimacy of her châlet on the mountains, leave a cradle at the door of her chosen husband on the night of the wedding. The good man wakes up the morning after his marriage to find staring him in the face, on his own threshold, these tangible proofs of his wife’s little slips in her spinster existence. . . . It’s a charming custom. I find it quite economical. He knows the worst at once. It saves him the trouble, so common among ourselves, of finding them out for himself piecemeal in the course of his later relations.”

“You are wandering from the question,” Will interrupted, testily. He didn’t quite relish these generalised innuendoes against poor Linnet’s character.

“Not at all, not at all,” Florian went on very gravely. “The point of these remarks lies in the application thereof, as Captain Cuttle puts it. . . . When Linnet marries, you mean, I suppose, to increase the number of the delicate little offerings presented at her door by⁠——”

Will started up and glared at him. “You shall not speak like that,” he cried in a very angry voice, “of such a girl as Linnet.”

The little man waved one dainty white hand with a deprecating gesture towards his excited friend. “This is too bad,” he said, sighing, “very bad indeed, far worse than I imagined. I said it on purpose, just to see what you were driving at. And I find out the worst. If you mean the girl no harm, and take a slighting little jest on her to heart like that, why your case is desperate⁠—⁠an aggravated attack, complicated by incipient matrimonial symptoms. You need change of air, change of scene, change of company. Law of Medes and Persians, it’s Innsbruck to-morrow! You go with me as I bid, or I go without you. Demur, and I leave you at once to your fate. You may stop with your cow-girl.”

“Don’t speak of her by that name!” Will broke in, half-angrily.

But Florian, for his part, was provokingly cool. “All A is A,” he said, calmly, with irresistible logic⁠—⁠“and every cow-girl’s a cow-girl. I’ll call her a boutrophista, or a neat-herding Phyllis, if it gives you any pleasure. That’s neither here nor there. The point’s just this⁠—⁠You mean the girl no harm: then what the deuce do you mean? Are you going to marry her?”

“No; certainly not,” Will answered. She was a very nice girl, and he loved to talk with her⁠—⁠there was something so sweetly unsophisticated in her ways that she charmed and attracted him. But marry her? No; the very word surprised him; he had never even dreamt of it. In the first place (though as yet he hadn’t as much as thought about that), he had nothing to marry upon. And in the second place, if he had, could he take a Tyrolese milkmaid fresh from the cowsheds in his tow to London, and present her to his friends as Mrs Will Deverill?

“Then what the deuce do you mean?” Florian repeated, persistently. His sound common-sense, when he chose to let it loose from his veneer of affectation, was no mean commodity.

Thus driven to bay, Will was forced to reply with a somewhat sheepish air, “I don’t know that I mean anything. I’ve never tried to formulate my state of mind to myself. She’s a very nice girl . . . for her class and sort . . . and I like to talk to her.”

“And when you talk to her, you like to hold her hand and lean forward like this, and stare with all your eyes, and look for all the world as if you wanted to devour her! Oh yes; I’ve seen you. No, no, Will, it won’t do; I’ve been there myself, and I know all about it. Looking at the matter impartially, as a man of the world”⁠—⁠and Florian, drawing himself up, assumed automatically, as those words rolled out, his most magisterial attitude⁠—⁠“what I’m really afraid of is that you’ll get gradually dragged into this rustic syren’s vortex, and be swallowed up before you know it in the treacherous sea of matrimony. However, you don’t believe that, and I know enough of the world to know very well it’s no use, therefore, arguing out that aspect of the case with you. No fellow will ever believe he can be such a fool⁠—⁠till he catches himself in church face to face at last with the awful reality. I prefer, accordingly, to go on the other tack with you. If you don’t mean to marry the girl, then, whether you know it or not, you mean no good to her. I dare say you’ve got all sorts of conventional notions in your head⁠—⁠which, thank heaven, I don’t share⁠—⁠about honour and so forth . . . how a cow-girl’s virtue⁠—⁠I beg your pardon, a boutrophista’s, or a neat-herding Phyllis’s⁠—⁠is as sacred at your hands as the eldest daughter’s of a hundred marquises. But that’s neither here nor there. If you don’t marry the girl, and you don’t ruin the girl, there’s only one thing left possible⁠—⁠you must break the girl’s heart for her. Between ourselves, being, I flatter myself, a tolerable psychologist, I don’t for a moment suppose that’s what would actually happen; you’d get yourself entangled, and you’d go on and on, and you’d flounder and struggle, and you’d marry her in the end, just to save the girl misery. But we’ll do poojah to your intellect at the expense of your heart, and we’ll put it the other way, as you seem to prefer it. Very well, then; sooner or later you’ll have to leave this place. No doubt, after what I’ve seen this morning, it’ll cost the girl a wrench⁠—⁠her vanity must be flattered by receiving so much undisguised attention from a real live gentleman. But, sooner or later, as I say, come it must, of course; and sooner, on the whole, will be better for her than later. The longer you stop, the more she’ll fall in love with you; the quicker you get away from her the less it’ll hurt her.”

He spoke the words of wisdom⁠—⁠according to his kind. Will rose again with an effort, and started homeward. As they walked down the pasture, and through the belt of pinewood, he said never a word. But he thought all the more on Florian’s counsel. Till that morning, he had never tried to face the question himself: he liked the girl⁠—⁠that was all; she sang like a linnet; and he loved to be near her. But the longer he stopped, the harder for her would be the inevitable breaking off. Just beyond the pinewood Florian halted and fronted him. “See here, Will,” he said, kindly, but with the world’s common sense, “it isn’t that I care twopence myself what becomes of the girl⁠—⁠girls like that are just made for you and me to play skittles with; if you meant her any harm I wouldn’t for the world interfere with any other man’s little fancies. All I want is to get you away from the place before you’ve time to commit yourself. I use the other argument as an argumentum ad hominem only. But as that it has its weight. The longer you stop, the harder it’ll be in the end for her.”

Will drew a deep breath. His mind was made up now. “Very well, then,” he said, slowly, though with an evident struggle; “if I must go, I must go. I won’t haggle over a day. Let us make it to-morrow.”

CHAPTER X

HAIL, COLUMBIA!

And next morning, indeed, saw them safe at Innsbruck.

’Twas a pull to get away; Will frankly admitted to his own soul he felt it so. But he saw it was right, and he went accordingly. Linnet, he knew, had grown fond of him in those few days; when he asked her once how it was she liked Franz Lindner less now than formerly, she looked up at him with an arch smile, and, after a second’s pause, made the frank avowal: “Perhaps it’s because now . . . I think Englishmen nicer.” At the moment his heart had come up in his mouth with pleasure, as will happen with all of us when a pretty woman lets us see for ourselves she really likes us. But he must go all the same: for Linnet’s sake⁠—⁠he must go: if illusion there were, he must at once disillusion her.

As for Linnet herself, she accepted the separation much more readily, to say the truth, than Will ever imagined she could. It half-piqued him, indeed, to find how easily she seemed to acquiesce in the inevitable. She trembled when he told her, to be sure, and tears started to her eyes; but she answered, none the less, in a fairly firm voice, that she always knew the gnädige Herr must go away in the end; that she hoped he would remember her wherever he went; and she⁠—⁠with a deep sigh⁠—⁠she could never forget his kindness. That, however, was all. Just a pressure of her fingers, just a kiss on his hand, just a tear that dropped wet on his outstretched palm as she bent her head over it in customary obeisance, and Linnet was gone, and he saw no more of her that evening. In the morning when he stood at the door to bid farewell to the household, he fancied her eyes looked red with crying. But she grasped his hand hard, for all that, and said goodbye without flinching. He gave a florin or two as Trinkgeld to each of the servants at the inn; but to Linnet he felt he couldn’t give anything. She was of different mould. Linnet noticed the omission herself, with a glistening eye⁠—⁠and took it, as it was meant, for a social distinction.

The plain truth was, she had always expected Will must soon go away from her. Nor was she indeed as yet what one might fairly call quite in love with him. The very distance between them seemed to forbid the feeling. He was kind, he was sympathetic, he was musical, he was a gentleman, he divined her better qualities, her deeper feelings; he spoke to her more deferentially and with truer respect than any of her own equals had ever yet spoken to her; she couldn’t help feeling flattered that he should like to come out upon the hillside to talk with her; but, as yet, she hardly said to herself she loved him. If she had, what good? Was it likely such a great gentleman from over the seas would care to marry a mere Tyrolese milkmaid? Was it likely, if he did, the wirth and the priest would allow her to marry a Protestant Englishman?

So, from the very outset, save as a passing affection, Will Deverill stood wholly outside poor Linnet’s horizon. She regarded him as a pleasant but short-lived episode. Besides, light loves are the rule with the alp-girl. It was quite in the nature of things for Linnet that a man should take a liking to her, should pay her brief court, should expect from her far greater favours than ever Will Deverill expected, and should give her up in the end for a mere freak of fancy. That was the way of the Zillerthal! So, though the thorn had gone deep, she accepted her fate as just what one might have anticipated, and hardly cried for an hour in her own bed at night, to think those sweet mornings on the pasture by the pinewood were to be over for ever. For of course, in the end, if the wirth so willed, she must marry herself contentedly to Andreas Hausberger.

Acting on Florian’s advice, Will did not even tell his tremulous little friend he was going to Innsbruck. “Better break it off at once,” Florian said, with practical common-sense, “once for all and absolutely. No chance of letters or any nonsense of that sort⁠—⁠if the dulcinea can write, which of course is doubtful.” And Will, having made up his mind to the wrench, acquiesced in this sage council. So for Linnet, the two strangers who had loomed so large, and played so leading a part on the stage of her little life for one rapturous fortnight, vanished utterly, as it were, at a single breath, like a dissolving cloud, into the infinite and the unknowable.

By seven that night, the young Englishmen found themselves once more in the full flood of civilisation. The electric light shed its beams on their hotel; a Parisian chef de cuisine turned out sweetbreads and ices of elaborate art to pamper their palates. Once more, Florian donned with joy the black coat of Bond Street. They had penetrated the Zillerthal with their knapsacks on their backs; but two leather portmanteaus, enclosing the fuller garb of civilised life, awaited their advent at Innsbruck. Thus restored to society, with a rosebud in his buttonhole, the dainty little man descended radiant to the salle-à-manger. He welcomed the change; after three whole weeks of unadulterated Nature, he had tired of Arcadia. And he loved tables-d’hôte: ’twas a field for the prosecution of social conquests. “A man goes there on his merits,” he said briskly to Will, as they dressed for dinner, “neither handicapped nor yet unduly weighted. Nobody knows who he is, and he knows nobody. So he starts there on the flat, without fear or favour; and if at the end of ten minutes he hasn’t managed to make himself the centre of a conversational circle, he may retire into private life as a social failure.”

On this particular evening, however, in spite of several brilliant and manful efforts, Florian didn’t somehow succeed in attracting an audience quite so readily as usual. The environment was against him. On his right sat a lady whom he discovered by a side glance at the name written legibly on the napkin ring by her plate, to be the Honourable Mrs Medway, and who was so profoundly filled with a sense of the importance of her own Honourableness that she feared to contaminate herself or her daughter by conversation with her neighbours till she had satisfied her mind by sure and certain warranty that they too belonged to the Right Set in England. Pending proof to that effect, her answers to his questions were both curt and monosyllabic. This nettled Florian, who prided himself with truth on his extensive knowledge of all the “smart people.” To his left, beyond Will, on the other hand, sat a stolid-looking gentleman of nonconformist exterior and provincial garb, whose conversation, though ample, betrayed at times the inelegant idiom and accent of the Humber. Him Florian the silver-tongued carefully avoided. Opposite, was a vacant place, on either side of which sat two young girls of seventeen or thereabouts in the acutest stage of giggling inarticulateness. Florian listened, and despaired. Here was a coterie, indeed, for a brilliant talker and a man of culture!

But just as they finished the soup, to his intense relief, a ray of light seemed to pierce of a sudden the gathering gloom of the dinner table. The drawing-room door opened, and through its portal a Vision of Beauty in an evening dress floated, Hellenic goddess-wise, into the salle-à-manger. It made its way straight to the vacant chair, nodded and smiled recognition to the bread-and-butter gigglers and the Honourable Mrs Medway, bowed demurely, continental-way, to the newly come strangers, and glided off at once, without a pause or break, into a general flow all round of graceful, easy conversation. Florian gazed, and succumbed. This was a real live woman! Ripe, but not too ripe, soft and rounded of outline, with a bewitching mouth, a row of pearly teeth, and a cheek that wore only its own natural roses, she might have impressed at first sight a less susceptible heart by far than the epicurean sage’s. As she seated herself, she drew from her pocket a little cardboard box, which she handed with a charming smile to one of the giggling inarticulates. “Those are the set you admired, I think,” she said, with unconscious grace. “I hope I’ve got the right ones. I was passing the shop on my way back from my drive, and I thought I’d just drop in and bring them back as you liked them so.”

The giggling inarticulate gave a jerky little scream of unmixed delight as she opened the box and took out from it with tremulous hands a pretty set of coral necklet, brooch, and earrings. “Not for me!” she cried, gasping; “not for me⁠—⁠for a present! You don’t really mean to give them to me! They’re too lovely, too delicious!”

“Yes, I do,” the Vision of Beauty responded, beaming. “I wanted to give you some little souvenir some time before you went, and I didn’t know what you’d like; so, as you said you admired these, I thought I’d best go in at once as I passed and buy them. They’re pretty, aren’t they?”

Florian eyed them with the lenient glance of a man of taste who appraises and appreciates a beautiful woman’s selection. When the bread-and-butter gigglers had exhausted upon them their slender stock of laudatory adjectives⁠—⁠their oh’s and just look’s, and dear me, aren’t they beautiful’s⁠—⁠he broke in with his bland smile, and, laying the necklet in a curve on the white tablecloth before him, began to discourse with much unction in the Florianic tongue, on the æsthetic points of this pretty trifle. For it was a pretty necklet, there was no denying that; its lance-like pendants were delicately shaped and most gracefully arranged; it was one of those simple half-barbaric designs which retain to our day all the naïve beauty of primitive unsophisticated human workmanship. Florian found in it reminiscences of Eve in Eden. And he said so in that luxuriantly florid style of which he was so great and so practical a master. He called attention with suave tones to the distinctly precious suggestions of archaic influence in the shaping of the pendants; to the exquisite nature of coral as a decorative object, cast up blushing on our shores by the ungarnered sea⁠—⁠a material whose use we inherit from our innocent ancestors, when wild in woods the noble savage ran, his limbs untrammelled by clinging draperies⁠—⁠when beauty unadorned was adorned the most in the subtle and sinuous curves of its own lissome figure. Necklets and armlets, he observed, with one demonstrative white forefinger held poised above the salmon, are the string-courses, so to speak, of this our natural human architecture; they serve to emphasise and throw out into stronger relief the structural points of the grand design, to call attention to the exquisite native fulness of a faultless torso.

The giggling inarticulates dropped their chins and stared. They were not quite sure whether such talk was proper. But the Vision of Beauty, more at home in the world, was not in the least alarmed at Florian’s torrent of eloquence. On the contrary, she answered him back, as he himself remarked a little later to Will, like the lords of the council, with grace, wisdom, and understanding. Florian brightened, and flowed on. He loved a listener who could toss the ball back to him as fast as he tossed it. And the Vision of Beauty answered him back with lightning speed, and bore her share with credit in the conversation. It was evident as she went on that she knew her Europe. Was it Munich Florian touched upon with the light hand of his craft?⁠—⁠she discoursed of the Van der Weydens and Crivellis in the Pinakothek, like one to the manner born, and had views of her own which were bold, if not prudent, about the meaning and arrangement of the Aeginetan marbles. Was it Florence he attacked?⁠—⁠she was at home at San Marco, and knew her way like a Baedeker round the rooms at the Pitti. Will listened and marvelled, talking little himself, but giving Florian and the Vision of Beauty their heads. It surprised him much to find one female brain could store in its teeming cells so much miscellaneous knowledge.

At last, at a brief break in Florian’s flood of speech, Will found space to inquire, for a purpose of his own, “Would you mind my asking where you got that necklet?”

The Vision of Beauty handed the lid of the box to him. It bore, on a label, the name and address of the jeweller at whose shop she had bought it. “It’s on the way up,” she said, carelessly, “to this hotel from the city.”

That one Shibboleth betrayed her. Florian started in surprise. “Why,” he cried with open eyes, “then you must be an American.”

The beautiful stranger smiled and nodded. “Yes, sir,” she said with marked emphasis, as if to clinch the assertion of her western nationality. “I am an American, and I don’t want to hide it. But you pay what you consider a compliment to the purity of my English all the same, if you mean that till now you haven’t even suspected it.”

Florian made some politely condescending remark, of the sort so obnoxious to the late Mr Lowell, as to the correctness and delicacy of her English accent, and then, in order to show himself quite abreast of the times, inquired expansively if she knew the Van Rensselaers.

“No; I haven’t had that pleasure,” the Vision of Beauty answered, curtly.

“The Livingstones, perhaps?” Florian adventured, in tentative tones.

The Vision shook her head.

“My friends the Vanderbilts?” Florian essayed once more, eager to find a connecting link. “I stayed with them at Newport.”

“No; nor yet the Vanderbilts,” the Vision answered, smiling.

Florian paused and reflected. “Ah, then, you’re from Boston, no doubt,” he suggested, with charitable promptitude. The fine friends he had mentioned, at whose houses he had stopped, were all New Yorkers.

“No; not from Boston,” the Vision answered with prompt negation.

“Washington, I suppose?” Florian adventured again. They were the only three places a self-respecting American could admit she came from without shipwreck of her dignity. He would not pay so much grace and eloquence the very bad compliment, as it seemed to him, of supposing it could “register” from St Louis or New Orleans.

The pretty woman smiled once more, a self-restrained smile. “I come from New York,” she said, simply. “I’ve lived there long. It’s my native place. But there are a good many of us there who don’t aspire to know the Roosevelts or the Livingstones.”

Florian withdrew, with quiet tact, from this false departure. He led aside the conversation, by graceful degrees, to the old Dutch families, the New England stock⁠—⁠Emerson, Longfellow, Channing, the Concord set: Howells, James, and Stedman, the later American poets. On these last he waxed warm. But the Vision of Beauty, herself cosmopolitan to the core, was all for our newest school of English bards. She doted on Lang and Austin Dobson.

“And have you seen the last Illustrated?” she asked, after awhile, with a burst of enthusiasm. “It’s on the table in the salon there. And there are three, oh, such lovely, lovely stanzas in it,⁠—⁠‘Among Alps,’ by Will Deverill.”

Her words sent a thrill of pleasure through Will’s modest soul. He had published but little, and ’twas seldom he heard his own name thus familiarly unhandled. Still, a harassing doubt possessed his soul. Could the Vision of Beauty have seen his name in the visitors’ book of the hotel, noticed the coincidence with the lines in the Illustrated, which he had sent from the Zillerthal, and managed this little coup with feminine adroitness, on purpose to deceive him? Yet she didn’t look guileful. With poetic trustfulness, he cast the evil suggestion at once behind him. “I’m so glad you liked them,” he said, timidly, looking down at his plate, and playing in nervous jerks with his fork in the chicken. “I wrote them in the Tyrol here. They’re fresh-fed from the glaciers.”

The Vision laid down her knife and fork and stared at him, speechless. “You’re not Will Deverill,” she exclaimed, in some excitement, after a moment’s pause.

“That’s my name,” Will answered, somewhat abashed, still perusing his plate. “But I’m very little used to⁠—⁠to⁠—⁠to meeting people who have heard of it.”

The pretty American clasped her hands with delight “Well, I am glad to meet you,” she said, “though I’d have given you the benefit of the Mr, of course, if I’d known it was you. I just love your verses. I have ‘Voices from the Hills’ in my box upstairs, bound in calf, this minute.”

“No; not really?” Will cried, with a young author’s delight at unexpected recognition.

“I’ll go upstairs after dinner and fetch it down to show you,” his pretty admirer answered, with some pride. “And your friend, too, is he a poet?”

“In soul; in soul only!” Florian interposed, airily, dashing in at a tangent; for it irked him thus to play second fiddle to Will’s first hand, and he longed to assert his “proper position.” “I string no sonnets; I play no harmonies; I take the higher place. I sit on a critical throne, weighing and appraising all arts impartially. Deverill rhymes; another man paints; a third man strums; a fourth acts, or carves stone⁠—⁠and all for me. I exercise none of these base handicrafts myself; but I live supreme in the Palace of Art they build, subordinating each in due place to my soul’s delight, like a subtle architect.”

“Just the same as all the rest of us,” the pretty American put in, interrupting his period. “We all do that. We sit still and listen. The difficulty is⁠—⁠to produce, like Mr Deverill.”

Florian stood aghast. To think a mere woman should thus slight his pretensions! But the pretty American, disregarding him, turned to Will once more. “And your friend’s name?” she said, interrogatively.

“My friend’s name,” Will answered, “is Florian Wood. You must know it.”

“Ah, Mr Florian Wood,” the pretty stranger echoed; “I’ve heard of him, of course. I’m glad to meet him. It’s so nice to see people in the flesh at last one has often heard talked about.”

“But you’ve heard about everybody, Mrs Palmer,” the first giggling inarticulate interposed, with a gurgle of admiration.

Florian clapped his hand to his head in theatrical disappointment. “Mrs Palmer!” he cried, markedly. “Did I hear aright, Mrs Palmer? This is indeed a blow! Then, I take it, you’re married!”

From anyone else on earth, the remark would have been rude; from Florian, it was only exaggerated compliment. The Vision of Beauty accepted it as such with American frankness.

“Well, you needn’t go and take a draught of cold poison offhand,” she retorted, a little saucily, “for there’s still a chance for you. Remember, a woman may be maid, wife, . . . or widow.”

“Dear me,” Florian ejaculated, half-choking himself in his haste, “I never thought of that. You don’t mean to say⁠——”

“Yes, I do,” Mrs Palmer responded, cutting him short with a merry nod. “Any time these last five years. Now, you’re sorry you spoke. Mr Deverill, may I trouble you to pass the mustard?”

CHAPTER XI

PRIVATE INQUIRY

During the rest of the young men’s stay at Innsbruck the pretty American was, as Florian remarked, “a distinct feature.” Such is the fickleness of man, indeed, that she almost superseded poor Linnet in their minds as an object of interest. She was attractive beyond a doubt; she was clever; she was lively; and she was so delighted to make a real live poet’s acquaintance, that Will hardly knew how to receive her almost obtrusive attentions. She brought him butter in a lordly dish, as Florian phrased it. That same evening, in the salon, according to promise, she came down with “Voices from the Hills,” Will’s thin little volume of fugitive verse, which she had had gorgeously bound in red calf in Paris, and made that sensitive young bard blush up to his eyes with modesty, by insisting on pointing out which pieces she liked best, in a voice that was audible to half the guests in the establishment. Ossian’s Tomb was her favourite⁠—⁠she knew that one by heart; but Khosru Khan was sweet too; and Sister Clare made her cry; and then Gwyn!⁠—⁠ah, that dear Gwyn was just too lovely for anything!

And yet, Will liked her. In spite of her open praise, and his blushes, he liked her. The surest way to a poet’s heart is to speak well of his poetry. And besides, he said to himself, Mrs Palmer had discrimination. She noted in his verse the metrical variety, the pictorial skill, the strong sense of colour⁠—⁠just the qualities of his poor muse on which he himself most prided himself. No artist cares for praise except for those characteristics of his art which he feels to be his strong ones. Mrs Palmer gave Will that, and he liked the incense.

Florian had said at St Valentin that Will needed change of air, change of scene, change of company. And at Innsbruck he got them. The pretty American, having found her poet, didn’t mean to let him slip again too soon from her clutches. With the pertinacity of her compatriots, she fastened herself at once upon the two young Englishmen. Not obtrusively, to be sure, not ungracefully, not awkwardly, not as a European woman might have done the same thing, but with that occidental frankness and oblivion of sex which makes up half the charm of the charming American. The very next morning, at the early breakfast, she happened to occupy a small table close by them. They chatted together through the meal; at the end of it Will mentioned, in a casual sort of way that he was going down the street to the shop where Mrs Palmer had bought the coral necklet. The dainty young widow seized her cue. “I am going down that way myself,” she said. “Let me come and show you. I won’t take a minute to run up for my hat. I’m not one of those women who can never go out for a morning stroll without spending half-an-hour before their mirrors, tittivating.” And, in spite of Will’s assurance that he could find the shop very well by himself, she was as good as her word, and insisted on accompanying them.

She had been charming in evening dress; she was more charming still in her girlish straw hat and neat tailor-made costume, as she tripped lightly downstairs to them. Florian, by her side, while they walked through the streets, cast sheep’s eyes askance up at her. Even Will, more mindful of poor Linnet’s desertion, was not wholly insensible to that taking smile, those pearly white teeth, that dainty small nose, those rounded contours. They turned down the road in the direction of the Maria-Theresien Strasse. Will knew of old that quaintest and most picturesque of European High Streets, with its queer gabled roofs, its rococo façades, its mediæval towers, its arcades and pillars. But to Florian, it all came with the added charm of novelty. Twice or thrice on their way, the spirit moved him to stop and perorate. Each time, the pretty widow cut him short at once with some quick retort of truly American practicality. At the shop, Will selected a second necklet, exactly like the one Mrs Palmer had chosen. “I gave her nothing before I came away,” he said, turning to Florian, and only indicating by that very indefinite pronoun, the intended recipient of his beautiful gift. “One couldn’t give her money. ’Twould have been a positive insult. But this ought to look well on that smooth brown neck of hers.”

“For your sister, of course,” Mrs Palmer said, pointedly.

“No; not for my sister,” Will admitted, with a quiet smile. “For a girl at the inn we’ve just left at St Valentin.”

Mrs Palmer said “Oh!” ’Twas an American oh. It deprecated the fact⁠—⁠and closed the episode. Cosmopolitan though she was, it surprised her not a little that Will should allude to such persons in a lady’s company. But there! these poets, you know⁠—⁠so many things must be condoned to them. Because they have loved much, much must be forgiven them. They have licence to break hearts and the most brittle of the commandments, with far less chance of blame than their even Christians.

Will’s transaction completed, Mrs Palmer proceeded to buy a second similar set on her own account, for presentation to the second of the giggling inarticulates. “Poor girl!” she said, good-humouredly, “she looked so envious last night when I gave the other to Eva Powell, I couldn’t bear to think I’d left her out in the cold. Thirty florins, I think you said? Ah, yes; that’s twelve dollars. Not much to make a poor little girl so happy!”

From this, and various other circumstances which occurred in the course of their first few days at Innsbruck, it began to dawn dimly upon Florian’s open mind that their American friend, though she knew not the Van Rensselaers, the Vanderbilts, and the Livingstones, must have been “comfortably left” by the late Mr Palmer. It was clear she had money for every whim and fancy. She took frequent drives, up the Brenner or down the Innthal, in a roomy two-horse carriage specially ordered from the livery stables; and she always gave a seat to one at least of the giggling inarticulates; and then, “on the girl’s account, you know,” with good-natured zeal, asked Will and Florian to take part in the expedition. “It’s so good for them, of course,” she said, “to see a little, when they can, of young men’s society. They’re each of them here with an invalid mamma⁠—⁠throat and lungs, poor things⁠—⁠you know the kind of person; and before I came, they had nobody to talk to, not even one another, for they were far too much afraid of a mutual snub ever to utter a syllable. I’ve tried to bring them out a bit, and make life worth living for them. But without a young man⁠—⁠at that age⁠—⁠no amusement’s worth anything. Do come, Mr Deverill⁠—⁠there’s a good soul, just to humour them.”

And Will and Florian, it must be candidly allowed, fell in with a good grace with her philanthropic projects. Though, to be sure, when once the carriage got under way, they seemed much more desirous of amusing the pretty American herself, than of seconding her schemes for drawing out the latent conversational powers of the giggling inarticulates, who contented themselves chiefly with leaning back in their seats, and listening open-mouthed to Florian’s flamboyant disquisitions. That, however, is a detail. Will attempted at first to pay his share of the carriage; but such interference with her plans Mrs Palmer most manfully and successfully resisted. She wanted to give the girls a little outing, she said; Will might come or he might stop; but she wasn’t going to let any other person pay for her well-meant attention to her poor little protégées. To that point she stuck hard, through thick and thin. They must come as her guests if they came as anything.

From this, and sundry other events that came under his knowledge by occulter channels, Florian grew strengthened in his idea that the late Mr Palmer, whoever he might have been, had at least “cut up well,” and, what was more to the point, had cut up entirely in his widow’s favour. Now this was business; for Florian, incurious as he was by nature where mere gossip was concerned, liked to know what was what in the matrimonial market. As he was wont to put it sweetly to his friends at the Savile, he wasn’t going to throw himself away on a woman for nothing. He had an income of his own, just sufficient to supply him with the bare necessaries of life⁠—⁠such as stalls at the opera and hansoms ad libitum; and, this being so, he had no intention of giving up that singular franchise which young men call “their liberty,” except in return for valuable consideration. But if good things were going, he liked at least to know of them; some day, perhaps, if some lady bribed him high enough, he might possibly consent to retire by her side into the Philistine gloom of wedded respectability.

So he pushed his inquiries hard into the Vision’s antecedents, wholly without effect, during the first few days of their stay at Innsbruck.

A few nights later, however, as they sat in the salon after a long day’s tramp to the summit of the Patscher Kopf, Florian found himself cast casually into conversation with an American old maid, belonging to the most virulent type and class of old maidhood⁠—⁠“of the cat-kind, catty,” he said afterwards to Will Deverill; one of those remarkable persons who have pervaded cosmopolitan hotels for years together, and are on intimate terms with the domestic skeletons in every cupboard. Miss Beard, as she was called, favoured Florian at full length with the histories and antecedents of the giggling inarticulates, their papas and mammas, and all their forebears; informing him with much gusto how one of them had paid ninepence in the pound to his creditors, and another had been cashiered from the navy for embezzlement. Then she proceeded in the same strain to demolish the unprepossessing gentleman of nonconformist exterior, who had been guilty, it seemed, of the social crime of retail business. Miss Beard was inclined, indeed, to believe he was nothing more than a retired chemist; but she wasn’t even sure⁠—⁠with hushed and bated breath⁠—⁠that it mightn’t be as bad as grocery and provisions. All these, and many other unimportant details, Florian’s soul endured, possessing itself in patience for many minutes together, in the fervent hope that at last this living encyclopædia of genealogical knowledge would come round to the character of the Vision of Beauty.

“And Mrs Palmer, who sits opposite me,” he adventured gently after awhile, when Miss Beard reached a pause in her caustic comments; “she seems a nice little thing in her way, though, of course, a mere butterfly. She comes from New York. I suppose you know her?”

Miss Beard drew herself up with that offended dignity which only an American woman of the “very best class” can exhibit in perfection when you suspect her of an acquaintance with a person moving in a social grade less exalted than the sphere she herself revolves in. “I don’t know her,” she said, markedly, “but I know, of course, who she is. She’s the widow of Palmer⁠—⁠the well-known Palmer⁠—⁠the notorious Palmer, who⁠—⁠but there!⁠—⁠you’ve been in the States; you must know all about him.”

“Not Palmer the murderer!” Florian exclaimed in surprise. “She’s too young for that, surely.”

“No; not Palmer the murderer,” Miss Beard responded in a very shrill voice with considerable acerbity. “He was at least a gentleman. I can’t say as much for this lady’s husband. She’s the widow of Palmer, the dry-goodsman in Broadway.”

“Oh, indeed,” Florian cried, deeply interested in this discovery⁠—⁠for it meant much money. “I remember the place well⁠—⁠a palatial building in the Renaissance style at the corner of a street near the junction with Fifth Avenue. These princes of commerce in your Western world represent in our midst to-day the great signiors of the Adriatic who held the gorgeous East in fee, and whose Gothic façades, rich in arch and tracery, still line the long curve of the Grand Canal for us. They are the satraps of finance. The world in our times is ruled once more⁠—⁠as in Venice of old, in the heyday of its splendour⁠—⁠by the signet-ring of the merchant. Palmer was one of these⁠—⁠a paladin of silken bales, a Doge Dandolo of Manhattan, a potentate in the crowded marts of the Samarcand of the Occident.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Miss Beard retorted in an acrid tone, eyeing him sternly through her pince-nez, “but I say he was a dry-goodsman.”

Florian descended at a bound from the open empyrean to the solid earth of commonplace. “Well, at any rate, he was rich,” he said, letting the paladins slide. “He must have died worth millions.”

“His estate was proved,” Miss Beard said, curtly, “at a sum in dollars which totals out⁠—⁠let me see⁠—⁠fives into 35⁠—⁠ah, yes, to exactly seven hundred and eighty-four thousand pounds sterling.”

Florian gave a little gasp. “That’ll do,” he said, with slow emphasis. “And he left it?” he suggested, after a second’s pause, with an interrogative raising of his broad white forehead.

“And he left it, every cent,” Miss Beard responded, “without deduction of any sort, to that fly-away little inanity.”

Florian drew a deep breath. “Then she’s rich,” he said, musing; “rich beyond the utmost dreams of avarice.”

“Well, of course she is,” Miss Beard answered, with a sharp little snap, as though every one knew that. “If she wasn’t, could she go tearing about Europe as she does, herself and her maid, buying everything she sees, and making presents right and left⁠—⁠to everyone she comes across. She’d give her own soul away if anybody asked her for it. Little empty-headed fool! She’s not fit to be trusted with the use of money. But, of course, one can’t know her, however rich she may be. We draw the line in the States at keeping shop. And, besides, she was never brought up among cultivated people.”

As she spoke, Florian noted several things silently to himself. He noted, first, that Mrs Palmer spoke the English tongue many degrees more correctly, and more pleasantly as well, than her would-be critic. He noted, second, that her very generosity was counted for blame to her by this narrower nature. He noted, third, that in republican America, even more than in monarchical and aristocratic England, Mrs Palmer’s cleverness, her information, her reading, her culture, were as dust in the balance in Society’s eyes, compared with the damning and indelible fact that her late lamented husband had owned a dry-goods store. But, being a worldly-wise man, Florian noted these things in his own heart alone. Externally, he took no overt notice of them. On the contrary, he continued his talk in the same bland and honey-sweet tone as ever. “Still, she’d be a catch in her way,” he said, with a condescending smile, “for any man who didn’t object to swallow her antecedents.”

“She would,” Miss Beard replied, with austere self-respect, “if people care to mix in that sort of society. For myself, I’ve been used to a different kind of life. I couldn’t put up with it.”

Florian was audacious. He posed the one last question he still wished to ask, boldly. “And there’s no awkward clause, I suppose,” he said, without even the apology of a blush, “in her husband’s will, of that nasty so-long-as-my-said-wife-remains-unmarried character?”

Miss Beard took up her Galignani with crushing coldness. She didn’t care to discuss such people’s prospects from such a standpoint. Their matrimonial affairs were beneath her notice. For fine old crusted prejudice of a social sort, commend me, so far as my poor knowledge goes, to the members of good New Yorker families. “To the best of my knowledge and belief,” she murmured, acridly, without raising her eyes, “the property’s left for her own sole use and benefit, without any restriction. But I’m sure I don’t know. If you want to find out you’d better ask her. I don’t burden my mind with these people’s business.”

Then Florian knew the Vision of Beauty was a catch not to be despised by a man of culture. Such wealth as that, no gentleman could decline, in justice to himself, if she gave him the refusal of it.

CHAPTER XII

THE MADDING CROWD

Andreas Hausberger was a dictator. He kept his own counsel till the moment of action grew ripe for birth in the womb of time; then, heeding no man, he gave his orders. Three days after Will Deverill’s departure from St Valentin, he called up Linnet to his office suddenly. “The dressmaker has brought home your new costume,” he said in his curt way. “Go upstairs and put it on. Then come down and let me see you.”

Linnet, much wondering what this mood might portend, went up to her own room and tried on her new gew-gaws. Puffed white sleeves, laced corset, crimson kirtle, high shoes, flowered kerchief at her bosom, silver dirk in her hair; Linnet wasn’t over-vain, as girls go in this world, but tricked out in such finery, she gazed in her glass, and, to tell the whole truth, admired herself consumedly. If only her Englishman could have seen her in that dress! But she stifled her sigh, and tripped lightly downstairs again, with the buoyancy of youth, when conscious of a perfectly becoming costume, for Andreas Hausberger’s scrutiny.

The wirth scanned her, well satisfied. “On Monday,” he said, briefly, in that iron voice, “we set out on our tour, and go first to Innsbruck.”

It was earlier by a week than he at first intended; but he saw it would be hard, if he stopped at St Valentin, to keep Fridolin’s hands from Franz’s throat much longer. So, by way of minimising the adverse chances, he made up his mind to start as soon as possible for his winter season. He meant to begin modestly with entertainments at hotels among the Tyrolese winter resorts, and the towns of the Riviera; and then, when his troupe had got over its first access of stage fright, and grown used to an audience, to go across for the summer to England or America.

So, for the next few days Linnet was busy as a bee with preparations for her first journey into the great wide world outside the Zillerthal. As yet, her native valley had bounded her view⁠—⁠she had never gone even as far as Jenbach. Expectation and preparation kept her mind well employed during that busy week, and prevented it from dwelling too much or too long on the kindly Engländer, who had vanished from her ken across the sea to England. For, that he had gone straight home, Linnet never even doubted. On the afternoon of Andreas Hausberger’s exciting announcement, indeed, a little registered parcel came by post for her to St Valentin. It bore the postmark of Wilten, where Will had intentionally dropped it into the letter-box, on purpose to conceal from her his exact whereabouts. Linnet scanned it close, and read the name correctly, but was too innocent of the topography of her native country to know that Wilten is the name of a village on the outskirts of Innsbruck. When she asked Andreas Hausberger where Wilten was, a little later in the day, without showing him the postmark, he confirmed her belief by answering at once that ’twas a town in England, not far from Salisbury. So he had thought of her over sea, then, and sent her this beautiful costly present from his own country. She tried it on that night before her tiny square mirror. As Will had rightly judged, it set off the rich tints of her creamy brown neck to the best advantage.

A beautiful gift! A real lady might have worn it! Later on, when Linnet had diamonds and rubies at command, there was no trinket she prized among all her jewels like Will Deverill’s coral.

At last the eventful morning itself arrived. The little troupe set out on foot down the mountain to Mairhofen. There, their boxes, sent on over-night, awaited them. They drove in a large open brake to Jenbach⁠—⁠Andreas Hausberger, Franz Lindner, Linnet herself, Philippina, and the two other singers who composed the party. At Jenbach, they descended at the door of the railway station. For the first time in her life, Linnet saw, half-alarmed, a puffing and snorting machine, a sort of iron devil, breathing flames like purgatory, burst with smoke and stench upon the crowd by the waiting-room. Though she had heard all about it often enough before, and could see for herself that this great scurrying creature, for all its noise and bustle, kept rigidly to the rails as it approached the platform, she yet drew back in pure physical terror and surprise at the swiftness and irresistibility of the fire-fiend’s motion.

She had scant time to think, however, for scarce had it come to rest when Andreas Hausberger, little heeding, bundled them all unceremoniously into a third-class compartment; and before Linnet had leisure to recover her self-possession, the engine had uttered one wild discordant shriek, and with ringing of bells and rattlings of wheels in her ears, she found herself, willy-nilly, beyond hope of release, whirled along at the break-neck pace of what you and I know as an Austrian slow train, over the jolting rails, up the broad Inn valley.

In spite of her terror⁠—⁠for she knew the railway as yet chiefly by hearing reports of collisions and accidents⁠—⁠Linnet enjoyed to the full that first steam-borne journey. She whirled past turreted towers like Hall and Volders, which to you and me commend themselves as the absolute quintessence of old-world quaintness, but which, to Linnet’s young eyes, accustomed only to St Valentin and the grassy Alps, envisaged themselves rather in glowing hues as the kingdoms of the world and all their glory. They had been late to start, and their drive from Mairhofen had been tolerably leisurely, so dusk was closing in when they arrived at Innsbruck. Oh, the bustle, the din, the whirling awe of that arrival! Electric lamps lighted up the broad Platz in front of the station; on either side rose great hotels, grander and more palatial than any buildings on earth Linnet’s poor little fancy had ever yet dreamed of. Not to one of these, however, of course, did Andreas Hausberger take his little troupe of minstrels. But even the humbler inn on the south side of the Theresien Strasse, to which they repaired on foot, bearing their boxes between them, seemed to Linnet’s inexperienced and impressionable eye a most princely caravanserai. After the noise and bustle in that busy railway junction, which made her brain whirl with the unaccustomed dizziness of a great city, the comparative rest and quiet of the Golden Eagle seemed a positive relief both of mind and body. That night she slept little. Her head swam with excitement; for this was the first step on her journey through the world, which might lead her perhaps at last to England. And in England, she thought to herself once or twice with a little thrill, who could tell but peradventure she might meet . . . Will Deverill?

For she knew little as yet of how big the world is, and how long you may live in it, going to and fro, without necessarily knocking up against this one or that of its component units.

Next morning they rose betimes, and went out into the street to view the city. For to Linnet, as to Mrs Palmer, a city it was⁠—⁠and a very great one. Such streets and streets seemed to frighten and appal her. Florian had admired in that picturesque old capital of a mountain land, the antiquated tone, the eighteenth-century flavour, the mediæval survivals, the air as of a world elsewhere gone from us utterly. But to Linnet, though it was beautiful and impressive too, it was above all things magnificent, grandiose, stately, imposing. She gazed with open eyes at the Golden Roof, admired the bronze statues at the base of the Anna Column, looked up with silent awe at the front of the Landhaus, and thought the Rudolfsbrunnen, with its attendant griffins and dragons, a wonderful work of art for the world’s delectation.

Philippina went with her, her companion on the alp. Linnet noticed with much surprise⁠—⁠for she knew not as yet the difference in fibre between them⁠—⁠that Philippina, though as interested as herself in the shops and their contents, seemed wholly unimpressed by these other and vastly more attractive features of a civilised city. For Linnet had been gifted by nature, to the fullest degree, with the profound Tyrolese artistic susceptibility. Though her mind came to art as a blank page, it responded to the stimulus, once presented to its ken, as the sensitive plate of a photographic camera responds in every line to the inspiring picture.

As they strolled through the town, by Andreas Hausberger’s express desire⁠—⁠for the wise impresario had arranged their first appearance for that very evening, and wished the girls to come to it fresh, after a morning’s exercise⁠—⁠they paid comparatively little heed to what most of us regard as by far the most striking characteristic of Innsbruck⁠—⁠the great limestone crags that seem on every side to tower and overhang the very roofs of the city. They were accustomed, indeed, to crags, and made very small case of them. It was the houses, the shops, the noise, the crowd, the gaiety, that chiefly struck them. Innsbruck to Linnet was as a little Paris. But as they went on their way through the bustling streets, they came at last to a church door, which Linnet’s profound religious nature could hardly pass by without one minute’s prayer for Our Lady’s aid at this critical turning-point of her artistic history.

Philippina, nothing loth, for her part, opined it could do them no harm to make favour above with the blessed saints for this evening’s work by a little Pater Noster. The blessed saints dearly love attentions: much may be done with them by a small wax candle! So they opened the door, and stepped into the Hofkirche.

Even those of us who know well the world and its art, can remember vividly the strange start of surprise with which we gazed round for the first time on that oddest and most bizarre of Christian temples. It isn’t so much beautiful, indeed, as unexpected and startling. To push open the church door and find oneself at once ringed round and guarded close, as it were, by that great circle of mailed knights and bronze-wimpled ladies, who watch the long sleep of the kneeling Maximilian on his cenotaph in the centre, gives one a thrill of a novel sort from which some tinge of dim awe can hardly ever be wholly absent. There they stand, on their low pedestals, a congregation of bronze ancestors round their descendant’s tomb⁠—⁠Theodoric the Ostrogoth and King Arthur the Briton, Mary of Burgundy and Eleonora of Portugal⁠—⁠strange efforts of struggling art in its first faint steps towards the attainment of the beautiful⁠—⁠naïf, ungainly, crude, rising only once or twice within measurable distance of the ideal in the few figures cast in metal by Peter Vischer of Nuremberg. But to Linnet, a woman grown, instinct with the innate artistic taste of her countrymen, yet innocent till then of all forms of art save the saints and purgatories of her mountain chapels, the Hofkirche was a glimpse of some new and unseen world of infinite possibilities. She went through it all piecemeal with open-mouthed interest. Philippina could only laugh at the quaint vizors of the knights, the quainter dresses of the ladies. But Linnet was almost shocked Philippina should laugh at them. She herself half forgot her intended prayer to Our Lady in her delight and surprise at those wonderful figures and those beautiful bas-reliefs. She read all the names on the bases conscientiously; they didn’t mean much to her, to be sure⁠—⁠her historical ideas didn’t get as far as “Clovis, King of the Franks,” or even as “Count Frederick of Tyrol with the Empty Pockets”; but in a vague sort of way she gathered for herself that these were statues of archdukes and mighty heroes, keeping watch and ward silently round the great dead emperor who knelt in the centre on his marble sarcophagus. Good luck, too, attended them. The little hump-backed sacristan, seeing two pretty girls looking through the grating at the reliefs on its sides, relaxed his stony heart without the customary kreuzers, and admitted them within the railing to inspect at their leisure those exquisite pictures in marble which Thorwaldsen declared the most perfect work of their kind in the whole of Christendom. Philippina found the dresses quite grotesquely old-fashioned; but Linnet, hardly knowing why she lingered so long, gazed at each scene in detail with the profoundest interest.

While down in the town Linnet was thus engaged, high up in the hills Will Deverill sat alone by Mrs Palmer’s side on an outcrop of rock near the summit of the Lanser Kopf. Florian had gone off for a minute or two round the corner by the mountain indicator, with the giggling inarticulates. Mrs Palmer, pointing her moral with the ferrule of her parasol on the grass in front of her, was discoursing to Will earnestly of his work and his prospects. “I want to see you do something really great, Mr Deverill,” she said, with genuine fervour, looking deep into his eyes; “something larger in scale and more worthy of your genius⁠—⁠something that gives full scope to your dramatic element. I don’t like to see you frittering away your talents on these exquisite little lyrics⁠—⁠beautiful gems in their way, to be sure, but that way not the highest. I want to see you settled down for a long spell of hard work at some big undertaking⁠—⁠an epic, a play, a grand opera, a masterpiece. I know you could do it if only you took the time. You should go to some quiet place where there’s nothing to distract you, and make your mind up to work, to write something more lasting than even that lovely Gwyn, or that exquisite Ossian!”

Will looked down and sighed. ’Tis pleasant to be appreciated by a beautiful woman. And every man thinks, if he had but the chance, he could show the world yet the sort of stuff that’s in him. “I only wish I could,” he answered, regretfully. “But I’ve my living to earn. That ties me down still to the treadmill of journalism. When my holiday’s over⁠—⁠the first for two years⁠—⁠I must get back once more, well content, to Fleet Street and drudgery.”

Mrs Palmer sighed too. She felt his difficulty. Her parasol played more nervously on the grass than before. She answered nothing, but she thought a great deal. How small a matter for her to secure this young poet whom she admired so much, six months of leisure for an immortal work⁠—⁠and yet, how impossible! There was only one way, she knew that very well; and the first step towards that way must come, not from her, but from this modest Will Deverill.

’Twas a passing thought, half formed, or scarce half formed, in the pretty widow’s mind. But nothing came of it. As she paused, and sighed, and played trembling with her parasol, and doubted what to answer him, Florian came up once more with the giggling inarticulates, “Well, Mr Wood?” she said, looking up, just by way of saying something, for the pause was an awkward one.

“Pardon me,” the mannikin of culture answered in his impressive way; “my name is Florian.”

“But I can’t call you so,” Mrs Palmer answered, recovering herself, with a merry little laugh.

“It’s usual in Society,” Florian responded with truth. “Just ask Will Deverill.”

Will nodded assent. “Quite true,” he admitted. “Men and women alike in London know him only as Florian. It’s a sort of privilege he has, an attribute of his own. He’s arrogated it to himself, and the world at large acquiesces in his whim, and grants it.”

“It makes things seem so much more real and agreeable, you see, as Dick Swiveller said to the marchioness,” Florian continued blandly. “Now suppose we five form an elective family, a little brotherhood of our own, a freemasonry of culture, and call one another, like brothers and sisters, by our Christian names only! Wouldn’t that be delightful! I’ve just been explaining to Ethel and Eva that I mean henceforth to Ethel and Eva them. Soul gets nearer to soul without these flimsy barriers. I’m Florian; this is Will; and you, Mrs Palmer, your Christian name is⁠——?”

The pretty widow drew back with a little look of alarm. “Oh no,” she said, shortly; “I never could tell you my given name for anything. It’s much too dreadful.” She pulled out a pencil from the pocket at her side. “See here,” she said to Will, writing down one word for him on the silver-cased tablets that hung pendant from her delicate Oriental chatelaine, “there’s a name, if you like, for two Puritan parents to burden the life of their poor innocent child with! Don’t tell Mr Wood⁠—⁠or Florian if he wishes it; he’d make fun of it behind my back, I’m perfectly certain. I know his way. To him nothing, not even a woman’s name, is sacred.”

Will glanced at the word curiously. He couldn’t forbear a quiet smile. “It’s bad enough, I must admit,” he answered, perforce. The Vision of Beauty had been christened Jerusha!

“But I make it Rue for short,” she added, after a moment, with a deprecating smile.

Florian caught at the word, enraptured. “The very thing!” he cried, eagerly. “Capital, capital, capital! ‘There’s rue for you, and here’s some for me: we may call it herb-o’-grace o’ Sundays.’ But Rue shall be your weekday name for the Brotherhood. Let’s read the roll-call! Florian, Will, Rue, Ethel, Eva! Those are our names henceforth among ourselves. We scorn formalities! No mystery for us. We abolish the misters!”

And so indeed it was. As Will, Rue, and Florian, those three of the Elective House knew each other thereafter.

CHAPTER XIII

A FIRST NIGHT

’Twas with no little trepidation that Linnet arrayed herself that eventful night for her first appearance on this or any other public platform. When her hair was dressed and her costume complete, Philippina declared, with good-humoured admiration, she looked just lovely⁠—⁠for Philippina at least was never jealous of her. And Philippina was right: Linnet did look beautiful. She had tied her crossed kerchief very low about the neck, so as to leave her throat bare for the better display of Will Deverill’s corals. They became her admirably. Andreas Hausberger inspected his prima donna with well-satisfied eye. The wise impresario had heard, of course, where the necklet came from; but that didn’t in the least disturb his serenity. Will Deverill was gone, evaporated into space; and the coral at least was “good for trade,” inasmuch as it enhanced and set off to the utmost the nut-brown alp-girl’s almost gipsy-like beauty. For the sake of trade, Andreas could pardon much. And Will Deverill in England was no serious rival.

At eight o’clock sharp the concert was to begin at one of the big hotels. To the guests in the house it was just a matter of “some music, I hear, to-night⁠—⁠the usual thing, don’t you know⁠—⁠Tyrolese singers with a zither in the salon.” But to Linnet, oh, the difference! It was the most important musical event, the most momentous performance in the world’s history. She trembled like a child at the thought of standing forth and singing her simple mountain songs alone, in a fine-furnished room, before all those grand well-dressed and well-fed Britons. She would have given thousands (in kreuzers), if only she had them, to forego that ordeal. But Andreas Hausberger said “You must,” and she had to obey him. And the blessed Madonna, in Britannia metal, on an oval pendant, gave her courage for the trial.

By eight o’clock sharp, then, the troupe trooped in. Electric light, red velveted chairs, soft carpet on the floor, gilded mirrors by the mantelpiece and opposite console. So much grandeur and magnificence fairly took poor Linnet’s breath away. ’Twas with difficulty she faltered across the open space to a chair by the table which was placed at one end of the room for the use of the performers. Then she raised her eyes timidly⁠—⁠to know the worst. Some twenty-five people, more or less listless all of them, composed the audience. Some leaned back in their chairs and crossed their hands resignedly, as who expects to be bored, and makes up his mind betimes to bear his boredom patiently. Some read the latest Times or the Vienna papers, hardly deigning to look up as the performers entered. ’Twas a lugubrious function; more chilling reception prima donna never met with. Linnet clutched the blessed Madonna in her pocket convulsively. One breath of mild applause alone reached her ears. “Pretty girl,” one stout Briton observed aloud in his own tongue to his plentiful mate. Linnet looked down and blushed, for he was staring straight at her.

“Let’s sit it out, here,” Florian exclaimed in the smoking-room. The folding doors stood open, so that all might hear; but their group sat a little apart⁠—⁠Will, Rue, and he⁠—⁠in the farther corner, away from the draught, and out of sight of the musicians. “It’s more comfortable so⁠—⁠just the family by itself; and besides, I’ve a theory of my own that one should hear the zither through an open door; it mitigates and modifies the metallic twang of the instrument.”

Will and Rue were all acquiescence. Next to a tête-à-tête, a parti-à-trois is the pleasantest form of society. So they kept their seats still, in the rocking-chairs by the corner, and let the sound float idly in to them through the open portal.

Linnet waited, all trembling. Thank heaven, it wasn’t her part to begin. Franz Lindner came first with a solo on the zither. Bold, confident, defiant, with his hat stuck a little on one side of his head, and his feather in his band, turned Robbler-wise, wrong way, quite as jaunty as ever, Franz faced his audience as if his life had been passed in first-class hotels, and an Edison light had been the lamp of his childhood. Nothing daunted or disconcerted by the novelty of the circumstances, he played his piece through with a certain reckless brilliancy, wholly in keeping with the keynote of the Tyrolese character. Florian observed outside, with connoiseur complacency, that the fellow had brio. But the audience went on unmoved with its Times and its Tagblatt. The audience was chilling; Franz Lindner, accustomed to his own mercurial and magnetic fellow-countrymen, could hardly understand it. His self-love was mortified. He had expected a triumph, a sudden burst of wild applause; he received instead a faint clap of the hands from Ethel and Eva, and an encouraging nod from the mercantile gentleman of nonconformist exterior.

Franz sat down⁠—⁠a smouldering and seething volcano.

Then came Linnet’s turn. She rose, all tremulous, in her pretty costume, with her beautiful face and her shrinking timidity. Old gentlemen peeped askance over the edge of their papers at the good-looking girl; young ladies took stock of her abundant black hair and her dainty kerchief. “She’s going to sing,” Ethel whispered. “Isn’t she pretty, Eva? And just look, how very odd, she’s got a necklet exactly like the ones Mrs Palmer gave us!”

As they gazed and gurgled, Linnet opened her mouth, and began her song, quivering. She trembled violently, but her very trembling increased the nightingale effect of those beautiful trills which form so marked a feature in all Tyrolese singing. Her throat rose and fell; her clear voice flooded the room with bell-like music. At the very first line, the old gentlemen laid their Times contentedly on their laps, and beamed attention through their spectacles; the old ladies let the knitting-needles stand idle in their hands, and looked up with parted lips to listen. Andreas Hausberger was delighted. Never in her life had Linnet sung so before. Occasion had brought her out. And he could judge of her here more justly than at home; he was quite sure now he had found a treasure.

But at the very first sound of her well-known voice, Will started from his chair. He clapped his hands, fingers apart, to his cheeks in wonder, and stared hard at Florian. Florian in return opened his eyes very wide, leaned back in his seat with a sudden smile of recognition, and stared hard at Will, with a certain amused indulgence. Then both with one voice cried out all at once in surprise, “That’s Linnet!”

After that, it was Florian who first broke the forced silence. “I see in this the finger of fate,” he murmured slowly. But Will didn’t want to see the finger of fate, or any other abstraction; what he wished to see, then and there, was his recovered Linnet. It was thoughtless, perhaps, to disturb her song; but young blood is thoughtless. Without a moment’s hesitation, he walked unobtrusively but hastily into the room in front, and took a seat near the door, just opposite Linnet. Andreas Hausberger didn’t notice him, his eyes were firmly fixed on Linnet’s face, watching anxiously to see how his pupil would acquit herself in this her first great ordeal. But Linnet⁠—⁠Linnet saw him, and felt from head to foot a great thrill break over her, like a wave of fire, in long undulating movement. The wave rose from her feet and coursed hot through her limbs and body, till it came out as a crimson flush on her neck and chin and forehead; then it descended once more, thrilling through her as it went, in long undulating movement from her neck to her feet again. She felt it as distinctly as she could feel the blessed Madonna clenched hard in her little fist. And she knew now she loved him. Her Englishman was there, whom she thought she had lost; he had come to hear her sing her first song in public!

Strange to say, the interruption didn’t impair her performance. For one second she faltered, as her eyes met his; for one second she paused, while the wave coursed through her. But almost before Andreas had time for anxiety, she had recovered at once her full self-possession. Nay, more; Will’s presence seemed actually to encourage her. She sang now with extraordinary force and brilliancy; her voice welled from her soul; her notes wavered on the air as with a sensible quivering.

That was all Will knew at the time, or the rest of the audience either. They were only aware that a beautiful young woman in Tyrolese costume was rendering a mountain song for them as they never before in their lives had heard such simple melodies rendered. But to Linnet herself, a strange thing had happened. As her eyes met Will’s, and that wave of fire ran resistlessly through her, she was conscious of a weird sense she had never felt before, a sudden failure of sound, a numb deadening of the music. It was all a vast blank to her. She heard not a note she herself was uttering. Her ears were as if stopped from without and within; she knew not how she sang, or whether she sang at all; all she knew was, that, come what might, for Will’s dear sake, she must keep on singing. The little access of terror this weird seizure gave her in itself added much to the quality of her performance. Unable to correct herself and keep herself straight in her singing by the evidence of her ears, she devoted extravagant and incredible pains in her throat and bosom to the mere muscular effort of note-production and note-modulation. She sang her very best⁠—⁠for Will Deverill was there to listen and applaud her! Franz Lindner! Who talked of Franz Lindner now? She could pour out her whole soul in one dying swan-song, now she had found once more her dear, kind, lost Engländer!

Instinctively, as she sang, her hand toyed with the coral⁠—⁠her left, for with the right she still clasped Our Lady. A grand Frau had crept in just behind Will’s back⁠—⁠a smiling, fair-haired Frau, all soft cheeks and dimpled chin, and aglow with diamonds. She had seated herself on a chair by Will Deverill’s side. Herr Florian, too, had crept in at the same time, and taken the next place beside the fair-haired lady. They nodded and smiled and spoke low to one another. At the sight, Linnet clutched the coral necklace still harder. She was a very great lady⁠—⁠oh, the diamonds in her ears!⁠—⁠and she talked to Will Deverill with familiar carelessness!

And as Linnet clutched the necklet, a shade broke over Rue Palmer’s face. With a quick little gasp, she leaned across to Will, growing paler as she recognised that familiar trinket. “Why, this is the girl,” she whispered, “from the inn at St Valentin.”

And Will whispered back, all unconscious, “Yes; this is the girl. And now you can see why I sent her the necklet!”

Through the rest of that song, there was breathless silence. At its end, the old gentlemen and ladies, after a short hushed stillness, broke into a sudden little burst of applause. There was a moment’s interval, and then the demonstration renewed itself more vigorously than before. People turned to one another and said, “What a beautiful voice!” or, “She sings divinely!” By this time the loungers who held aloof in the smoking-room were crowding about the doorway. A third time they clapped their hands; and at each round of applause, Linnet, alternately pale and flushed with excitement, dropped a little mountain curtsey, and half cried, and half smiled at them. Her hearing had returned with the first symptom of clapping hands; she could catch the vague murmur of satisfied criticism; she could catch Andreas Hausberger’s voice whispering low in an aside, “Very well sung, Linnet.” But her eyes were fixed on Will, and on Will alone; and when Will framed his lips to one word of approbation, the hot blood rushed to her cheeks in a torrent of delight that at last she had justified her Engländer’s praises.

Linnet was the heroine of that evening’s performance. Andreas Hausberger sang “He was a jäger bold”; Philippina, looking arch, twanged the thankless zither. But the audience waited cold till ’twas Linnet’s turn again. Then, as she rose, they signified their approval once more by another little storm of applause and encouragement. Linnet curtsied, and curtsied, and curtsied again, and stared straight at Will Deverill. This second time she sang in less fear and trembling; she could hear her own notes now, and Will’s face encouraged her. She acquitted herself, on the whole, even better than before. Her rich pure voice, though comparatively untrained, exhibited itself at its best in that pathetic little ballad of her native hills, “The Alp-girl’s Lover.” She sang it most dramatically, with one hand pressed hard on her heaving bosom. At the end, the audience clapped till Linnet was covered with blushes. A mere scratch performance before some casual tourists in the drawing-room of an hotel; but to Linnet, it came home as appreciation and praise from the grandest of gentlefolk.

She sang three songs in all. Her hearers would gladly have made it six; but Andreas Hausberger knew his trade, and stuck firm to his programme. When all was finished, the foreign Herrschaft crowded round; Herr Florian shook Linnet’s hand; Herr Will pressed it tenderly. The grand lady with the diamonds was graciousness itself. “With a voice like that, my child,” she said, “you shouldn’t be singing here; you should be training for the stage in some great musical centre.” Many of the other guests, too, gathered round and congratulated her. It was noised abroad in the room that this was the pretty peasant girl’s absolute début, and that Mr Deverill and Mr Wood had met her as a sennerin at an inn in the Zillerthal. More voices than one praised her voice enthusiastically. But Will Deverill whispered low, “You have done yourself justice. As I told you at St Valentin, so I tell you again⁠—⁠Heaven only knows how high that voice may carry you.”

One thing Linnet noticed for herself, unprompted. That first appearance in operatic peasant dress as a musician in a troupe, had raised her at a bound in the scale of social precedence. At St Valentin, she was an alp-girl; at Innsbruck, all those fine-dressed ladies and gentlemen accepted her at first sight as a public singer. They spoke to her with a politeness to which she was hitherto unused. They bent forward towards her with a quiet sort of deference and equality which she felt instinctively the very same persons would never have shown to the sennerin in her châlet. Their curiosity was less frank; their questions were less blunt and better put than she was used to. It was partly the costume, no doubt, but partly also the function: she was a peasant girl in the Zillerthal; at Innsbruck she was a member of the musical profession.

She had only a second or two with Will that night. While the other guests crowded round her, uttering their compliments for the most part in rather doubtful German, which Linnet answered (by Andreas Hausberger’s wise advice) in her pretty broken English, Will dropped but a few words of praise and congratulation. After all was over, however, and they were going away for the night to the Golden Eagle, he stood at the door, bare-headed, his hat in his hand, to say goodbye to her. Andreas Hausberger’s keen eye watched their interview close. Will held Linnet’s hand⁠—⁠that transfigured Linnet’s, in her snow-white sleeves and her corset-laced bodice⁠—⁠held it lingering in his own with a mutual pressure, as he murmured, not too low for Andreas to overhear (’twas wisest so), “I’m pleased to see you wore my necklet.”

And Linnet, half-afraid how she should answer him aright, with Andreas standing by and straining his ear for every word, replied in German, with a timid smile, raising her eyes to his shyly, “I’m so glad you were pleased. I wanted to wear it. It’s a beautiful present. Thank you so very much for it.”

That was all. She had no more talk than just that with her Engländer. But she went back to the Golden Eagle, and lay awake all night thinking of him. Of him, and of the fair-haired Frau who sat smiling by his side. That fair-haired Frau gave Linnet some pangs of pain. Not that she was jealous; that ugliest of all the demons that beset human nature had no place, thank Heaven, in Linnet’s great heart. But she thought to herself with a sigh how much fitter for Will was that grand fair Frau than ever she herself could be. How could she expect him to make anything of her, when he could sit and talk all day long in great covered courts with grand ladies like that, his natural equals? He could think, after the Frau, no more of her, than she, after him, could think of Franz Lindner. And yet⁠—⁠and at that thought the billowy wave of fire broke over her once more from head to foot⁠—⁠he had left the grand lady in the room outside to come in and hear her song the moment he recognised her!

In the salon that same evening, when Linnet was gone, Rue stood talking for a minute by the fireside to Will Deverill. “She sings like an angel,” the pretty American said, with unaffected admiration of the peasant girl’s gifts. “What a glorious voice! Florian’s quite right. It’s a pity she doesn’t get it properly trained at once. It’s fit for anything.”

“So I think,” Will answered, looking her frankly in the face. “She needs teaching, of course⁠—⁠the very best teaching. But if only she gets it, I see no reason to doubt she might do what she likes with it.”

“And she’s beautiful, too,” Rue went on, without one marring touch of any feminine but. “How queenly she’d look as a Mary Stuart or a Cleopatra! Your necklet suits her well.” She paused, and reflected a second. “It’s a pity,” she went on, musingly, as if half to herself, “she shouldn’t have the brooch and the earrings to match it!”

And next day, sure enough, at the Golden Eagle, about one o’clock, when Linnet went up to her own room after early dinner, she found on her dressing-table a small cardboard box containing some coral ornaments to go with the necklet, and this little inscription in a feminine hand inside it:⁠—⁠“For Linnet, from one who admired last night her beautiful singing.”

Then Linnet knew at least that the fair-haired lady too had a great heart, and owed her no grudge for the possession of Will Deverill’s necklet. For she divined by pure instinct what admirer had sent them.

CHAPTER XIV

AND IF FOR EVER

“It’s no use wasting words,” Florian observed, with decision. “As our old friend Homer justly remarks, ‘Great is the power of words; wing’d words may make this way or that way.’ I’m a practical man myself: I stick close to the facts; they’re solid; they’re tangible; they’re not to be evaded. I won’t allow myself to be argued out of a reasonable conviction. I put it like this: if it was right for you, as you admitted, to leave St Valentin, then, by parity of reasoning, it’s right for you now to leave Innsbruck instantly. Mill, Whately, and Jevons would allow that that’s logic. Why did we come here? Partly, no doubt, to instruct ourselves in the contents of this most interesting town; but mainly, I submit, to deliver you forthwith from your milkmaid’s clutches. Why should we go away again? Partly because we’ve seen all that Innsbruck contains of historical or artistic; but largely, also, because the milkmaid insists upon pursuing us through the land and jingling her bells till she compels us to listen to her.”

“She didn’t know we were here,” Will interjected, bristling up.

“She didn’t know we were here, that’s true; but she’s followed us all the same, cow-bells and pails and all, and we must break away at once from her. I’ve said so to Rue, and Rue fully agrees with me. As I told you before, if you mean the girl harm,⁠—⁠well and good; I don’t meddle with you. But if you mean to go on shilly-shallying like this,⁠—⁠saying goodbye for ever⁠—⁠and sending her coral necklets; meeting her again at hotels⁠—⁠and applauding her rapturously; saying goodbye once more⁠—⁠and letting it run, for aught I know to the contrary, to diamonds and rubies⁠—⁠why, what I say is this, I’ve seen the same thing tried on more than once before, and my experience is, the man who begins by meaning only to flirt with a girl, sinks down, down, down, by gradual degrees, till at last he loses every relic of self-respect⁠—⁠and ends by marrying her!”

Will fingered his under lip, and knit his brow reflectively. “At least,” he said, “I must see her and tell her I’m going away again.”

Stern justice once more embodied itself as Florian. “Certainly not,” the little man answered, with an emphatic shake of the head. “If you say goodbye, she’ll want to know where you’re going. If she knows where you’re going, she’ll want, of course, to follow you. If you don’t mean her harm, then, hang it all, my dear fellow, you must mean her good⁠—⁠which is far more dangerous. There are only two possible motifs in such an affair⁠—⁠ou le bon, ou le mauvais. You must mean the first, if you don’t mean the second. I’ve talked it over with Rue, and Rue entirely supports me. For the poor girl’s own sake, she says, it’s your duty at once to run away from the spot, post haste, and leave her.”

A little later in the day, on the slopes behind Mühlan, Will thrashed it out himself, tête-à-tête with Rue, seated close by her side on the grassy upland. “She’s in love with you, poor thing,” Rue said very seriously. “You mayn’t see it yourself; sometimes, you know, Mr Deverill⁠—⁠I can’t always say Will; it seems so forward⁠—⁠sometimes, you know, you men⁠—⁠even the best of you⁠—⁠are unkind to us poor women through pure excess of modesty. You don’t realise how much a girl may really think of you. Your very want of self-conceit may make you blind to her feelings. But consider what you must seem to a child like Linnet. You’re a gentleman, a poet, a man of the great world, wholly removed from her sphere in knowledge, position, culture. She looks up to you, vaguely and dimly no doubt, with a shrinking respect, as some one very grand and great and solemn. But your attentions flatter her. Florian has told me all about how you met her at St Valentin. Now, even a lady,” and Rue looked down as she spoke, and half stifled a sigh, “even a lady might be pleased at attracting the notice of such a man as you; how much more then a peasant-girl! I watched her close last night when you first came into the room, and I saw such a red flush break over her throat and cheeks, like a wave surging upwards, as I never saw before on any woman’s face⁠—⁠though long ago . . . myself . . . when I was very young . . . I think I may have felt it. And I knew what it meant at once; I said to myself as I looked, ‘That girl loves Mr Deverill.’ ”

“I think she’s fond of me,” Will admitted modestly. “I didn’t notice it so much myself, I confess, at St Valentin; but last night, I won’t deny I watched her hard, and I could see she was really very pleased to meet me.”

Rue looked grave. “Mr Deverill,” she said in a serious voice, “a woman’s heart is not a thing to trifle with⁠—⁠I’m an old married woman myself, you see, and I can speak to you plainly. You may think very little yourself⁠—⁠for I know you’re not conceited⁠—⁠of the effect you’re likely to produce on women. I’ve known cruel things done, before now, by very good men, just because they never realised how much store women set on their passing attentions. You’ve only to look at Linnet to see she has a deeply passionate nature. Now, I beg of you, don’t play fast and loose with it any longer. If you don’t mean anything, don’t see her again. The more you see of her, the worse it will be for her.”

Will listened, and ruminated. Rue’s words had more effect on him by far than Florian’s. For one thing, she was a woman, and she treated the matter earnestly, where Florian only treated it with the condescending flippancy of his native clubland. To Rue, in her true womanliness, an alp-girl’s heart was still a sacred object; to Florian, ’twas a toy for the superior creature, man, as he said, “to play skittles with.” But then, again, Florian had dwelt much to him on the chance of his finally marrying Linnet. To Will himself, that contingency seemed too remote to contemplate. As he sat by Rue’s side on the grassy upland, and heard Rue speak so gently to him in her well-turned sentences, the distance between a refined and educated lady like that and a musical alp-girl appeared to his mind too profound to be bridged over. Was it likely, in a world which held such women as Rue, he ever could marry such a girl as Linnet? Now, Rue herself never spoke of marriage between Linnet and himself as even possible. She took it for granted the end must be either Linnet’s ruin or Linnet’s desertion. And all she urged him was not to break the poor child’s heart for her. So, where Florian’s worldly wisdom fell somewhat flat on his ears, Rue’s feminine sympathy and tact produced a deep effect upon him.

“It’ll make her very sad, I’m afraid, if she doesn’t see me again,” he said, looking down, with masculine shyness.

“I know it will,” Rue answered, pushing her point with advantage. “I could see that last night. But all the more reason, then, you shouldn’t let it go any further.”

“Well, but must I never see her again?” Will inquired with an anxious air. For his own sake, even, that counsel of perfection was a very hard saying.

Rue’s face grew still graver. “No; I think you must never see her again,” she answered, seriously. “Remember what it involves. Remember what she is; how dazzled she must be by a gentleman’s advances. The more you see of her, the more she’ll think of it⁠—⁠the more she’ll love you, confide in you, lean on you. That’s only womanly. We all of us do it . . . with a man we admire and feel greater and better than us. And you and she, after all, are both of you human. Some day, perhaps, carried away by a moment of emotion⁠—⁠” She broke off quite suddenly, and let her silence say the rest. “And then,” she went on, after a long pause, “when all’s lost and all’s done, you’ll be sorry, poor child, you’ve spoilt and wrecked her whole life for her. . . .” She paused again, and grew crimson. “Mr Deverill⁠—⁠Will⁠—⁠” she said, faltering, “I wouldn’t speak to you like this if I didn’t feel I was doing it to save this poor child in the end from untold misery. It’s not only the material consequences I’m thinking of now (though those are bad enough), but the girl’s own heart⁠—⁠for I can see she has got one. If you don’t go away, sooner or later you’ll break it. What other end can there be to an affair like this between a poet like you and a Tyrolese peasant girl?”

What other end, indeed! Will knew it, and felt it. He saw she was right. And her words thrilled through him. When a beautiful woman discusses your personal affections in such a strain as this it isn’t in human nature (in its male embodiment) not to tingle through and through in pure instinctive response with her. While Rue spoke like that, Will felt he must indeed see no more of Linnet. “But where must I go?” he asked, vaguely, just to distract the talk from his own potential misdeeds. Their original idea was Cortina and the Dolomites.

The innocent question fell in pat with Rue’s plans. Already that morning she had talked it over with Florian; and Florian, for the furtherance of his own designs, had agreed it would be best for them to alter their route, as things stood, in favour of a new project which Rue suggested. She was going to Meran herself, for a month or six weeks of bright autumn weather, on her way down to Italy. Why shouldn’t they come there, too, she asked, and keep the family together? Florian, not unmindful of her seven hundred thousand pounds, admitted at once the cogency of her reasoning. It would be quite delightful, he said⁠—⁠in point of fact, consummate. But would Will consent to it? Then Rue expounded to him her views about Will and his future in life⁠—⁠how he ought to retire to the wilderness for forty days, after the manner of the prophets, to meditate, and, if possible, to begin some great work, which should bring in the end name and fame and honour to him. Florian admitted, just to humour her, that if Will had the chance, and chose to buckle to, he might really produce something quite worth looking at. “Persuade him to it,” he said, in his mellifluous tones. “To you, Rue, it comes so easy, you see, to be persuasive. One word from your lips is worth fifty from mine. Make him stop away for three months from that dear, delightful, distracting London, and begin some big thing that the world must listen to.”

To inspire a great work is a mission in life for a woman⁠—⁠to be some Petrarch’s Laura, some Dante’s Beatrice. So, when Will asked plaintively, “Where must I go?” that afternoon, Rue answered with prompt decision, “Why, of course, to Meran. I’m going there myself. You must come with us and stop there.”

“What for?” Will inquired, not wholly untouched in soul⁠—⁠for proximity counts for much, and they were sitting close together⁠—⁠that the pretty American should so desire his company.

Then Rue began to explain, to persuade, to reason. And reason from those lips was profoundly conclusive. No syllogism on earth could have failed to convince from them. Meran was the prettiest place in South Tyrol, she said; the pleasantest climate for the autumn months, the loveliest scenery. The sun always shone, and the birds always sang there. Though it froze underfoot, you could bask on the hill-tops. But that wasn’t all;⁠—⁠and she leaned forward confidentially⁠—⁠she wanted to speak to him again about that subject she had broached the other day on the Lanser Kopf. When a pretty woman interests herself in your private concerns, she’s always charming; when she pays you the delicate flattery of stimulating you to use “your own highest powers”⁠—⁠that’s the proper phrase⁠—⁠she’s quite irresistible. So Will Deverill found Rue. Why, she asked, should he go back so soon to London? This devotion to mere journalism was penny-wise and pound-foolish. Could he afford to stay away for six weeks at Meran⁠—⁠just barely afford it⁠—⁠and settle himself down at a quiet hotel to some really big work that would make him famous?

Will, drawing a deep breath, and looking wistfully into her eyes, admitted his funds in hand would permit him, with care, such a hard-working holiday.

Then Rue pressed him close. She brought ghee to his vanity. She was convinced if he stopped in this keen mountain air, among these glorious Alps, fresh inspired from Nature, he could turn out a poem, a play, a romance, some great thing of its kind, that the world must listen to. He had it in him, she felt sure, to make his name famous. Nothing venture, nothing have. If he didn’t believe in himself enough to risk six weeks of his precious time on the effort to sketch out something really worthy of him, then all she could say was⁠—⁠and she flooded him as she spoke with the light of her lustrous eyes⁠—⁠he believed in himself far less⁠—⁠oh, so far, far less⁠—⁠than his friends believed in him. Florian had told her Will held no regular staff-appointment on any London paper; he was an occasional journalist, unattached, earning a precarious livelihood, in fear and trembling, by reviews and poems and descriptive articles in half-a-dozen assorted dailies and weeklies. Why shouldn’t he give them up for awhile, then, and play boldly and manfully for some larger stake, some stake such as she knew he could well attain to? And she quoted Queen Elizabeth⁠—⁠or was it Walter Raleigh?⁠—⁠

“He either fears his fate too much,

Or his desert is small,

Who will not put it to the touch

To lose, or win it all.”

Now, this line of argument, as it happened, exactly fell in, for a special reason of his own, with Will’s mood for the moment. A holiday, we all know, especially in the pure and stimulating air of the mountains, has always a most invigorating and enlivening effect upon the jaded intellect. And Will’s holiday in the Zillerthal had inspired him by degrees with fresh ideas and scenes for a Tyrolese drama. It was a drama of the hills, with some poeticised version of Linnet for its heroine⁠—⁠a half-musical sketch, a little mountain operetta, the songs in which were to be all of his own composing. Hitherto, he had never taken himself quite seriously as a composer; but Linnet and Andreas Hausberger had praised the few pieces he played over for them at St Valentin, and Rue had thought well of the stray snatches from his notes he had given them, under protest, on the very untuneful hotel piano. Now the idea occurred to him to write and compose a little play of his own, while the picture of Linnet was still fresh in his brain; and this holiday Rue dangled so temptingly before him would just suffice to get the first scaffolding of his piece together. The filling in he could manage at his leisure in London. So Rue won her point; but ’twas Linnet who won it for her.

“Yes; I’ll go to Meran,” he said at last, after a long break in their talk, “and I’ll settle down to work there, and I won’t even wait to say goodbye to Linnet.”

Poets are weak, however, where a woman is concerned. In this respect, it may be allowed, Apollo’s sons closely resemble the rest of the children of Adam. Will left Innsbruck, indeed, without bidding Linnet goodbye, but he couldn’t refrain from just dropping her a line before he went, to say he must leave her. “To meet you once more,” he wrote, “would be only to part again. I must say farewell, and this time for ever. But, Linnet, it makes my heart ache to do it!” You see, he was a poet.

CHAPTER XV

A CRITICAL EVENING

Florian and Rue, as it happened, were very ill-informed as to the Tyrolese minstrel market, otherwise they would certainly never have chosen Meran as a place of refuge for Will Deverill against the pressing temptations of his acquaintance with Linnet. They chose it because it was a delightful and frequented autumn resort; because the climate was charming and the sunshine unfailing; because the grape-cure was then on in full swing in the valley; and because everybody else at Innsbruck that moment was going there. For those very reasons, the wisdom of the serpent might have taught them to avoid it: ’twas the innocence of the dove that led them to fly right into it. In point of fact, Meran is crowded in October and November. High well-born Graf and consumptive plebeian disport themselves all day long on the leafy promenades, eating grapes as they go, beside the band and the Kurhaus. It stands to the world of Berlin and Vienna as Cannes and Mentone to the world of London. That was precisely why Andreas Hausberger had marked it out long since, as the next southward point on their way Riviera-wards.

“Are there many hotels there?” Franz Lindner asked dubiously, much crestfallen at his own comparative failure with the public of Innsbruck. A little of his jauntiness had been washed for the moment out of Franz Lindner’s figure; he looked limper in the back and not so stiff in the neck⁠—⁠nay, even his hat stood cocked on his head at a less aggressive angle.

“There isn’t anything else,” Andreas Hausberger answered in his Western style. “Meran and Obermais are one enormous gasthaus. If Linnet does as well as she has done at Innsbruck, it’ll take us take three weeks or a month, at least, to get right through with them. We took a good bit, considering all things, the other evening. I think she draws; I noticed old gentlemen slipped their florins under their palms into the plate unobtrusively. Besides, in a Kurort, she’ll soon get talked about. People at one hotel or pension will speak of us at another⁠—⁠‘Seen this Tyrolese troupe going about in the place? Pretty girl; sings sweetly.’ I take it there can’t be less than thirty houses in Meran where we could get an audience. That carries us well on to the end of November. By that time, San Remo and Bordighera’ll be filling up fast, and from there we can go on to Cannes, Nice, Mentone.”

So three days later saw them safe at Meran. To Linnet, that journey from north to south, across the great ridge of the Alps, seemed like transplantation into an earthly fairyland. She had never seen the luscious wealth of vineclad lands before; for North and South Tyrol are two different countries, one cold, bleak, Germanic, the other soft, warm, Italian. Meran itself appeared to her ardent imagination more beautiful than anything eye hath seen or mind conceived of. And, indeed, it is beautiful. Whoever knows it loves it. A brawling little mountain stream, the Passer, rushes headlong from the glaciers of the Otzthaler Alps through a wild upland glen, to join in due time the broader stream of the Adige, which threads the bleak Vintschgau on its precipitous course from the lofty snow-fields of the Ortler and the Wild-Spitze. Near the point where the two unite, on a long tongue of land, the little town of Meran nestles close among its vines, under shelter of the rounded ice-worn Küchelberg. It clings with its ancient walls, its steeples, its watch-towers, as if glued to the lower slopes of the basking mountain. Linnet gazed at it, delighted. For here, on the south side of the Alps, looking down the broad valley to sunny Italy, the vegetation differed greatly, both in richness and in character, from anything she had ever seen in her native Zillerthal. Indeed, even Italy itself, parched as it often is with excessive heat, seldom shows such wild luxuriance of foliage and fruit as these green and well-watered South Tyrolese valleys. There is a bowery, flowery lavishness and lushness about it all that defies description. The vines that trail loose across their trellised archways; the gourds that hang pendent from their wooden frails; the great yellow pumpkins that lean temptingly over every terraced wall; the lizards that bask blinking on the sun-smitten rock-face; the crimson sprays of Virginia creeper that droop in festoons from the brown verandah wood-work of coquettish châlets, mingled with the pine-clad slopes and bare snow-sprinkled peaks of the upper background, make a charming hybrid between Switzerland and Lombardy. Imagine for yourself an ancient German town, with mouldering walls and high turrets, like Boppard or Andernach, and crenellated castles of quaint mediæval architecture, but with arcaded streets and Italian loggias, plumped down incongruously in the midst of this half-Alpine, half-southern scenery, and you get a very fair bird’s-eye view indeed, in its way, of the main traits of Meran.

On the very first morning of her arrival in the town, Linnet took her way out with Franz Lindner and Philippina along the brawling stream that forms the centre and rallying point of the gay little watering-place. Meran is all parade, winter-garden, and band, and they walked through its midst to see and be seen of the lounging Herrschaft. They were dressed in full costume; ’twas a form of advertisement Andreas greatly believed in. Franz held himself erect, with his feather still stuck Robbler-wise, and his defiant air, as he strode through the crowd that lined the promenade⁠—⁠the gayest, most varied, and most fashionable throng Linnet had ever set eyes on. He and Philippina stared hard at the world that displayed itself before them. German Jews from Frankfort, great Viennese bankers, the round-faced, engaging Bavarian fräuleins, the tall and tailor-made English lawn-tennis misses. Linnet gazed at them, too, but cast her eyes now and then from the people and the shops to the great cleft mountain peaks that soared everywhere high and clear-cut into the sky above them.

In the lower part of their walk the river was smooth, and the roadway was bordered by fantastic pensions and quaint Tyrolese buildings; but in the upper part, which they reached beyond a single bold arch of stone-work that spanned the Passer, precipitous rocks began to hem it in, the river assumed the guise of a foaming torrent, and the ruined fortress of the Zenoburg, with its Romanesque portal, frowned down from high above them on a water-worn gorge where the stream forced its way in a dashing cataract. A little platform overhangs the very edge of the cascade. Linnet stood there long, leaning over the iron rail, and gazing with delight at the white foam beneath, and the placid deep green of the calm rock-basin that received the mountain stream as it leapt from the precipice.

Franz and Philippina wouldn’t let her remain there, however. With the restlessness of their kind, they were eager to explore this new world more fully. They strolled through the town, and up the hills behind, where all seemed fresh and southern and romantic to Linnet. Through green alleys of vines, trained like bowers over their heads, they mounted at last by a cloven ravine to the chestnut-covered slopes, where they looked down like a map on the vast garden of the Etschthal. It was a wonderful view. Linnet drank it in eagerly. In front crouched the town with its huddling red roofs wedged in between the hill and the scurrying river; beyond lay a wide plain of such luxuriant tilth as Linnet till then had never dreamt of. Villages and churches clustered thick by the dozen on slope and hill-top; but what added the last touch of charm to the strange scene in Linnet’s eyes was the extraordinary number and variety of its feudal châteaux. Every height was crowned by its castellated Schloss, ivy-clad Planta, huge sun-smitten Labers, the terraced front of Rametz, the frowning bastions of Fragsburg: Franz Lindner, with his keen eyes, could count no less than forty-three of them. The exhilaration of the fresh scene, and of the southern trees and creepers, so different from the stunted pines of their own chilly Zillerthal, filled Linnet with a certain vague and indefinable delight: had but her Engländer been there, she would have been perfectly happy.

Andreas Hausberger had taken charge of the health of his troupe, in strict accordance with his own favourite theories. The two girls were to walk on the hills for three hours every morning. They were to dine thus and thus. They were to do or avoid this, that, or the other thing. He himself had gone off meanwhile to one of the smaller hotels to make arrangements beforehand for that evening’s concert. One of the smaller hotels, bien entendu, for Andreas knew well the money value of mere gossip as a means of advertisement. Not till he had seen what impression Linnet made on the public of the lesser houses would he launch her on the Meranhof or the Erzherzog Johann. That ensured him the full benefit of the talk of the town. A shrewd man, Andreas Hausberger! By the time he reached those larger and richer houses in his nightly rounds, he didn’t doubt the world of Meran would have heard and tattled much of his new-found singer; people would say to one another, “Don’t miss the Tyrolese troupe that’s coming to us to-night; they say there’s one girl in it worth seeing and hearing.” For Andreas was above all things a man of the world; he never threw away the chance of earning an extra gulden.

That evening, in due course, their concert came off at the Austria at Obermais. You know the Austria?⁠—⁠a small but select and aristocratic pension, much affected by the Von So-and-so’s of Berlin and Vienna. The result (in net cash) surpassed the prudent Andreas’s highest expectations. Though no Will Deverill was there to inspire her efforts, Linnet sang divinely. Indeed, to say the truth, though she had met him and lost him once more at Innsbruck, that meeting and losing, instead of dashing her hopes to the ground, as Rue and Florian expected, had only produced on her simple little mind a general impression that now, by the blessed Madonna’s aid, her Engländer might turn up any day, anywhere. In that innocent hope, born of the age of faith, she sang her best with a will, and charmed her audience, looking hard at the door all the while, to see if, peradventure, her Engländer would enter. And when no Engländer came, she comforted her soul with the thought that Andreas had said there were twenty-nine other hotels in Meran and Obermais⁠—⁠at any one of which, no doubt, that dear friend might be stopping. Her heart wasn’t crushed⁠—⁠not the least bit of it⁠—⁠and her trust in the blessed Madonna on the Britannia metal pendant that hung round her neck was as vivid and as childishly unquestioning as ever. Our Dear Frau had brought her her lover at Innsbruck; Our Dear Frau could bring him her just as well at Meran here.

She sang three times. Each time the audience applauded vociferously. The Austria, you see, is mainly frequented by Germans. Now, your German is musical; he has little reserve; he loves a good noise; and he’s never afraid of displaying his feelings. Moreover, the little party in the salon that night was largely composed of Viennese or Bavarians; they understood the zither and the Tyrolese songs; they were to the manner born, good judges of execution. Franz Lindner’s feather curled once more, quite as perkily as ever, when they applauded the bravado of his facile playing. Philippina smiled and bobbed, a wicked twinkle in her eye, when they cried “Bis!” to the loudest and sauciest of her jodels. But at each of Linnet’s songs, her hearers grew silent, then burst as she ceased into uproarious approbation. She was the heroine of the night, the black swan of the party; not often had they heard such a voice as hers at so humble a performance.

When all was finished, ’twas Linnet’s task to hand round the plate and make the little collection. She hated the work, but ’tis always imposed, and with sound commercial reason, on the prettiest girl of the troupe, so it naturally devolved upon Linnet to perform it. Even good-humoured Philippina admitted without dispute her claim to the function. Hot in the face, and ill at ease, Linnet walked round the room in a maze of confusion, with her little silver salver. She offered it first to the rich Jew banker from Frankfort-on-the Main, with the diamond pin, and the seals on his watch-chain. Now, your pretty face is a mighty opener of your purse-strings. The rich Jew banker, holding out one fat thumb and forefinger gingerly, after a second’s hesitation (for ’tis hard to part with so much money at once) dropped a ten-florin piece in good Austrian gold, plump into the middle of the silver salver. It fell with a ring. His example was contagious. Christian Freiherrs could not stand being beaten in their appreciation of vocal art by Jewish financiers from Frankfort. People who meant to give one florin now gave two; people who meant to put off on their wives the duty of dispensing the family bounty now drew out their purses and became their own almoners. Linnet had never seen a gold piece in her life before; when she finished her round, bowing low, that night, there were three of them on the salver.

Andreas Hausberger eyed the plate with a carefully-suppressed smile of subdued satisfaction. His mouth never moved; only the corners of his eyes betrayed his emotion. But that evening’s haul had far-reaching consequences⁠—⁠for him and for Linnet. He saw in a moment he had found indeed, as he thought, a treasure. He didn’t need the assurances of the rich Jew banker, and the lady amateur with the tortoise-shell eyeglasses who came from Berlin, that Linnet should be placed at once for instruction in a proper conservatorium. He saw for himself, from the effect she produced on the audience that night, she would yet do wonders. As Linnet left the Austria, Andreas held her cloak for her. But it wasn’t mere gallantry. “Wrap your throat round well, Linnet,” he said, with much zealous care. “For Heaven’s sake don’t take cold. The air on the hills in the daytime won’t hurt you; but after sitting in these crowded, over-heated rooms, the night fogs are so bad for you.”

The goose that lays the golden eggs deserves to be well tended.

CHAPTER XVI

SCHLOSS TYROL

“Where shall we go to-day?” Will inquired next morning, as they sipped their early coffee at the Erzherzog Johann. He was already hard at work on his projected operetta, but ’twas a fad of his to compose in the open air; he went out for a long stroll every morning with Florian, and sat on the hillsides, jotting his thoughts down with a pencil, exactly as they occurred, face to face with Nature.

“Rue won’t meet us to-day, she says,” his friend answered with a yawn. “Her nerves are tired after her walk of yesterday. So, for my part, I vote we go and see Schloss Tyrol. It inspires me, that place,” Florian went on, warming up⁠—⁠for he had been reading his guide-book. “It has the interest of a germ, a nucleus, a growing point. I like to think that here we stand before the embryo of a State⁠—⁠the very heart and core of the evolving Tyrol. We watch its development, so to speak, from its central cell. It’s the evolution of law, of order, of authority. The robber chiefs of that high stronghold perched aloft on the hills”⁠—⁠and Florian extended one small white hand, as was his wont when he perorated⁠—⁠“are the centre round which clusters by successive degrees the whole Tyrolese and Austrian history. I see them pushing their power in concentric rings from their eagle’s eyrie on the crags above the valley of the Adige, to Botzen and the Brenner, the basin of the Inn, the Bavarian March, the entire Eastern Alps, from the Engadine to the Dolomites. Their Schloss there is the original and only genuine Tyrol. By successful robbery, which is the basis of all the divine rights of governments, they become the masters and lords of a mighty province; they dictate peace and justice to obedient villagers; they stand out in course of time as an earthly providence. But what were they at first? Why, a den of thieves! There you have the whole evolution of morality in a nutshell⁠—⁠the rule of the strong, established and maintained by continued aggression. So I will see Schloss Tyrol; I will be a pilgrim at the shrine; I will refresh myself at the fount of law and order as it exists and envisages itself for these innocent mountains.”

“It’s an interesting place,” Will replied, taking no notice of Florian’s gush, “and it’s well worth visiting. I’ve seen it before. I’ll sit on the rocks outside and write, while you go in and look at it.”

So after breakfast they started up the narrow old road, paved in places with cobble-stones, and overarched in its lower slopes by graceful festoons of trellised vines, that leads from Meran along a shoulder of the hills to the earliest home of the counts of Tyrol. ’Twas a true South Tyrolese November morning. It froze hard through the night, and the ice still lay thick on the pools by the wayside; but in that keen, crisp air, and with that cloudless sky, the sun overhead blazed as warm as summer. Up the Passer valley to their right, as they mounted, the villages and churches on the slopes of the Ifinger stood out in dazzling white against their dark green background. The little mountain path, bordered as usual by countless petty crucifixes and whitewashed shrines, wound in continuous zig-zags up the face of the Küchelberg, a wedge of rounded rock that overlooks the town, draped with vineyards on its sides, and worn smooth on its summits by the titanic ice mills of the glacial epoch. The chapels in particular excited Florian’s interest. “There’s more religion to the square mile in the Tyrol,” he said, “than in any other country I ever visited!”

They rose by slow degrees till they reached the long hog’s back which separated the wild Passer glen from the wider and more luxuriant Adige valley. Florian stood still to gaze. Tier upon tier of vines, in endless galleries, roofed the southern slope as with one leafy arbour; the long shoulder itself on whose top they now stood was green with pastures, and watered by plashing artificial leats which had worn themselves deep beds like natural streamlets. The music of falling water accompanied them all the way; the cow-bells tinkled pleasantly from the fields on either hand; and the views, as they walked along the crest of the ridge, looking down into the two valleys with their villages and klosters, their castles and towers, seemed infinite in the variety of their beauty and interest. Above soared the bare peaks of the Muthspitze and the Tschigatspitze; to the east rose the fissured summits of the cloven Dolomites; the white mass of the Lanser Ferner closed the glen to westward.

After nearly an hour’s walk, as they approached the little village of Dorf Tyrol on the hill-top, they passed a huddled heap of wayside boulders, over whose ledge the stream that had accompanied them so far on their road tumbled from a small sluice in a bickering cataract. Two girls were seated on the brink of the torrent with their backs turned towards them. As the young men approached, one of the girls looked round, and gave a start of surprise. “Why, Linnet,” she cried in German, “here he is again!⁠—⁠your Engländer!”

Linnet turned, with a crimson flush on her nut-brown face, to think that Philippina should speak so openly of Will, as of some one that belonged to her. But her cheek, to say the truth, was hardly redder than Will’s own, as he heard himself so described by the laughing sennerin as Linnet’s Engländer. He couldn’t conceal from himself, however, the fact that he was glad to meet Linnet under whatever circumstances. With a wondering heart, he went up and took her hand. “Why, when did you come here?” he asked, all astonished.

“The day before yesterday,” Linnet answered, tingling.

“And she sang last night at the Austria,” Philippina put in, with her good-humoured smile, “and made a great success, too, I can tell you that; and took, oh, ever and ever so much money. Herr Andreas is so pleased. He goes chuckling to himself. I think he thinks Linnet will make his fortune.”

“And how long do you stop here?” Will inquired, half-anxiously, half-eagerly.

“About a month,” Linnet answered, looking deep into his eyes, and keeping down the rising tears as well as she could in her own. “And you, Herr Will? how long do you mean to remain here?”

“A month or six weeks,” Will replied with a thrill. Then he added, gazing hard at her, in spite of Florian, “so I hope we may still have many chances of meeting?”

Florian flung his fragile form at full length on the heap of stones by their side, and began to laugh unrestrainedly. “Well, it’s no use fighting against fate,” he cried, looking up at the blushing pair, with philosophic indulgence for the errors and foibles of youth and beauty and the poetic temperament. “You must go your own way, I suppose. I retire from the contest. I’ve done my very best, dear boy, to preserve you from yourself; but the stars in their courses seem to fight against Sisera.” He extended both his small hands with paternal unction. “Bless you, my children,” he cried, theatrically. “Be happy. Be happy.”

“Which way are you walking?” Will asked in German, to cover his confusion.

“Well, we were going towards the Schloss,” Philippina replied, smiling. “But the climb’s rather stiff, so we sat down for awhile by these stones, just to rest on the hill-top.”

“The finger of fate again!” Florian cried, much amused, raising his hands deprecatingly. “Well, Will, there’s no help for it; I see they must go with us. It’s useless trying to keep you and your Oread apart any longer, so I won’t attempt it. Two’s company, three’s none. The only thing left for a wise man like me⁠—⁠is just to walk on in front and take a German lesson from Fräulein Philippina.”

Fortunately for Florian, too, Philippina proved to be one of those gay and easy-going young ladies with whom the want of a common tongue wherein to express one’s thoughts forms a very slight barrier to the course of conversation. Already at her châlet he had guessed as much; and now on the hill-top, they walked along side by side, chatting and laughing as they went, with expressive eyes, and making themselves mutually understood as much by nods and becks and wreathèd smiles⁠—⁠so Florian poetically phrased it in his silent soul⁠—⁠as by any articulate form of the German language. Before they had reached the Schloss they stood already on excellent terms with one another, and Florian even consoled himself for the enforced loss of Linnet’s society with the reflection that Philippina was, after all, in many ways “a great deal more practical.”

But Linnet, walking behind, was in the seventh heavens. She had found her Engländer once more, and that alone would have been enough for her. But that wasn’t all; this second chance meeting, perfectly natural as it was⁠—⁠for Andreas had but followed the stream of tourists southward⁠—⁠impressed her simple mind with the general idea that the world, after all, wasn’t as big as she had supposed it, and that she’d be liable now to meet the gnädige Herr wherever she went, quite casually and accidentally. Not, indeed, that she troubled her head much just then about the future in any way: with Will by her side, she lived wholly in the present. She didn’t even ask him why he had gone away from Innsbruck without coming to say goodbye to her in person; she didn’t utter a single word of reproach or complaint; she accepted all that; she took it all for granted. Will never could marry her; she didn’t expect him to marry her: a gentleman like him couldn’t marry a peasant-girl; a Catholic like herself couldn’t marry a heretic who scarcely bowed the knee to Our Blessed Lady. But she loved him for all that, and she was happy if he would but let her walk beside him. And in this she was purely and simply womanly. True love doesn’t ask any end beyond itself: it is amply satisfied with being loved and loving.

And Will? Well, Will had a poet’s nature, and the poet lives in the passing emotion. Only a man of moods can set moods before us. Like Linnet herself, Will thought little of the future when Linnet was beside him. He meant her no harm, as he said truly to Florian; but he meant her no good either: he meant nothing at all but to walk by her side, and hold her hand in his, and feel his heart beat hard, and her finger-touch thrill through him. Walking thus as in a mist, they passed Dorf Tyrol; and the road at once grew wilder and more romantic. It grew also more sequestered, with deeper bends and nooks, as it turned the corners of little ravines and gulleys, where they could look at one another more frankly with the eager eyes of young love; and once, Will raised his hand to Linnet’s nut-brown cheek, and pressed it tenderly. Linnet said nothing, but the hot blood rushed to her face with mingled shame and pleasure; and who was so glad as she that Will Deverill should touch her!

The path wound round a deep gorge, overhanging a torrent, with Schloss Tyrol itself frowning beyond on its isolated crag⁠—⁠a picturesque and half-ruinous mediæval fortress, almost isolated on a peninsular mass of crumbling mud-cliff, interspersed with the ice-worn débris of pre-historic glaciers. ’Tis a beautiful spot. Pretty Alpine rills, tearing headlong down the sides, have carved out for themselves steep ravines which all but island the castle; their banks rise up sheer as straight walls of cliff, displaying on their faces the grey mud of the moraine, from which the ice-worn boulders project boldly here and there, or tumble from time to time to encumber the littered beds of the streams that dislodged them. But what struck Florian most of all, as he paused and looked, was the curious effect produced where a single large boulder has resisted the denuding action of the streams and the rainfall, so as to protect the tapering column of hardened mud beneath it. Each big rock thus stood paradoxically perched on the summit of a conical pillar, called locally an earth-pyramid, and forming, Florian thought, the most singular element in this singular landscape. Close to its end the track bends round an elbow to skirt the ravine, and then plunges for a hundred yards or more into a dark and narrow underground passage through the isthmus of moraine stuff, before drawing up at the portcullis of the dismantled fortress. A more romantically mysterious way of approaching a mediæval stronghold Florian could hardly imagine: it reminded him of Ivanhoe or the Castle of Otranto.

But as Florian and Philippina disappeared under the shadow of the darkling archway, Will found himself alone for one moment with Linnet, screened from observation by the thick trellis-work of the vineyards. They were walking close together, whispering in one another’s ears those eternal nothings which lovers have whispered in the self-same tones, but in a hundred tongues, for ten thousand ages. Occasion favoured them. Will glanced round for a moment; then with a rapid movement he drew the trembling girl to himself, half unresisted. Her cheek was flushed, partly with joy, partly with fear, that he should dare to lay hands on her. His boldness thrilled her through with a delicious thrill⁠—⁠the true womanly joy in being masterfully handled. “No, no,” she cried in a faint voice; “you mustn’t, you mustn’t.” But she said it shyly, as one who half-wishes her words to fail of their effect: and Will never heeded her “no”⁠—⁠and oh, how glad she was that Will never heeded it! He held her face up to his, and bent his own down tenderly. Linnet tried to draw back, yet pursed up her lips at the same time and let him kiss her when he tried; but she made him try first, though when at last he succeeded, she felt the kiss course trembling through her inmost being.

It was but a moment, yet that moment to her was worth many eternities. For a second of time she nestled against him confidingly, for now he was hers, and she was his for ever. Their lips had sealed it. But before he could steal another, she had broken away from him again, and stood half-penitent, half-overjoyed, by the roadside, a little way from him. “No more now!” she said, gravely, lifting one finger in command; “we must follow Herr Florian.” And with that, they plunged at once into the gloom of the tunnel.

What happened by the way, no one knows save themselves; but, two minutes later, with blushing cheeks, they rejoined their companions by the gateway of the castle. Even flushed as she was, Linnet couldn’t help admiring it. It was beautiful, wonderful. The ancient wealth and dignity of the first counts of Schloss Tyrol remain well reflected to this day in the rude magnificence of their Romanesque residence. Linnet looked up with wonder at the round-arched portal of the principal doorway, richly carved with quaint squat figures of grotesque fancy, naïve, not to say childish and uncouth, in design, but admirable and exquisite in execution. “Tenth-century workmanship!” Florian said, with a bland smile, as he looked up at it, condescendingly; and Will, pulling himself together again, explained to the two girls in detail the various meanings of the queer little figures. Here were Adam and Eve; here Jonah and the whale; here saints revelled in Heaven; here, lost souls rolled in torment. Linnet gazed, and admired the beauty of the door⁠—⁠but still more, Will’s learning. If only she could understand such things as that! But there!⁠—⁠he was so wise, and she so ignorant!

They passed into the hall⁠—⁠that stately old Rittersaal, adorned with marble carvings of the same infantile type⁠—⁠and looked sheer down from the windows a thousand feet on to the valley below, with the falls of the Adige behind, and a sea of tumultuous porphyritic mountains surging and rolling in the farther background. ’Twas a beautiful view in itself, rendered more beautiful still by its picturesque setting of semi-circular arches, divided and supported by slender shafts of polished alabaster. To an untutored girl of Linnet’s native artistic temperament, it was delightful to pass through those lordly halls and into that exquisite chapel with its quaint old frescoes, in company with somebody who could explain their whole meaning to her simple intelligence so well as Will Deverill. Though she felt her own ignorance⁠—⁠felt it acutely, sensitively⁠—⁠she felt at the same time how fast she could learn from such a teacher; and as she dropped on her knees before the twelfth-century Madonna in the spangled shrine of that antiquated chantry, it was not for herself alone that she murmured below her breath, in very tremulous tones, an Ave Maria.

Will and Florian talked, too, of the Schloss and its history. Linnet listened with all her ears, though she hardly understood half the English words they used to describe it⁠—⁠how it commanded the whole vast plain of Meran and Botzen, the widest and most populous in the Eastern Alps, one basking garden of vines and Indian corn and fruit-trees, thickly dotted with hamlets, churches, and castles. “You can see why the counts who lived here spread their power and their name by slow degrees over the whole of this country,” Will said, as they gazed down on it. And then he went on to talk of how the Counts of Tyrol gradually absorbed Meran and Botzen, and in course of time, by their possession of the Brenner route, the great mediæval highway from Italy to Germany, acquired the over-lordship of the whole wide tract which is now called after them. Oh, what grand words he used! Linnet listened, and wondered at them. She caught, from time to time, the name of Margaret Maultasch⁠—⁠that Meg of the Pocket-Mouth who made over her dominions to the house of Austria⁠—⁠and learned from stray hints how the Counts of the new line moved their capital northward from Meran to Innsbruck. It was marvellous how Herr Will, who was a stranger from England, should know so much more about her people’s history than she herself did! But there! what did she say? Herr Will knew everything.

Florian and Philippina went off by themselves after awhile among the ruins of the ramparts. Linnet was left alone with Will again by the windows of the Rittersaal. All this historical talk had inflamed her eager mind with vague hopes and possibilities. Why should not she too know? Why should not she too be fit for him, like the fair-haired lady? “Herr Will,” she said at last, turning round to him with a shy look in her shrinking eyes, “How I wish you could teach me! How I wish you could tell me how to learn such things! We shall be here for a month. Why shouldn’t I begin? Why shouldn’t I learn now? We may see each other often.”

“Will you be on the hill behind the town to-morrow?” Will asked, half-ashamed of himself for these endless breakings-off, and these fresh re-commencements.

“Perhaps,” Linnet answered timidly, in her accustomed phrase; “if Philippina will come . . . and if she doesn’t tell Andreas.”

“Where will you be?” Will inquired, taking her hand in his own once more and holding it.

Linnet looked down and paused. “I might be near the cross at the turn of the road by the second oratory, about ten o’clock,” she said very low, “if Our Lady permits me.”

Will pressed her hand hard. “And where do you sing to-night?” he asked, with a little smile of pleasure. “I must come and hear you.”

To his immense surprise Linnet drew back at once, red as a rose, and fixed her eyes on him pleadingly. “Oh, no, don’t,” she cried, much distressed. “Don’t, don’t, I beg of you.”

Will, in turn, lifted his head, astonished, and looked hard at her. He couldn’t understand this strange freak of feeling. “Then don’t you like me to hear you?” he cried, regretfully. “It’s such a pleasure to me. I thought you wanted me to hear. And I thought I encouraged you.”

“So you do,” Linnet answered with a burst, half-sidling towards him, half-shrinking. “I love you to hear me. And I’ll sing for you whenever you like. I’ll sing for you till I’m hoarse. But don’t come to the hotels. Oh, don’t come, I implore you!”

“Why not, my child?” Will cried, drawing her close to him once more.

Linnet’s cheeks burnt crimson. She looked down and stammered. Then, with a sudden impulse she hid her face on his bosom, and yielded up her whole soul to him. “Because,” she whispered, all aglow with maiden shame at having confessed the truth, “if Andreas Hausberger sees you, he’ll know you’re in Meran⁠—⁠and then he won’t allow me to come out on the hills to meet you.”

CHAPTER XVII

CAUGHT OUT

That avowal of Linnet’s that she didn’t want Andreas Hausberger to know of Will’s presence in the town put Will’s relations towards her during the next few weeks on a different, and to some extent compromising, footing. It introduced into their meetings a certain shadowy element of clandestine love-making which was in many ways distasteful to Will’s frank and manly nature, though it was at the same time, as Florian felt, a hundred times more “dangerous” for him than any open acquaintance. For Andreas, after all, was Linnet’s ostensible guardian and nearest male protector. To meet Linnet on the hills, without his knowledge or consent, was to place oneself in the position of an unrecognised lover. Will knew it was a mistake. And yet⁠—⁠he did it. We, who have made no mistakes of any sort in all our lives, but have steadily followed the beaten track all through, with sheep-like persistence, can afford to disapprove of him.

So, day after day, during the next few weeks, Will went up on the hills to walk and talk with Linnet. Rue Palmer was delighted. She thought, poor soul, her scheme was succeeding admirably. Will was out every morning on the mountains alone, working hard at his magnum opus, which was to astonish the world, and with which she had inspired him. It was glorious, glorious! And, indeed, in spite of the time wasted in talking with Linnet, though the best spent time, as everybody knows, is the time we waste, Will did really succeed in writing and composing at odd moments and in the night watches no small part of his graceful and beautiful little operetta, “The Chamois Hunter’s Daughter.” But alas for poor Rue, it was not she who inspired it.

On these morning expeditions up the surrounding hills to some appointed trysting-place, Florian sometimes accompanied him, and sometimes not. But, in any case, he abstained from mentioning their object to Rue; as he put it himself, never should it be said that Florian Wood could split upon two ill-advised but confiding young people. It suited Florian’s book now, indeed, that Will’s attention should be distracted from Rue to Linnet. He wanted to make the running for himself with the American heiress, and he was by no means sorry that so dangerous and important a rival as the author of “Voices from the Hills” should be otherwise occupied. So he kept his own counsel about Will and Linnet; he had abdicated by this time his self-appointed function of moral censor; and seeing they would go to the devil in any case, he was inclined to let them go their own headlong way, into the jaws of matrimony, without preliminary haggling. He that will to Cupar, maun to Cupar. Deverill would marry his cow-girl in the end⁠—⁠of that Florian felt certain; and when a man’s quite determined to make a fool of himself, you know, why, you only earn his dislike, instead of his esteem, by endeavouring to win him back again to the ways of wisdom.

And Will? Well, Will himself had as yet no very fixed ideas of his own as to whither he was tending. Being only a poet, he was content to drift with the wind and tide, and watch on what shoals or shores they might finally cast him. Most probably, if things had been allowed to go their own way, he would sooner or later have justified Florian’s pessimistic prophecies by marrying Linnet. He would have gone on and on, falling more and more deeply in love with the pretty peasant every day, and letting her fall every day more and more deeply in love with him, till at last conventional differences sank to nothing in his eyes, and he remembered only that heart answereth to heart, be it poet’s or alp-girl’s. At present, however, he troubled himself little with any of these things. He was satisfied for the moment, Florian said, to bask in the sunshine of that basilisk’s smile, without care for the morrow. Sooner or later, he felt sure, in so small a town, either Florian or he must run up unawares against Andreas Hausberger. Whenever that happened, no doubt, there must be some sort of change or new departure. Meanwhile, he religiously avoided the Promenade, where he was likeliest to come suddenly on the wise impresario. So he stuck to the hills, with or without Linnet.

The very next morning, indeed, after this their chance meeting, he went up the Küchelberg once more, impressed with an ardent desire to aid and abet Linnet’s laudable wish for self-education. He brought a book up with him to read to the two girls under the bright blue sky, as they sat on the hillside. He chose a pleasant spot, in the full eye of the autumn sun, on a rounded boss of rock, whose crumbling clefts were still starred with wild pinks and rich yellow tormentils. Florian had contributed to the feast of reason and the flow of soul a kilogram of grapes⁠—⁠they cost but threepence-halfpenny a pound in the vintage season⁠—⁠unknown luxuries till then to Philippina and Linnet. Philippina found the grapes delicious, but the book rather dry; its style was stilted, and it appeared to narrate the story of a certain Doctor Faust, his transactions with a gentleman of most doubtful shape (who caused Philippina to look round in some fear), and his wicked designs against the moral happiness of a young girl called Gretchen. Philippina yawned; it was a tedious performance. Florian, having reduced his share of the grapes to their skins alone, yawned in concert with the lady, and began to play with his eyeglass. As his German didn’t suffice to understand the lines, even when aided by Will’s dramatic delivery and clear enunciation, he found the play slow, and the reader a nuisance. So he was very well pleased when Philippina suggested, at a break in the first act, they should go off for a walk by themselves alone, and continue their course of oral instruction in the German language. Florian liked Philippina; there was no silly nonsense about her. After all, in a woman, if all you want is a walk on the Küchelberg, the total absence of silly nonsense, you must at once admit, is a great recommendation.

But Linnet sat on. She sat on, and listened. She drank it in, open-eyed, and with parted lips⁠—⁠every line and every word of it. Dear Herr Will read so well, and made her feel and understand every point so dramatically; and the book⁠—⁠the book itself was so profoundly interesting. Never in her life before had Linnet heard anything the least bit like it. It was grand, it was beautiful! She didn’t know till then the world contained such books; her reading had been confined to her alphabet and grammar at the parish folk-school, supplemented by the good little tracts on purgatory and the holy saints, distributed by the Herr Vicar and the sisters at the nunnery. Theological literature was the sole form yet known to her. This weird tale about Gretchen and the transformed philosopher opened out to her new vistas of a world of possibilities. Long after, when she sang in great opera-houses, as Marguerite in Gounod’s “Faust,” she remembered with a thrill how she had first heard that tale, in Goethe’s deathless words, from Will Deverill’s lips, on the green slopes of the Küchelberg.

She sat there for an hour or two, never heeding the time, but listening, all entranced, to that beautiful story. Now and again Will broke off, and held her hand for a moment, and gazed deep into her eyes, and said some sweet words of his own to her. He was a poet, Herr Will, in his own tongue and land; she knew now what that meant⁠—⁠he could make up such lovely things as he read from the book to her. “Tell me some of your own, Herr Will. Tell me some of your own verses,” she said, sighing, at last. “I should love to hear them.”

But Will shook his head. “The English is too hard. You wouldn’t understand them, Linnet,” he answered.

“Let me try,” Linnet pleaded, with such a winning look that Will couldn’t resist her. And to humour her whim, he repeated the simplest of the laughing little love-songs from his book of “Voices.”

The ring of it was pretty⁠—⁠very sweet and musical. Linnet half understood⁠—⁠no more; for the words were too hard for her. But it spurred her on to further effort. “You must lend me some books like that in English,” she said, simply. “I want to be wise, like you and Herr Florian.”

So Will brought her next day from the book-shop in the town the dainty little “Poetry Book of Modern Poets,” in the Tauchnitz edition. He wrote her name in it too; and Linnet took it home, and hid it deep in her box in a white silk handkerchief, and read bits of it by night, very stealthily in her own room, spelling out what it meant with Andreas Hausberger’s dictionary. Long after, she had that precious volume bound in white Florentine vellum, with a crimson fleur-de-lys on the cover, at a house just opposite the Duomo at Florence. But at present she read it in its paper covers. She read other books, too⁠—⁠German books which Will chose for her; not instructive books which were over her head, but poetry and romance and imaginative literature, such as her ardent Tyrolese nature could easily assimilate. Day after day, Will read her aloud something fresh⁠—⁠Undine, the Maid of Orleans, Uhland’s Ballads, Paul Heyse’s short stories⁠—⁠but of all the things he read to her, the one she liked best was a German translation of an English play⁠—⁠a beautiful play by another English poet, whose name was also Will, but who died long ago⁠—⁠a play about two luckless and devoted lovers, called Romeo and Juliet. Linnet cried over that sad story, and Will kissed her tears away; and a little later, when Andreas Hausberger took her to Verona on their way south to Milan, Linnet went of her own accord to see Juliet’s tomb in a courtyard in the town, and wasted much excellent sympathy and sentiment over the shameless imposture of that bare Roman sarcophagus. But she meant very well; and she believed in Juliet even more firmly than she believed in Siegfried and Chriemhild and all the other fine folks to whom Will introduced her.

So three weeks passed away, three glorious golden weeks, and day after day, on those lovely hillsides, Linnet saw her lover. At the end of a fortnight, Rue heard, from various friends at other hotels, of a wonderful singer in a Tyrolese troupe, then performing nightly in the various salons. “Why, that must surely be Linnet!” she said before Will, to the first friend who mentioned it.

“Yes; Linnet⁠—⁠that’s her name,” Rue’s friend assented.

“I knew she was in the town,” Will admitted somewhat sheepishly; for he felt as if he were somehow deceiving Rue, though it never would have entered his good, modest head to suppose she herself could care anything about him, except as a poet in whose work she was kind enough to take a friendly interest.

“Ah, I should love to hear her again!” Rue cried, enthusiastically. “She sings like a nightingale⁠—⁠such a splendid soprano! Let’s find out where she’ll be to-night, and go round in a body to the hotel to hear her!”

But Will demurred strongly. He’d rather not go, he said; he’d stop at home by himself and get on with his operetta. At that, Rue was secretly pleased in her own heart; she felt it throb sensibly. After all, then, her poet didn’t really and truly care for the pretty alp-girl. He knew she was in the town⁠—⁠and, in spite of that knowledge, had spent every evening all the time with herself at the Erzherzog Johann! Nor would Florian go either; he invented some excuse to account for his reluctance. So Rue went with two new girls she had picked up at the hotel, in succession to the giggling inarticulates at Innsbruck. Linnet recognised her in the crowd, for the room was crowded⁠—⁠’twas a nightly ovation now, wherever Linnet sang⁠—⁠and knew her at once as the fair-haired lady. But Florian and Will weren’t with her to-night! That made Linnet’s heart glad. She had come without him! After all, her Engländer didn’t always dance attendance, it seemed, on the fair-haired Frau with the many diamonds!

So easily had Will made two women’s hearts happy, by stopping at home at his hotel that evening! For women think much more of men than men imagine⁠—⁠their poor little breasts live for the most part in a perpetual flutter of love and expectancy.

As the weeks wore away, however, it began to strike Franz Lindner as a singular fact, that Philippina and Linnet severed themselves so much every day from the rest of the troupe, and went up on the hills all alone for exercise. That fierce young Robbler was a true Tyrolese in his treatment of his women. Though he never abated one jot or tittle of his attentions to Linnet, it hardly occurred to him as forming any part of a lover’s duty to accompany his mädchen in her morning rambles. Franz was too much engaged himself, indeed, with the young men of the place in the cafés and beer-gardens, to find much time hanging idle on his hands for female society. He had made many friends in the gay little town. His hat and his feather were well known by this time to half the gilded youth in the Meran restaurants. Andreas Hausberger had turned out the young women on the hills; and there they might stop, so far as Franz Lindner was concerned to prevent them. Andreas Hausberger had been wondrous careful of Linnet’s health of late, since he saw he was likely to make pots of money from her. He had bound them all down by a three years’ engagement, and he knew now that Linnet was worth at least five times the sum he had bargained to pay her. But Franz Lindner’s health might take care of itself; and Franz didn’t think much, personally, of the air of the mountains. He’d had enough of all that in his jäger days; now the chrysalis had burst, and let loose the butterfly; his wander-years had come, and he meant to sip the sweets of advanced civilisation. And he sipped them in the second-rate bars and billiard-rooms of a small town in South Tyrol.

On this particular morning, however, it occurred to his Robblership to inquire in his own mind why the womenkind loved to walk so much by themselves on the mountains. Philippina hadn’t told him, to be sure; Philippina had an eye to Andreas Hausberger herself⁠—⁠was he not the wirth, and the master of the troupe?⁠—⁠and she was therefore by no means averse to any little device which might distract poor Linnet from that most desirable admirer. Still, Franz had his suspicions. Women are so deep, a man can never fathom them! He mounted the Küchelberg by the zig-zag path, and turning to the left by the third Madonna, came at last to a little knoll of bare porphyry rock, looking down on the wide vale and the long falls of the Adige.

A very small and dainty, not to say effeminate, young man, in a knickerbocker suit of most Britannic aspect, was strolling some distance off, with his arm encircling a woman’s plump waist, which suspiciously reminded Franz of his friend Philippina’s. The Robbler could hardly believe his eyes; could that be Herr Florian? Oh no; for they had left the foreign Herrschaft at the hotel at Innsbruck. But here, close by, behind the shadow of some junipers⁠—⁠stranger sight still!⁠—⁠stretched at length on the ground, and reading aloud in German to some unseen person, lay another young man in another tourist suit, with a voice that most strikingly and exactly recalled the other Engländer’s at St Valentin. Franz drew a deep breath, and strode a long step forward. At sound of his foot, the unseen person sprang back where she sat with a quick, small scream. Black as night in his wrath, Franz peered round and faced them. It was undoubtedly Will; quite as undoubtedly Linnet!

The Robbler spoke angrily. “You again!” he cried, clenching his fist, and knitting his brow hard, with bullet head held forward. “Are you following us in hiding? What do you mean by this trick? You daren’t show your face, coward, at our inn in the town! You steal up here and skulk! What do you mean with the mädchen?”

At that imputation of secrecy, and still worse of cowardice, Will sprang up and confronted him. “I dare show my face anywhere you like,” he answered in hot blood. “I have not followed this lady; I came here before her, and met her at Meran by the purest accident. But I refuse to be questioned about her by you or by anyone. What right have you to ask? She is no mädchen of yours. Who gave you any power or authority over her?”

For a moment the Robbler instinct rose fierce and hot in Franz Lindner’s breast. He drew back half a pace, as if making ready to spring at him. In a few angry words he repeated his cutting taunts, and spoke savagely to Linnet. “Go home, go home, girl; you are here for no good! What can this Engländer want, save one thing, with a sennerin?”

He laid his hand roughly on Linnet’s shoulder. Will couldn’t stand that sight; he clutched the man’s arm fiercely, twisted it round in the socket, and pushed him back like a child, in the white heat of his anger. Franz saw the interloper was strong⁠—⁠far stronger than he supposed. “If you dare to lay your hand on this lady again,” Will cried, standing in front of her like a living buckler, “I give you due warning, you do it at your peril. Your life is at stake. I won’t permit you to behave with brutality before me.”

In his native valley the Robbler would have flown at Will’s throat on those words, and fought him, strong as he was, to the death, for his mädchen. But since he came to Meran he had learned some new ways: such were not, he now knew, the manners of civilisation. Will’s resolute attitude even produced a calming effect upon the young barbarian. He felt in his heart he had a better plan than that. To beat Will in fair fight would, after all, be useless; the mädchen wouldn’t abide, as mädchen ought, by the wager of battle. But he could wound him far worse. He could go down to the town⁠—⁠and tell Andreas Hausberger how his ward spent her mornings on the slopes of the Küchelberg!

Already he was learning the ways of the world. With a sarcastic smile, he raised his hat ceremoniously, turned feather and all, in mock politeness. “Good morning, mein Herr,” he drawled out, with a fine north German accent, picked up in the billiard-rooms. “Good morning, sennerin.” And without another word he strode away down the mountain.

But as soon as he was gone Linnet burst into tears. “Ah, I know what he’ll do!” she cried, sobbing and trembling. “He’ll go down to the town and tell Andreas Hausberger. He’ll go down to the town and tell how he met us here. And, of course, after this, Andreas will put the very worst face upon it.”

CHAPTER XVIII

TAKEN BY SURPRISE

Andreas Hausberger was a wise and prudent man. He felt convinced by this time that Linnet, as he said to himself⁠—⁠though to no one else, for to confess it would have been foolish⁠—⁠was a perfect gold mine, if only a man knew how to work her properly. And in exploiting this mine, like a sensible capitalist that he was, he determined to spare neither time nor pains nor money. Night after night, as the audiences at the hotels grew more and more enthusiastic, the truth forced itself upon his wise and prudent mind that what they said was right: Linnet was a singer fit for the highest undertakings. She must be trained and instructed for the operatic stage; and on the operatic stage, with that voice and that presence, she’d be worth her weight in gold if she was worth a penny.

So, ever since the first day when he left the Zillerthal, Andreas’s views and ideas about his troupe and his tour had been undergoing a considerable and constant modification. It would cost a good deal, of course, to abandon his first plan, and instead of proceeding to the Riviera as he originally intended, take Linnet to be trained at Milan and Florence. But it was worth the money. You must throw a sprat to catch a herring. And it must be Italy, too, not Munich or Dresden. He wouldn’t put her precious life in jeopardy, now, in those cold northern towns, during the winter months, for he had grown wonderfully careful of Linnet’s health since he saw how her voice conjured florins into the plate for him; and though he believed as much as ever in the virtues of fresh air and a Spartan diet, he feared to expose the throat that uttered such golden notes to the rigours and changes of a Bavarian or Saxon December. So Milan and Florence it must be, though he had Franz Lindner and Philippina and the others on his hands to pay and care for. And in those great settled towns, where theatres and amusements were regularly organised, he couldn’t hope his little troupe, deprived of its chief ornament, could compete, save at a loss, with more showy establishments. Still, to one thing he had made up his mind: Linnet should never utter another note in public, after they moved from Meran, until she could blaze forth, a full-fledged star, armed and equipped at every point with all that art could do for her, on the operatic stage of London, Paris, or Petersburg. He must put up with present loss for the sake of future gain; he must pay for his little troupe and for Linnet’s training, though he spent by the way his bottom dollar.

Not that the wise impresario was moved in this affair by any mere philanthropic desire to benefit a favourite pupil. As a prior condition to any expenditure on fitting and preparing Linnet for the operatic stage, Andreas proposed to obtain a clear hold on her future earnings by the simple little business preliminary of marrying her. And he proposed this plan to himself in the same simple-hearted and entirely dictatorial way in which he would have proposed some arrangement about his cows or his horses. That Linnet could possibly object to his designs for her advancement in life was an idea that hardly so much as even occurred to him. He was her master, and, if he ordered her, she could scarcely say him nay. That would be plain contumacy. Besides, the match would be one so much to her own advantage! Not a girl in St Valentin but would be overjoyed to catch him. Philippina, he knew, would give her eyes for such a chance; but Philippina’s high notes were shrill⁠—⁠a great deal too shrill⁠—⁠while Linnet’s were the purest and clearest and most silvery ever uttered by woman. He was a husband any girl might well be proud of, and though Linnet would be worth money, too, if properly trained, yet without his capital to back her up and give her that needful training, she could never use her voice to full (mercantile) advantage. She’d be a fool, indeed, if she refused his offer. And if she did,⁠—⁠well, she was bound to him for three years at any rate; he could use up her voice pretty well in those three years, as he used up his horses⁠—⁠on commercial principles⁠—⁠and make a very fair profit out of her meanwhile in the process.

Thinking which things to himself during his stay in Meran, Andreas, who was by nature a taciturn person, had been in no hurry to communicate his ideas on the point prematurely to Linnet. He didn’t want to puff her up with too much vanity beforehand, by disclosing to her over-soon the high honour in store for her. She had received more than enough homage already from the audiences at their concerts; it would turn her head outright if she knew all at once she was also to be promoted to marry her master. He would make all the legal preparations for the wedding in due time, without consulting Linnet; then, when everything was finished, and the day had come for them to leave Meran, he would break to her all at once the good fortune he designed for her. Not only was she to marry a man of substance, and a man of weight, and a Land-amt of the parish, but she was to be trained and fitted by him with sedulous care as a special star of the operatic profession.

When Franz Lindner burst in upon him, however, at his old-fashioned inn, in the street that is called Unter den Lauben, all indignant with the news how he had lighted upon Linnet and the Herr Engländer together on the slopes of the Küchelberg, and how he believed they had been meeting there secretly for many mornings at a stretch, Andreas saw at once this was no laughing matter. It was serious rivalry. For Franz Lindner himself, as a possible suitor of Linnet’s, he didn’t care a button. He could afford to despise the self-assertive Robbler. But Will Deverill⁠—⁠ah, that was quite another matter! Will Deverill was dangerous; he saw so much at a glance; and all the more dangerous in that he made his advances to the girl clandestinely. Poaching on those preserves must be severely repressed. Andreas didn’t for a moment suppose the Engländer intended or wanted to marry the child; that was hardly likely: but he might upset her feelings, and, lead her into trouble, and unsettle her heart, and what was worse still, stuff her head all full of silly romantic nonsense.

Still, being always a prudent man, Andreas said little at the time. He was content with assuring Franz, in a very confident tone, that he’d put a stop at once to this folly of Linnet’s. He acquiesced for the present⁠—⁠it being his nature to temporise⁠—⁠in Franz’s little pretension to treat the girl as his acknowledged mädchen. He acquiesced, and smiled,⁠—⁠though he hadn’t the slightest intention of relinquishing his own hold on a future prima donna. Meanwhile, he pushed on all the legal formalities for marrying Linnet himself, as soon as he thought it well to disclose his matured plans to her.

So when Will went up to their stated meeting-place on the slopes of the Küchelberg, the morning after that stormy interview at the knoll with Franz Lindner, hardly daring to expect Linnet would be there to receive him, he was astonished to find her awaiting him much as usual at the accustomed seat, undeterred by either the wirth or the redoubtable Robbler. “I can’t understand it myself,” she said, holding his hand, and half crying. “It’s awfully curious. I thought he’d be angry with me, and scold me so hard, and perhaps shut me up in the house for a week, or, at any rate, not let me come out any more to meet you. But, instead of that, he never said a word; he hasn’t even spoken to me at all about the matter. Perhaps Franz hasn’t told him yet; but I think he must have⁠—⁠and so does Philippina. It almost seems as if he didn’t mind my coming out at all. We can only wait and see. That’s all I can make of it.”

Thus, for the next few days, Linnet and Will lived on in a real fool’s paradise. Andreas never said a word about the meetings on the hill; Franz Lindner looked wise, and bided his time in silence. At the end of the week, however, Will found himself reluctantly compelled to fulfil a long-standing engagement with Rue and Florian, entered into before Linnet’s arrival at Meran, to go for a three days’ tour among the Botzen Dolomites. Will had put it off and put it off, not to miss one morning of Linnet’s time in the town, till Rue declared in her imperious little American way she wouldn’t wait a single day longer for anyone. And, indeed, it was getting full late in the season, even south of the Alps, for a mountain excursion. Rue had ordered her carriage, and settled her day to start. Will must go or stop behind, she said; and to do the last would be to confess all to Rue; so with a pang at his heart and no small misgivings in his brain⁠—⁠for Linnet by this time had grown wonderfully dear to him⁠—⁠he made up his mind to absent himself for three days, and to miss three precious mornings on the hills with his lady-love. It would freshen up the operetta, Rue declared, with deep conviction; there’s nothing like change of scene to inspire one with the germs of poetry and music. But Will, for his part, knew something better⁠—⁠and he got it every day on the slopes of the Küchelberg.

“You won’t go away while I’m gone?” he asked eagerly of Linnet, on the day before he left for those hateful Dolomites. “You’re sure Andreas means to stop longer in the town. You’ll be here when I come back again?”

“Oh yes; quite certain,” Linnet answered, confidently. “He’s not going away yet. We’ve engagements at hotels for nearly another fortnight.”

Will held her hand long. It was only for three days, yet he found it hard to part from her. “One last kiss!” he said, drawing her close to him behind the sheltering gourd-vines. And Linnet let him take it without struggling for it now. In after years, Will felt those words were a kind of omen. It was far more of a last kiss than ever he dreamed at the time. And Linnet⁠—⁠well, Linnet was glad in her heart, when she came to look back on it, she had allowed him to take that last kiss so easily.

Next morning Will left. Andreas knew he had gone. Not many things escaped the wise Andreas’s notice. From the moment he first heard of Will’s meetings with Linnet on the hill behind the town, that cool-headed wirth had been waiting for his chance; and now the chance had come of its own accord to him. That day, after dinner, he went into the parlour of their little inn, and called Linnet to speak to him. Linnet came, all trembling. In a few short sentences⁠—⁠concise, curt, business-like⁠—⁠Andreas unfolded to his tremulous ward the notable scheme he had devised for her advancement. He would make her his wife. But that wasn’t all; he would make her a great lady⁠—⁠a star of the first magnitude. If she did as he bid, crowds would hang on her lips; silver and gold would be hers; she should dress in silk robes, diamonds dangling at her ears, pearls in strings on her bosom. But he said never a word about her heretic lover. Still, he said never a word about himself any more. He never mentioned love⁠—⁠her heart, her feelings. He laid before her, like a man of the world as he was, a simple proposal for an arrangement between them⁠—⁠in much the same spirit as he might have laid before Franz Lindner an agreement for a partnership. And he took it for granted Linnet would instantly jump at him. Why shouldn’t she, indeed? She had every reason. Not a girl in St Valentin but would be proud if she could get him.

Yet he wasn’t the least surprised when Linnet, growing pale, and with quivering lips, hid her face in her hands at last and began to cry bitterly. These girls are so silly!

“You agree to it?” Andreas asked, laying his palm on her neck behind with what tenderness he could muster.

Linnet shook it away angrily. “Never, never!” she cried, “never!”

Andreas bore with her patiently. He knew the ways of women. They were all little idiots! And this Engländer on the hill had filled her poor head with sentimental rubbish. With infinite forbearance, like a business man, he began to explain, to expostulate, to admonish her. He pointed out to her how rare a chance in life it was for a girl in her position to get an offer of marriage from a man in his; how his capital would enable her to train herself for the stage; how, without it, she must remain for ever just what she was now; how, with it, she might rise to the very crown and head of an admired profession. And, besides, she was bound to him for three years in any case. In those three years, of course, he could do as he liked with her.

But Linnet, weeping passionately, with her face in her hands, and every nerve in her body quivering with emotion, only sobbed out now and again in a heart-broken voice, “No; never, never!”

At last, after one such convulsive outburst, even fiercer than before, Andreas put the question point blank, “Is it because of this Engländer?”

And Linnet, raising her head, and clasping her hands in despair, made answer, obliquely, in one wild burst of speech, “Oh, I love him, I love him!”

At those words, Andreas smiled a peculiar cold smile, and began once more. He kept his head cool; he explained, he reasoned. The Engländer, of course, never meant to marry her. Marriage in such a case was out of the question. She must know what that meant; why go off on such side-issues? . . . . And, besides, she must never forget⁠—⁠the man was a heretic!

Still, Linnet, unflinching, looked up and clasped her hands. “I don’t care for that,” she cried wildly. “I love him! I love him!”

“Then you refuse, point blank?” Andreas asked, stepping a little aside, and holding the knob of the bedroom door in his hand, half-irresolute.

“I utterly refuse!” Linnet answered, very firm, but sobbing.

With an air of cruel triumph, Andreas opened wide the door. “Come in, Herr Vicar!” he cried, with real theatrical effect. And even as he spoke, the Herr Vicar entered.

Linnet gazed at him, dumb with awe, surprise, and amazement. How had he ever got here? It was her own parish priest⁠—⁠her confessor from St Valentin!

CHAPTER XIX

SPIRITUAL WEAPONS

The Herr Vicar in Meran! It was wonderful, miraculous!

For a minute or two, Linnet was so utterly taken aback at this unexpected portent that she hardly knew how to comport herself under such novel circumstances. Now, that was exactly the result Andreas Hausberger had counted upon. Andreas loved not the Church, to be sure, but, like all sound strategists, political or social, he knew how to make use of it for his own wise purposes. As soon as ever he learned from Franz Lindner how things were going on between Linnet and her Engländer, and had ascertained by private inquiry from the Herr Oberkellner at the Erzherzog Johann that Herr Will was going away for a few days’ tour among the Botzen Dolomites,⁠—⁠why, taking opportunity by the forelock, he telegraphed at once to the Herr Vicar at St Valentin to come on by the first train, all expenses paid, over the Brenner to Meran, on purpose to save the soul of an erring member of his flock, in imminent danger of faith and morals, from a heretic Englishman. And the Herr Vicar, in return, though he loved not Andreas⁠—⁠for the wirth was a Liberal, an enemy of the “Blacks,” and reputed to be even not far short of a freethinker⁠—⁠the Herr Vicar, for his part, was by no means averse to a pleasant holiday in a fashionable watering-place south of the Alps at that delightful season, especially if some one else was to pay the piper. It is well to combine the salvation of souls with an agreeable excursion. The Herr Vicar was prepared to make free use of the Mammon of Unrighteousness⁠—⁠in the Church’s service; a good pastor employs it without stint or compunction to secure the eternal bliss of the particular flock committed to his guidance.

Not that the astute priest began at once with the matter in hand, on which Herr Andreas had already most amply coached him. He was far too wise and politic a fisher of souls for so clumsy a procedure. He angled gently. He started on his task by striking, first, all the familiar home chords of St Valentin. The moment he entered the room, indeed, Linnet rushed up and seized his hand⁠—⁠she had known him from her childhood, and taken the mass from him often; she had confessed to him her sins, and received time and again his paternal blessing. At such a moment as that any old friend from St Valentin would have been a welcome counsellor: how much more then the Herr Vicar, who had taught her the Credo, and the Vater Unser, and the Ave; who had prepared her lisping lips for First Communion; who had absolved her from her sins from her babyhood onward! And he had seen that dear mother only the day before! How she flooded him with questions as to everyone at St Valentin.

The Herr Vicar, in reply, folding two plump hands over his capacious waistband, sank back in an easy-chair, and answered her at full length as to all that had happened since she left the village. The good mother was well, very well indeed, seldom better in November; some holy oil rubbed on night and morning, had proved highly effectual against her threatened rheumatism. Oh yes; she had duly received the five florins that Linnet sent her⁠—⁠thanks very much for them⁠—⁠and had expended two of them, as Linnet would no doubt herself have wished, in the performance of a mass for the deliverance of the dear father’s soul from purgatory. She knew the Herr Vicar was coming to Meran, and would see her daughter, and she had sent many messages (all detailed at full length)⁠—⁠how the cow with the crooked horn was giving no milk, and how the cat had five kittens, and how pleased they all were to hear at St Valentin there was talk Linnet was to make such a brilliant marriage.

Then poor Linnet faltered out, half-sobbing again, when the Herr Vicar spoke of that mass for the repose of her father’s soul, how great a trial it had been to her to be away from St Valentin for the first time in her life on All Souls Day⁠—⁠the Feast of the Dead⁠—⁠when it had always been her custom to lay a little wreath, and burn four small tapers on her father’s grave in the village churchyard. She was afraid that dear spirit in its present home would feel itself neglected by the duty unperformed in due season.

But the Herr Vicar, with a benign smile, was happy he should be able to reassure her as to this matter. The candles and the wreath had been forthcoming as usual; he had seen to them himself⁠—⁠at Herr Andreas’s request, who had written to him on the subject from Meran most thoughtfully.

That was kind, Linnet thought, far kinder than she ever could have expected from Andreas. But that wasn’t all. He had provided in many ways, or intended to provide, for the good mother’s comfort. Then the Herr Vicar went on to speak still more of Andreas, who slipped out as he spoke, leaving priest and penitent alone together. So Herr Andreas, it seemed, was going to marry her! For a girl like her, that was a very great honour. And the sooner the better, indeed; the sooner the better! These were grave and painful rumours now afloat in St Valentin⁠—⁠and the Herr Vicar shook his head in solemn warning⁠—⁠grave and painful rumours, how Linnet had been seen on the hillsides more than once⁠—⁠with an English heretic. And he had followed her to Innsbruck! and then to Meran! and now, Heaven knew what he was trying to do with her! ’Twas a dangerous thing, a compromising thing (the Herr Vicar thought) for a girl to get involved in an affair like that with a man so much above herself in position and station. But Herr Andreas was so kind, and consented to overlook it; there were very few men who in a similar case would act like Herr Andreas. In other matters the Herr Vicar had withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; but in this, he had behaved like a generous gentleman.

To all which, poor Linnet, hiding her face in her hands, only made answer once more, “I can never marry Andreas Hausberger.”

“Why not?” the priest asked, sharply.

And Linnet, hardly knowing how to answer him for fear and shame, yet murmured very low, “Because I don’t love him.”

Then the Herr Vicar, thus aroused, went off at a tangent into a clerical exhortation on the nature, duties, and inducements of matrimony. We must remember that, in these matters, the wishes of the flesh were not alone or even chiefly to be consulted. They were of minor importance. There was her duty as a daughter, for example: Herr Andreas was rich; how much might he not do to lighten her mother’s old age? how much to release her poor father’s soul from the flames of purgatory? There was her duty as a woman, and a child of the Church; how much might not Herr Andreas’s money enable her to accomplish for the good of the world and for the souls of her people? She was still a giddy girl. What temptations such a marriage would enable her to avoid; what a brilliant future in the end it might open out before her! And then these floating rumours had disturbed him much; on his way from Jenbach, if she would only believe him, he had said prayers on her behalf to Our Lady, to preserve her honour.

But Linnet, raising her head, and looking him straight in the eyes, made answer at last in these wicked, rebellious words, “I love the Engländer! Ah, I love the Engländer! If ever I marry at all, I’ll marry the Engländer!”

The Herr Vicar grew grave. This was a case, indeed, not for humouring and coaxing, but for the sternest admonition. And he administered it without stint. With the simple directness of the Tyrolese priest, accustomed to deal with coarse, straightforward natures, he spoke the plain truth; he brought her future sin home to her with homely force and unvarnished language. In the first place, this young man clearly meant no good by her. That was obvious to everyone. Now, if he were one of her own sort, a faithful son of the Church, and a Tyrolese jäger, well, the Herr Vicar might, in that case, have been disposed, no doubt, to be somewhat more lenient. He admitted, while he deplored, the temptations and difficulties of a sennerin’s life, and was never too hard on them. And besides, in such circumstances, the young man might mean in the end to marry her. But this Engländer assuredly meant nothing of the kind; and, what was worse, even if he did, the Herr Vicar could by no means approve of such a union. The Holy See, acting as ever on the Apostolic advice, “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers,” disallowed and discouraged the union of Catholics with Jews, heretics, infidels, and other schismatics, under one or other of which unholy categories (and the Herr Vicar frowned) he must needs place her Engländer. True, the Holy Father was sometimes pleased, on good cause duly shown, to grant certain persons an exceptional dispensation. But even if the Engländer desired to marry her, which was scarcely likely, and even if he consented to invoke such aid, which was still more improbable, how could he, the Herr Vicar, knowing the young man’s circumstances, back up such a request?⁠—⁠how consign a lamb of his flock to the keeping of an infidel? Every sentiment of gratitude should bind her to Herr Andreas. Every feeling of a Catholic should turn her instinctively away from the false wiles of a schismatic.

To all which theological argument, Linnet, raising her head, and wringing her hands, only answered once more, in a wildly despairing voice, “But I love him, I love him!”

The priest saw at once this was a case for strong measures. Unless he adopted them, a lamb might slip from his pastoral grasp, a doubtful soul might stray for ever from the fold of true believers. He put on at once the set tone and manner of the confessional. It was no longer a question now of merely meeting Herr Andreas’s wishes⁠—⁠though Herr Andreas’s aid would be most useful indeed in the affairs of the parish; it was a question of preserving this poor sheep of his flock from everlasting perdition. What are a few fleeting years, with this lover or that, compared with an eternity of unceasing torment? The Herr Vicar was an honest and conscientious man, according to his lights; this poor girl was in deadly danger of her immortal soul⁠—⁠and that window for the chancel, which Herr Andreas vowed, would be a work of piety most pleasing to their holy patron saint, the blessed Valentin.

So, with all the strength of imagery he possessed at his command, the priest began to play of deliberate design upon the chords of poor Linnet’s superstitious terror. In horribly vivid and realistic language, such as only a Tyrolese tongue could command, he conjured up before her mind that familiar picture of dead souls in purgatory, lost souls in torment. He poured out upon her trembling head all the thunders of the Church against unholy love, or, what came to the same thing, against an uncatholic union. Linnet listened, and cowered. To you and me, this would just have been a well-meaning but ignorant parish priest; to Linnet, he was the embodied voice of all Catholic Christendom. She had sat upon his knees; she had learnt prayers from his lips; she had looked upon him for years as the mouthpiece of whatever was right and just and holy. And now, he was bringing all the weight of his authority to bear against the dictates of her poor hot heart; he was terrifying her with his words; he was denouncing upon her the horrible woes of apostasy. Whether the man meant to marry her or not, all was equally sin; she was bent on the downward path; she was flying in the face of God and His priest, to her own destruction. She might marry Andreas or not⁠—⁠that was a question of inclination; but if she persisted in her relations with an infidel, who could mean her no good, she was hurrying straight to the devil and all his angels. And the devil and all his angels were very real and very near indeed to Linnet; the flames of purgatory were as familiar to her eyes as the fire on the hearth; the tortures of hell were as solid and as material as she had seen them pictured on every roadside oratory.

And the effect? Ah, well, only those who know the profound religious faith of the Tyrolese peasantry can fully understand the appalling effect this pastoral exhortation produced upon Linnet. It was no new discovery, indeed. All along, amid the tremulous delight of her first great love, she had known in her heart this thing she was doing, though sweet⁠—⁠too sweet⁠—⁠was unspeakably wicked. She was paltering with sin, giving her heart to a heretic. She herself had seen him pass many a wayside crucifix, many a shrine of Our Dear Lady, without raising his hat or letting his knee do obeisance, as was right, before them. He was good, he was kind; in a purely human sort of way he sympathised with her, and understood her as no one else in the world had ever yet done; but still⁠—⁠he was a heretic. She had known that all along; she had known the danger she ran, and the end, the horrible end, it must finally lead her to. And now, when her parish priest, her earliest friend, her own tried confessor, pointed out her sin to her, she quivered and crouched before him in bodily terror and abject submission. The flames of hell seemed to rise up and take hold of her. And the more frightened she grew, the more vehement and fierce grew the priest’s denunciation. He saw his opportunity, and made the best use of it. What were the few short years of this life to an eternity of pain? What a dream of brief love to fiery floods for ever?

At last, appalled and horrified, Linnet, bowing her frightened head, held up her bloodless hands, and begged convulsively for mercy. “Give me absolution,” she cried; “Father! O Father, forgive me!”

Her confessor seized the occasion, for her soul’s benefit. “Not unless you abandon him!” he answered, in a very stern voice. “While you remain in your sin, how can God’s priest absolve you?”

Linnet wrung her hands for a moment in silent agony. She couldn’t give him up! Oh, no; she couldn’t! “Father,” she cried at last with a despairing burst, “what shall I do to be saved? Guide me! Save me!”

The priest snatched at the chance. “Will you come back to St Valentin to-morrow?” he asked, with two uplifted fingers poised half-doubtful in air, as if waiting to bless her. “Will you come back to St Valentin⁠—⁠and marry Andreas Hausberger?”

In an agony of abject religious terror, Linnet bowed her head. “Is there no other way?” she cried, trembling, “No other way of salvation?”

The priest pressed his advantage. “If you died to-night,” he answered, in a very solemn voice, “you would die in your sin, and hell’s mouth would yawn wide for you. Accept the escape an honourable man offers you, and be clear of your heretic!”

Linnet flung herself on her knees, and clasped her hands before him. The horrors of eternity and of the offended Church made her shake in every limb. She was half-dumb with terror.

“I’ll do as you wish, Father,” she moaned, in a voice of hushed awe, “if you’ll only bless me. I’ll go back to St Valentin and marry Andreas Hausberger!”

CHAPTER XX

FLORIAN ON MATRIMONY

In spite of the lateness of the season, and Will’s preoccupation, that visit to the Dolomites turned out a complete success. Rue was in excellent spirits; Florian was in fine form; Nature smiled compliance, as he consummately phrased it⁠—⁠in other words, the weather was lovely, the mountains clear of cloud, the horses fresh, and the roads (for Austria) in very good order. Their capacious carriage held its party of five comfortably,⁠—⁠for Rue, with her wonted wisdom, had consulted Mrs Grundy’s feelings by inviting an old Indian colonel and his wife, whose acquaintance she had picked up at the Erzherzog Johann, to accompany them on their trip, and chaperon the expedition. Rue herself enjoyed those four days immensely. She had lots of long talks with Will on the hillsides, and she noticed Will spoke much⁠—⁠though always in an abstract and highly impersonal way⁠—⁠of the human heart, its doubts and its difficulties. He was thinking of Linnet, who engaged his thoughts much during that enforced absence; but Rue imagined he was thinking of himself and her, and was glad accordingly. She was growing very fond of her English poet. She hoped and half-believed he in turn was growing fond of her.

As for Will, now he was away from Linnet for awhile, he began to think much more seriously than he had ever thought before of the nature of his relations with her, and the end to which they were inevitably leading him. As long as Linnet was near, as long as he could hold her hand in his, and look deep into her eyes, and hear that wonderful voice of hers carolling out some sweet song for his ear alone among the clambering vineyards,⁠—⁠why, he could think of nothing else but the passing joy and delight of her immediate presence. Imperceptibly, and half-unconsciously to himself, she had grown very dear to him. But now that he was away from her, and alone with Rue, he began to realise how much he longed to be once more by her side⁠—⁠how little he was prepared to do without her, how deeply she had entwined herself into his inmost being. Again and again the question presented itself to his mind, “When I go back to Meran, on what footing shall I stand with her? If I find it so hard to run away for four days, how shall I ever run away from her for ever and ever?”

Besides, during those few happy weeks at Meran, Linnet had begun to reveal herself to him as another person. He was catching faint glimpses now of the profounder depths of that deeply artistic, though as yet almost wholly undeveloped, character. The books he had read to her she understood so fast; the things he had told her she caught at so readily; the change to new scenes seemed so soon to quicken and stimulate all her latent faculties. Had not Nature said of her, as of Wordsworth’s country lass, “She shall be mine and I will make A lady of my own”? For that she was a lady indeed had been forcing itself every day more and more plainly upon Will’s mind, as he walked and talked with her. At Innsbruck, he had thought more than once to himself, “How could one dream in a world where there are women like Rue, of tying oneself for life to this sweet-voiced alp-girl?” Among the Dolomites, three weeks later, he asked himself rather, “How could one ever be content with mere brightness and sunniness like that charming Rue’s, in a world which holds women so tender, so true, and so passionate as Linnet?”

Slowly, bit by bit, he began to wonder how he could muster up courage to tear himself away again⁠—⁠and, if he did, for how long he could manage to keep away from her? And then, as he debated, there arose in his mind the profounder question of justice or injustice to Linnet. Was it right of him so deeply to engage her affections, unless he meant by it something real, something sure, something definite? She loved him so well that to leave her now would surely break her heart for her. What end could there be to this serious complication save the end he had so strenuously denied to Florian?

On the very last evening of their drive through those great bare unearthly peaks that look down upon Botzen, Florian came into Will’s room for an evening gossip. They sat up long over the smouldering embers of a fragrant pinewood fire. There’s nothing more confidential than young men’s confabulations over a smouldering hearth in the small hours of the morning. The two friends talked⁠—⁠and talked, and talked, and talked⁠—⁠till at last Will was moved to make a clean breast of his feelings in the matter to Florian. He put his dilemma neatly. He acknowledged he was going just where Florian had said he would go. “I pointed out the noose to you,” the epicurean philosopher observed, with bland self-satisfaction, “and you’ve run your neck right into it. Instead of playing with her like a doll as a sensible man would have done, you’ve simply gone ahead and lost your heart outright to her. Foolish, foolish, exceedingly foolish; but, just what I expected from you. I said from the very first, ‘Now mark my words, Deverill, as sure as eggs is eggs, you’ll end by marrying her.’ ”

“I don’t say I’ll marry her now,” Will replied, somewhat sheepishly. “How can I, indeed? I’ve got nothing to marry on. I find it hard enough work to keep body and soul together for myself in London, without thinking of an engagement to keep somebody else’s into the bargain.”

“Then what do you mean to do?” Florian inquired, with sound common-sense. “If you don’t mean to marry her, and you don’t mean to harm her, and you can’t go away from her, and you can’t afford to stop with her,⁠—⁠why, what possible new term are you going to introduce into human relations and the English language to cover your ways with her?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know,” Will answered, in a somewhat hopeless and helpless voice, piling the embers together in the centre as he spoke, just to keep them alight for some minutes longer. “There’s the rub. I admit it. Nobody feels it more than I do. But I don’t see any possible kind of way out of it. I’ve been thinking to myself⁠—⁠or perhaps half-thinking⁠—⁠I might manage it like this, if Linnet would assent to it. We might get married first⁠——”

Florian raised one warning hand, and nodded his shapely head up and down two or three times solemnly. “I told you so,” he interposed, in a tone of most mitigated and mournful triumph. “There we get at it at last. You have said the word. I was sure ’twould come to that. Marry, marry, marry!”

“And then,” Will went on, with a very shamefaced air, never heeding his comment, “what’s enough for one’s enough for two, they say⁠—⁠or very nearly. I thought we might live in lodgings quite quietly for awhile, somewhere cheap, in London⁠——”

“Not live,” Florian corrected gravely, with another sage nod of that sapient head; “lurk, linger, vegetate. A very sad end! A most dismal downfall! I see it all: Surrey side, thirty shillings a week; cold mutton for dinner; bread and cheese for lunch; an ill-furnished parlour, a sloppy-faced slavey! I know the sort of thing. Pah! My gorge rises at it!”

“And then, I could get Linnet’s voice trained and prepared for the stage,” Will continued, perusing his boots, “and work very hard myself to keep us both alive till she could come out in public. In a year or two, I feel sure, if I watched her close and saw her capabilities, I could write and compose some good piece of my own to suit her exactly. With me to make the songs, and Linnet to interpret them, I believe, sooner or later, we ought easily to earn a very good livelihood. But it’d be a hard pull first; I don’t conceal that from myself. We’d have a struggle for life, though in the end, I feel sure, we’d live it down and conquer.”

Florian lighted a cigarette and watched the thin blue smoke curl upward, languidly. “Love’s young dream!” he mused to himself with a placid smile of superior wisdom. “I know the style of old. Bread and cheese and kisses! Very charming, very charming! Chorus hymeneal of the most approved pattern. So odd, so interesting! I’ve often asked myself what it is in the world that leads otherwise sensible and intelligent fellows to make wrecks of their lives in this incredible way⁠—⁠and all for the sake of somebody else’s daughter! Why this insane desire to relieve some other man of his natural responsibilities? I account for it in my own mind on evolutionary principles. Marriage, it seems to me, is an irrational and incomprehensible civilised instinct, by which the individual sacrifices himself on the shrine of duty for the benefit of the species. Have you ever heard of the lemmings?”

“The lemmings!” Will repeated, unable to conceive the connection in Florian’s mind between two such totally dissimilar and unrelated subjects. “Not those little brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway?”

“Precisely,” Florian answered, waving his cigarette airily. “Those little brown animals like rats or marmots they have in Norway. You put it like a dictionary. Well, every year or two, you know, an irresistible desire seizes on many myriads of those misguided rodents at once, to march straight to the sea in a body together, plunge boldly into the water, and swim out in a straight line, without rhyme or reason, till they can swim no farther but drown themselves by cartloads. What’s the origin of this swarmery? It’s only an instinct which keeps down the number of the lemmings, and so acts as a check against over-population. A beautiful and ingenious provision of Nature they call it!” and Florian smiled sweetly. “I’ve always thought,” he went on, puffing a contemptuous ring of smoke from his pursed-up lips, “that marriage among mankind was a very similar instinct. It’s death to the individual⁠—⁠mental and moral death; but it ensures at least a due continuance of the species. The wise man doesn’t marry; he knows too well for that; he stands by and looks on; but he leaves no descendants, and his wisdom dies with him. Whereas the foolish burden themselves with a wife and family, and become thereby the perpetuators of their race in future. It’s a wonderful dispensation; I admire it⁠—⁠at a distance!”

“But you said you’d marry yourself,” Will objected, “if you met the right person; and, to tell you the truth, Florian, I fancied you’d been rather markedly attentive to Rue for the last few weeks or so.”

Florian stroked a smooth small chin with five meditative fingers. “That’s quite another matter,” he answered, in a self-satisfied tone. “Circumstances, it has been well remarked by an anonymous thinker, alter cases. If an Oriental potentate in all his glory were to order me to flop down on my marrow-bones before him and kiss his imperial foot as an act of pure homage, I should take my proud stand as a British subject, and promptly decline so degrading a ceremony. But if he offered me a thousand pounds down to comply with his wishes, I would give the polite request my most earnest consideration. If he made it ten thousand, I would almost certainly accede; and if he went to half-a-million, which is a fortune for life, well, no gentleman on earth could dream of disputing the question any further with him. Just so, I say, with marriage. If a lady desires me, without due cause assigned, to become her abject slave, and serve her alone for a lifetime, I will politely but firmly answer, ‘No, thank you.’ If she confers upon me, incidentally, a modest competence, I shall perpend for a moment, and murmur, ‘Well, possibly.’ But if she renders me independent and comfortable for life, with a chance of surrounding myself with books, pictures, music, without a moment’s hesitation I shall answer, ‘Like a bird,’ to her. Slavery, in short, though in itself disagreeable, may be mitigated or altogether outweighed by concomitant advantages.”

“Florian,” Will said, earnestly, “I don’t know what you mean. You speak a foreign language to me. If I felt like that, I could never bring myself to marry any woman. If I married at all, I must do it for the sake of the girl I loved⁠—⁠and to make her happy.”

Florian gazed at him compassionately. “Quixotic,” he answered low, shaking his sculpturesque head once or twice with a face of solemn warning. “Quixotic, exceedingly! The pure lemming instinct; they will rush into it! It’s the moth and the candle again: dazzle, buzz, and flutter,⁠—⁠and pom! pom! pom!⁠—⁠in a second, you’re caught, and sizzled hot in the flame, and reduced to ashes. That’s how it’ll be with you, my dear fellow: you’ll go back to Meran and, by Jingo, to-morrow, you’ll go straight up the hill, and ask the cow-girl to marry you.”

“I think I will,” the poet answered, taking up his candlestick with a sigh to leave the room. “I think I will, Florian. I’ll fight it out to the bitter end, sloppy slavey and all, on your threatened south side, in those dingy lodgings.” And he took himself off with a hurried nod to his bland companion.

Florian rose, and closed the door behind the poet softly. He had played his cards well, remarkably well, that evening. If he wanted to drive Will into proposing to Linnet, he had gone the right way to effect his object. “And I,” he thought to himself with a contented smile, “will stand a fair chance with Rue, without fear of a rival, when once he’s gone off and got well married to his cow-girl. It’ll be interesting to ask them to a nice little dinner, from their Surrey side garret, at our snug small den in Park Lane or South Kensington. Park Lane’s the most fashionable, but South Kensington’s the pleasantest:

In Cromwell Road did Florian Wood,

A stately pleasure dome decree.

Such a palace of art as it will be, too! I can see it now, in my mind’s eye, Horatio!⁠—⁠Botticellis, Della Robbias, Elzevirs, Stradivariuses! William Morris on the floor! Lewis Day on the ceiling! It rises like an exhalation, all beautiful to behold! Such things might I do⁠—⁠with Rue’s seven hundred thousand!”

CHAPTER XXI

FORTUNE’S WHEEL

It was with no little trepidation that Will mounted the Küchelberg on the morning after his return to Meran from the Dolomites. Would Linnet be there, he wondered, or would he somehow miss her? He didn’t know why, but a certain vague foreboding of possible evil possessed his soul. He was dimly conscious to himself of danger ahead. He couldn’t feel reassured till he stood once more face to face with Linnet.

When he arrived at the appointed place, however, by the Station of the Cross which represented the Comforting of the Daughters of Jerusalem, a cold shudder of alarm came over him suddenly. No Linnet there! Not a sign of her to be seen! And hitherto she had always kept her tryst before him. He took out his watch and looked. Ha, a moment’s respite! In his eagerness, he had arrived five minutes early. But Linnet was usually, even so, five minutes ahead of him. He couldn’t make it out; this was ominous, very!

With heart standing still, he waited a quarter of an hour⁠—⁠half-an-hour⁠—⁠three-quarters. And still no Linnet came!⁠—⁠And still he watched eagerly. He paced up and down, looking again and again at his watch with impatience. Could she have mistaken the place? Yet he told her plain enough! On the bare chance of some error, he would try the other stations. He went to them all, one by one, from the Crown of Thorns to the Calvary. The same luck still! No Linnet at any of them! Then he mounted the great boss of ice-worn rock with the bench on its top, that commands far and wide the whole expanse of the Küchelberg. Gazing down on every side upon the long, low hog’s back, he saw nobody all around save the women in the fields, watching their cows at pasture, and the men with the carts urging overtasked oxen to drag too heavy a load up the cobble-paved hill-track.

Thoroughly alarmed by this time, and uncertain how to act, Will determined to take a very bold measure. He descended the hill once more, and, passing under the archway of the old town gate, and through the narrow streets, and past the high-towered parish church, he made his way straight to Andreas Hausberger’s inn in the street that is called Unter den Lauben. At the doorway, Franz Lindner, all on fire, was standing. Wrath smouldered in his face; his hat was cocked fiercely; his feather, turned Robblerwise, looked angrier, more defiant, more aggressive than ever. But to Will’s immense surprise, the village champion, instead of scowling challenge at him, or receding under the arch, stepped forward with outstretched palm to meet him. He grasped Will’s hand hard. His pressure struck some note of a common misfortune.

“You’ve come to look for Linnet?” he said, holding his head very haughtily. “She wasn’t on the hill? She’d promised to meet you there? Well, we’re both in the same box, it seems. He’s done two of us at once. This is indeed a dirty trick Andreas Hausberger has played upon us!”

“What do you mean?” Will cried, aghast, clapping his hand to his head. “Where’s Linnet? I want to see her.”

“You won’t see her ever again as Lina Telser, that’s sure,” the Robbler answered aloud, with an indignant gesture. His wrath against Andreas had wholly swallowed up all memory of his little quarrel on the hills with Will Deverill. It was common cause now. Andreas had outwitted both of them.

“You can’t mean to tell me⁠——” Will cried, drawing back in horror.

Franz took him up sharply. “Yes; I do mean to tell you just what I say,” he answered, knitting his brows. “Andreas Hausberger has gone off with her . . . to St Valentin . . . to marry her.”

It was a bolt from the blue⁠—⁠an unforeseen thunder-stroke. Will raised his hat from his brow, and held his hand on his stunned and astonished forehead. “To marry her!” he repeated, half-dazed at the bare thought. “Andreas Hausberger to marry her!⁠—⁠to marry Linnet! Oh no; it can’t be true; you never can mean it!”

Franz stared at him doggedly. “He gave me the slip on Wednesday morning,” he answered, with a resounding German oath. “He went off quite secretly. May the Evil One requite him! He knew if he told me beforehand I’d have planted my good knife to the handle in his heart. So he said never a word, but went off unexpectedly, with Linnet and Philippina, leaving the rest of us here stranded, but cancelling all engagements for the next three evenings. The white-livered cur! He’ll never dare to come back again! He knows if I meet him now⁠—⁠it’ll be this in his black heart!” And Franz tapped significantly the short hunting knife that stuck out from his leather belt in true jäger fashion.

“And you haven’t followed him?” Will exclaimed, taken aback at the man’s inaction. “You know all this, and you haven’t gone after him to prevent the wedding!” In an emergency like the present one, with Linnet’s happiness at stake, he was only too ready to accept as an ally even the village bully.

Franz shrugged his broad shoulders. “How could I?” he asked, helplessly. “Have I money at command? Have I wealth like the wirth, to pay my fare all the way from Meran to Jenbach?”

Will drew back with a deep sigh. He had never thought of that difficulty. It’s so natural to us all to have money in our pockets, or at least at our command, for any great emergency, that we seldom realise how insuperable a barrier a bare hundred miles may often seem to men of other classes. It was as impossible for Franz Lindner to get from Meran to St Valentin at a day’s notice as for most of us to buy up the house of Rothschild.

“Come with me!” Will cried, starting up. “The man has cheated us vilely. Come with me to St Valentin, Herr Franz⁠—⁠forget our differences⁠—⁠and before he has time to get through with the legal formalities, help me, help me, to prevent this nefarious wedding!”

“It’s too late to prevent it now!” Franz answered, shaking his head, with a settled gloom on his countenance. “It’s all over by this. She’s his wife already. They were married on Friday.”

At those words Will felt his heart stand still within him. He gasped for breath. He steadied himself mechanically. Never till that moment had he known how much he loved the Tyrolese singer-girl, and now the blow had come, he couldn’t even believe it. “Married!” he faltered out in a broken voice; “what, married already! Linnet married to that man! Oh, impossible! Impossible!”

“But it’s true, all the same,” Franz answered sturdily. “Philippina was there, and she saw them married. She came back last night to collect their things and pack up for Italy. She’s to meet them to-morrow by the mid-day train, at a place called Verona.”

“But how did he do it in the time?” Will exclaimed still incredulous, and clinging still to the last straw with a drowning man’s instinct. “Your Austrian law has so many formalities. Perhaps it’s a story the man has made up on purpose to deceive us. He may have told Philippina, and she may be in league with him.”

Franz shook his head with gloomy determination. “No, no,” he said; “it won’t do; don’t flatter your soul with that; there’s no doubt at all in the world about it. He’s as deep as a well, and as false as a fox, and he’d laid all his plans very cunningly beforehand. He made the arrangements and swore to the Civil Act without consulting Linnet. He and the priest were in league, and the priest helped him out with it. At the very last moment, Andreas carried her off, and before she could say nay, he went straight through and married her.”

Will’s brain reeled round; his mind seemed to fail him. The sense of his loss, his irreparable loss, deadened for the moment every other feeling. Linnet gone from him for ever! Linnet married to somebody else!⁠—⁠and that somebody else so cold, so calculating, so cruel a man as Andreas Hausberger! It was terrible to contemplate. “He must have forced her to do it!” the Englishman cried in his distress. “But how could she ever consent? How could she ever submit? I can’t believe it! I can’t even understand it!”

“He didn’t exactly force her,” Franz answered, tilting his hat still more angrily on one side of his head. “But he brought the Herr Vicar from St Valentin to persuade her; and you know what priests are, and you know what women! The Herr Vicar just turned on purgatory and all the rest of it to frighten the poor child⁠—⁠so Philippina says. She was crying all the time. She cried in the train, and she cried on the road, and she cried in the church, and she cried at the altar! She cried worst of all when Herr Andreas took her home to the Wirthshaus to supper. . . . But I’ll be even with him yet.” And Franz tapped his knife once more. “When I meet him again⁠—⁠ten thousand devils!⁠—⁠this goes right up to the hilt in the base black heart of him!”

“Can I see Philippina?” Will gasped out, white as death.

“Yes; certainly you can see her,” the Robbler answered with a burst, leading him in through the dark archway to the sunless courtyard. “Come this way into the parlour. She’s upstairs just now, but I’ll bring her down to speak to you.”

In a minute or two more, sure enough, Philippina appeared in her very best dress, looking bright and smiling. She was garrulous as usual, and most gay and lively. “Oh yes; they had been to St Valentin, and no mistake⁠—⁠the Herr Vicar going with them⁠—⁠no scandal of any sort⁠—⁠and ’twas a very grand affair; never anything like it! Andreas Hausberger had spared no expense or trouble; red wine at the supper, and fiddlers for the dance, and all the world of the valley bidden to the feast on the night of the wedding! Linnet had cried a good deal; ach, yes, she had cried, how she had cried⁠—⁠but cried!⁠—⁠mein Gott, it was wonderful! But there, girls always will cry when they’re going to be married; and you know, Herr Will,” archly, “she was very, very fond of you.” For herself, Philippina couldn’t think what the child had to cry about⁠—⁠except, of course, what you call her feelings; but all she could say was, she’d be very glad herself to make such a match as Lina Telser was making. Why, would the gnädige Herr believe it? Herr Andreas was going to take her to a place called Mailand, away off in Italy, to train her for the stage⁠—⁠the operatic stage⁠—⁠and make in the end a real grand lady of her!

Will sat down on a wooden chair by the rough little table, held his face in his hands, and listened all aghast to Philippina’s artless outpourings. The sennerin, unheeding his obvious distress, went on to describe in her most glowing terms the magnificence of the wedding, and of the wirth’s entertainment. St Valentin hardly knew itself. Andreas had had a wedding-dress, oh, a beautiful wedding-dress, made beforehand, as a surprise, at Meran for Linnet⁠—⁠a white silk wedding-dress from a Vienna clothes-maker’s on the Promenade, by the Stephanie Garten; it was cut to measure from an old bodice of Linnet’s, which he abstracted all unknown from her box on purpose; and it fitted her like a glove, and she was ever so much admired in it. And all the young men thought Andreas the luckiest dog in the whole Tyrol; and cousin Fridolin had almost wanted to fight him for his bride; but Linnet intervened, and wouldn’t let them have it out for her. “And on the morning after the marriage,” Philippina concluded, with wide open eyes, “there wasn’t a cradle at the door, though Linnet was a sennerin⁠—⁠not one single cradle.”

“Of course not!” Franz Lindner cried, bridling up at the bare suggestion, and frowning native wrath at her.

“But perhaps if you’d been there, Franz⁠——” Philippina put in saucily, and then broke off short, like a discreet maiden.

The Robbler rose above himself in his generous indignation that anyone should dare even to hint such things about their peerless Linnet. He clenched his fist hard. “If a man had said that, my girl,” he cried, fingering his knife involuntarily, “though she’s Andreas Hausberger’s wife, he’d have paid with his blood for it.”

Philippina for a moment stood silent and overawed. Then, recovering herself at once, with a sudden little recollection, she thrust her hand into her bosom and drew out a small note, which she passed to Will openly. “Oh, I forgot,” she exclaimed; “I was to give you this, Herr Will. Linnet asked me to take it to you on the morning of her marriage.”

Will opened it, and read. It was written in a shaky round hand like a servant’s, and its German orthography was not wholly above criticism. But it went to Will’s heart like a dagger for all that.

“Dear Herr Will,” it began, simply, “I write to you to-night, the last night that I may, on the eve of my wedding; for to-morrow I may not. When Andreas asked me first, it seemed to me impossible. But the Herr Vicar told me it was sin to love a heretic; you did not mean to marry me, and if you did, you would drag my soul down to eternal perdition. And then, the good Mother, and the dear Father in purgatory! So between them they made me do it, and I dared not refuse. It is hard to refuse when one’s priest commands one. Yet, dear Herr Will, I loved you; ah, how I loved you! and I know it is sin; but, may Our Dear Frau forgive me, as long as I live, I shall always love you! Though I never must see you again.⁠—⁠Your heart-broken Linnet.”

Will folded it reverently, and slipped it into the pocket just over his heart. “And tell her, Philippina,” he said, “when you see her at Verona, I had come back to-day to ask her to marry me.”

CHAPTER XXII

A WOMAN’S STRATAGEM

For the next three years, Will heard and saw nothing more of Linnet. Not that he failed to make indirect inquiries, as time went on, from every likely source, as to her passing whereabouts; once Linnet was lost to him, he realised to himself how deeply he had loved her, how much he had admired her. But, for her happiness’ sake, he felt it would be wrong of him to write to her direct, or attempt in any way to put himself into personal communication with her. She was Andreas Hausberger’s wife now, and there he must leave her. He knew himself too well, he knew Linnet too well, too, to cheat himself with false ideas of mere friendship in future. A woman with so passionate a nature as hers, married against her will to a man she could never love, and meeting once more the man whom she loved, the man who really loved her, must find such friendship a dangerous pitfall. So, for the very love’s sake he bore her, he refrained from attempting to communicate with her directly; and all indirect inquiries failed to elicit anything more than the bare fact, already known to him, that Linnet was being musically educated for the stage, in Germany and Italy.

Three years, however, must be got through somehow, no matter how drearily; and during those next three years many things of many sorts happened to Will Deverill. To begin with, he was steadily growing in name and fame, in the stage-world of London, as a composer and playwright. That was mainly Rue’s doing; for Rue, having once taken her Englishman up, was by no means disposed to lay him down again easily. Not twice in her life, indeed, does even a pretty American with money at her back stand her solid chance of booming a poet. And Rue boomed Will steadily, after the manner of her countrymen. It didn’t escape her quick womanly eye, indeed, that Linnet’s sudden marriage and hasty flight to Italy had produced a deep effect on Will’s spirits for the moment. But it was only for the moment, she hoped and believed⁠—⁠a mere passing whim, a poet’s fancy; impossible that a man who thought and wrote like Will Deverill⁠—⁠a bard of lofty aim and exquisite imaginings, one who on honey-dew had fed and drunk the milk of Paradise⁠—⁠should be permanently enslaved by a Tyrolese cow-girl. Surely, in the end, common-sense and good taste and right feeling must prevail; he must come back at last⁠—⁠well⁠—⁠to a woman worthy of him!

So, very shortly after Will’s return to London, Rue decided on a complete change in her plans for the winter, and made up her mind, instead of going on as she had intended to Rome and Naples, to take a house for the season in Mayfair or South Kensington. But Florian would hear of no such temporary expedients; she must have a home of her own in London, he said,⁠—⁠in the world’s metropolis,⁠—⁠and he himself would choose it for her. So he found her a shelter in Hans Place, Chelsea, and fitted it up beforehand with becoming magnificence⁠—⁠just such a palace of art as he had dreamed of among the Dolomites; though, to be sure, his own chance of inhabiting it now seemed considerably lessened, since the failure of his scheme for putting off Will Deverill on his musical sennerin. Still, Florian furnished it, all the same, with a strictly business eye to his own tastes and fancies⁠—⁠in case of contingencies. There was a drawing-room for Rue, of course quite utterly Hellenic; there was a dining-room for Society, not grim and gloomy, after the common superstition of all British dining-rooms, but gay and bright and airy, like Florian himself: for Florian held that the cult of the sacred dinner bell, though important enough in the wise man’s scheme of life, should be a blithe and joyous, not a solemn and stolid one; there was a smoking-room, for which Rue herself had certainly no need, but which Florian insisted might be useful in the future, as events demanded. “For, you see,” he said, pointedly, “we’re not in Bombay. You may yet choose a new friend to light his cigars in it.” All was decorated throughout in the most modern taste; incandescent wires shed tempered beams through Venetian glass globes on Liberty brocades and Morris wall-papers. ’Twas a triumph of ornamental art on a very small scale⁠—⁠an Aladdin’s palace in Hans Place,⁠—⁠and Florian took good care that paragraphs should get into the Society papers, both describing the house, and attributing its glories to his own superintendence.

However, he took good care, too, that due prominence should be given on every hand to Rue’s own personal claims to social distinction. He was a first-rate wire-puller. Little notes about the beauty, the wealth, the cleverness, and the fine taste of the pretty American widow cropped up spasmodically in Truth and the Pall Mall. Even the Spectator itself, that high-and-dry organ of intellectual life, deigned to recognise her existence. It was Florian’s intention, in short, to float his new protégée. Now, all the world admitted that Florian, if he chose, could float almost anybody; while Rue, for her part, was without doubt exceptionally easy of flotation. Seven hundred thousand pounds, to say the truth, would have buoyed up a far heavier social subject than the pretty and clever New Yorker. Americans are the fashion; for a woman, at least, the mere fact that she comes from beyond the mill-pond is in itself just at present a passport to the best society. But Rue had also money; and money in these days will admit anyone anywhere. Furthermore, she had good looks, taking manners, much culture, real cleverness. She was well informed and well read; Society itself, that collective critic, could find nothing to criticise or to carp at in her conversation. So, introduced by Florian on one side, and His Excellency the American Minister on the other, Rue made that spring a perfect triumphal progress through the London drawing-rooms. She was the fact of the season; she entertained in her own pretty rooms in Hans Place, where Florian exhibited his decorative skill with bland satisfaction to dowager-marchionesses,⁠—⁠“I edited it,” was his pet phrase⁠—⁠while Will Deverill hung modestly in the background by the door, talking, as was his wont, to those neglected souls who seemed to him most in need of encouragement and companionship.

Before two months were out, everybody was talking of Rue as “our new acquisition.” It was Mrs Palmer this, and Mrs Palmer that. “We understand Mrs Palmer will not be present at the Duchess of Thingumabob’s dance on Tuesday.” “Among the guests on the Terrace, we noticed Lord So-and-so, Lady What’s-her-name of Ware, and Mrs Palmer of New York, whose pretty house in Hans Place is fast becoming a rallying point for all that is most interesting in London Society.” Old Miss Beard, indeed, when she arrived at the Langham Hotel early in May, and found Rue in quiet possession of the Very Best Houses, was positively scandalised. She declared, with a little sneer, it was perfectly disgraceful the way That Woman had forced herself by pure brass on the English Aristocracy. The widow of a dry-goodsman to give herself such airs!⁠—⁠but there, Miss Beard had begun to despair before now of the future of Europe! The Nobility and Gentry of England had degringolated. For true blue blood, she was perfectly convinced, you could only look nowadays to the heirs of the Puritans, the Knickerbockers, and the Virginians.

The very first use Rue made of her new-found friends and position in London was to push Will Deverill’s claims with theatrical managers. Will had sent the manuscript score of his pretty little open-air operetta, “Honeysuckle,” to Wildon Blades of the Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre. And, before Mr Blades had had time to consider the work submitted to him, backed up as it was by Florian Wood’s powerful recommendation, Rue’s new victoria drew up one day at the door of the manager’s house in St John’s Wood, and Rue herself, in her most becoming and bewitching costume, stepped out, with her blameless footman’s aid, to interview him.

The pretty little American looked prettier and more charming than ever that morning. A dainty blush rose readily to her peach-blossom cheeks; her eyes were cast down; an unwonted tinge of flutter in voice and manner became her even better than her accustomed serenity. Mr Blades bowed and smiled as he scanned her card; he was a bullet-headed man with shifty grey eyes, a dubious mouth, and a sledge-hammer manner. He knew her name well; Florian had already sung the American’s praises to the astute manager. They sat down and talked. With many indirect little feminine twists and turns, Rue gradually got round to the real subject of her visit. She didn’t approach it straight, of course⁠—⁠what woman ever does?⁠—⁠by stray hints and roundabout roads she let Mr Blades understand in dim outline she was to some extent interested⁠—⁠platonically interested⁠—⁠in the success of Will Deverill’s Tyrolese operetta. Mr Deverill, she explained, was merely a young poet of musical tastes, whom she had met last year at an hotel in the Tyrol⁠—⁠a friend of their mutual friend’s, Mr Wood. The manager smiled wisely with that dubious mouth. Rue saw he drew his own inference⁠—⁠and drew it wrong; he thought it was Florian in whom her interest centred, not the unknown poet. Indeed, Florian himself had done his very best already to produce that impression; if you want to marry a rich woman, it’s not a bad plan to let her friends and the world at large believe the matter’s as good as settled already between you. So the manager smiled, and looked intensely wise. “Anything I can do for any friend of our friend Florian’s,” he said, politely, “I’m sure will give me the very greatest pleasure.”

Rue was not wholly unwilling he should make this mistake; she could ask the more easily the favour she had to beg on behalf of Will Deverill. With many further circumlocutions, and many womanly wiles, she gradually let the bullet-headed manager see she was very anxious “Honeysuckle” should be duly produced at an early date at the Duke of Edinburgh’s. But Mr Blades, for his part, like a man of the world that he was, was proof against all the smiles and blandishments of the pretty enchantress. A beautiful woman is thrown away, to say the truth, upon a theatrical manager; they are his stock-in-trade; he’s accustomed to bargaining with them, bullying them, quarrelling with them. He regards them merely as a class of exceptionally exacting and irritating persons, who presume upon their good looks and their popularity with the public to excuse the infinite trouble and annoyance they give in their business relations. So Mr Blades smiled again, this time a hard little mercantile smile, as of a man unimpressed, and answered briefly, in his sledge-hammer style, “Now, let’s be frank with one another, at once, Mrs Palmer. I run this theatre, not for the sake of high art, nor to oblige a lady, but on the vulgarest and commonest commercial grounds⁠—⁠just to make my living, and get a fair percentage on the capital I invest in it. I judge by returns, not by literary merit or artistic value. If Mr Deverill’s little piece seems likely to pay⁠—⁠why, of course, I’ll produce it. If it don’t, why, I won’t. That’s the long and the short of it!”

Rue seized her cue at once with American quickness. “Just so,” she replied, catching him up very sharp, and going straight to the point; “that’s exactly why I’ve come here. I want you to read this play very soon, and to say as a candid business man what you think of it. Then I want you to tell me what you’ll take, money down, to produce it at once, and to run it on your boards till you see whether it’s likely to succeed or fail⁠—⁠if I give you a guarantee, secured against bonds, to reimburse you in full for any loss you may sustain, say, by giving it the chance of a fortnight’s production.”

It was a curious offer. The manager’s shifty grey eyes ran her over with a sharp little stare of astonishment. Her directness amused him. “Well now,” he said, “that’s odd; but it’s business-like⁠—⁠for a woman.”

“You understand,” Rue said, blushing crimson, and letting her eyelids drop once more, “I make this suggestion in strict confidence; I don’t want it talked about.”

“Certainly, certainly,” Mr Blades replied, with a scrutinising glance. “Not even to our friend Florian?” And he eyed her quizzingly.

Rue’s face flushed deeper still. “Above all, not to him,” she answered firmly. “But what do you say to my offer? Is it business or not? Does it seem to you possible?”

The manager hesitated, and drummed with his finger on the desk before him. “Well, to tell you the truth, my dear lady,” he answered, evasively, “I couldn’t very well give you any opinion, good, bad, or indifferent, till I’ve read the manuscript, and considered it carefully. You see, a play’s not quite like a book or picture; a deal of capital’s involved in its production; and, besides, its success or its failure don’t stand quite alone; they mean so much in the end to the theatre. It won’t do for me to reckon only how many hundreds or thousands I may possibly lose on this or that particular venture if it turns out badly; there’s the indirect loss as well to take into consideration. Every success in a house means success in future; every failure in a house means gradual increase in the public coldness. It wouldn’t pay me, you understand, if you were merely to offer me a big lump sum down to produce a piece with no chance of a run in it. I never produce anything for anybody on earth unless I believe myself there’s really money in it. But I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” and he brightened up most amiably; “I’ll read it this very day; and then, if I think it won’t prejudice the Duke’s to bring it out at once, why, . . . I’ll consider whether or not I can accept your offer.”

“Oh, thank you!” Rue cried, very gratefully indeed; for she was a simple soul, in spite of her thousands.

The manager drew himself up, and looked stonily grave. He shook his bullet-head. This charge was most painful. It hurt his feelings as a business man that a pretty woman should even for one moment suppose he meant to make a concession to her.

“You’ve nothing to thank me for,” he answered, truthfully; and indeed she hadn’t; for his answer, after all, amounted merely to this: that if he thought the play likely to prove a success, he would generously permit the rich American to indemnify him beforehand against the off-chance of a failure. In other words, if it turned out well, he stood to win all; while if it turned out ill, it was Rue who stood to lose whatever was lost upon it.

Nevertheless, after a few more preliminary arrangements, Rue drove off, not ill-satisfied with her partial success, leaving behind her many injunctions of profoundest secrecy with the blandly-smiling manager. As she disappeared down the road, Mr Blades chuckled inwardly. Was he likely to tell any one else in the world, indeed, that he had even entertained so unequal a bargain? He would keep to himself his own clever compact with the American heiress. But two days later, Rue’s heart was made glad, when she came down to breakfast, by a letter from the manager, couched in politest terms, informing her that he had read Mr Deverill’s manuscript; that he thought on the whole there was possibly money in it; and that he would be pleased to talk over the question of its production on the basis of the arrangement she had herself proposed at their recent interview. Rue read it, overjoyed. In the innocence of her heart, she agreed to promise whatever the astute Mr Blades demanded. Moreover, this being a strictly confidential matter, she couldn’t even submit it to her lawyer for advice; she was obliged to act for once on her own initiative. She longed to rush off the very moment it was settled and tell Will the good news; but prudence and womanly reserve prevented her. However, she had her reward none the less next day, when Will hurried round immediately after breakfast to announce the splendid tidings which had come by that morning’s post, that Blades had accepted “Honeysuckle,” without any reserve, and intended to put it in rehearsal forthwith at the Duke of Edinburgh’s. His face beamed with delight; Rue smiled contentment. She was pleased he should burst in upon her first of all the world in London with news of his good fortune; that really looked as if he rather liked her! And then, how sweet it was to feel she had managed it all herself, and he didn’t know it. It was such a delightful secret that, womanlike, she longed to tell it to him outright⁠—⁠only that, of course, to divulge it would be to spoil the whole point of it. So she merely smiled a tranquil smile, to her own proud heart, and felt as happy as a queen about it. ’Tis delicious to do something for the man you love, and to know he doesn’t even suspect you of doing it. . . . Some day, perhaps, she would be able to tell him. But not till he’d made a great name for himself. Then she might say to him with pride, at some tender moment, “Before the world found you out, Will, I knew what you were, and, all unknown to yourself, it was I who stretched out the first helping hand to your fortunes!”

CHAPTER XXIII

A PROPHET INDEED!

While Will Deverill’s operetta was still in rehearsal at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, a little episode occurred at Rue’s house in Hans Place, which was not without a certain weird influence of its own on the after-life of herself and her companions.

Rue gave an At Home one night early in March, to which Florian and Will Deverill were invited. Will brought his sister with him⁠—⁠the sister who was married to an East End curate, and who had called upon Rue at her brother’s bidding.

“Well, what do you think of her to-night, Maud?” Will asked a little anxiously as they stood alone for a minute or two in the middle of the evening.

Mrs Sartoris curled her lip. “Oh, she’s pretty enough,” she answered; “pretty enough, after her fashion. I could see that the first time; and she’s got nice manners. She lights up well, too; women of her age always do light up well. They look better by night, even in the searching glare of these electric lamps, than in full broad sunshine. But, of course, she hasn’t got quite the tone of our set; you couldn’t expect it. A faded air of drapery clings about her to the end. That’s the way with these people; they may be ever so rich, they may be ever so fascinating⁠—⁠but a discriminating nose still scents trade in them somewhere.”

Will smiled a quiet smile of suppressed amusement. He didn’t care to answer her. Rue’s father, he knew, had been an episcopal clergyman in New York, and she herself, though she married a dry-goodsman, had been every bit as well brought up as Will and his sister. But ’tis a sisterly way to say these disparaging things about women whom one’s brother might be suspected of marrying. Will didn’t mean to marry Rue, it is true; but Maud thought he might; and that idea alone was more than enough to give a caustic tone to her critical comments.

The feature of the evening, it seemed, was to be a peculiar séance of a new American phenomenon, who had come over to Europe with a wonderful reputation for thought-reading, hypnotism, and what he was pleased to style “magnetic influences.” Like most of her countrymen and countrywomen, Rue had a sneaking regard, in the background of her soul, for mesmerism, spiritualism, psychic force, electro-biology, and the occult and mysterious in human nature generally. She was one of those impressionable women, in short, who fall a ready prey to plausible impostors with voluble talk about ethereal vibrations, telepathic energy, the odic fluid, and the rest of such rubbish, unless strong-minded male friends intervene to prevent them. The medium on this occasion, it appeared, was one Joaquin Holmes, otherwise known as the Colorado Seer, who professed to read the inmost thoughts of man or woman by direct brainwaves, without contact of any sort. The guests that night had been specially invited to meet Mr Holmes on this his first appearance at a séance in London; so about ten o’clock, all the world trooped down to the dining-room, which Florian had cunningly arranged as a temporary lecture-hall, with seats in long rows, and an elevated platform at one end for the medium.

“What an odd-looking man!” Mrs Sartoris exclaimed, as the Colorado Seer, in full evening dress, bowed a graceful bow from his place on the platform. “He’s handsome, though, isn’t he? Such wonderful eyes! Just look! And such a Spanish complexion!”

“A Hidalgo, every inch!” Florian assented gravely, nodding his head, and looking at him as he would have looked at a Velasquez. “That olive-brown skin points back straight to Andalusia. It doesn’t want his name to tell one at a glance that if his father was an American of English descent, his mother’s folk must have emigrated from Cordova or Granada. I see a Moslem tinge in cheek and eye; those dusky thin fingers are the Moor all over!”

“For Moor, read blackamoor,” Colonel Quackenboss, the military attaché to the American Legation, murmured half under his breath to his next-door neighbour.

And they were each of them right, in his own way and fashion. The Colorado Seer was a very handsome man, somewhat swarthier than is usual with pure-blooded Europeans. His eyes were large and dark and brilliant; his abundant black hair fell loose over his brow with a graceful southern curl; a heavy moustache fringed his upper lip; he looked to the unsophisticated European eye like a pleasing cross between Buffalo Bill and a Castilian poet. But his Christian name of Joaquin and his southern skin had descended to him, not from Andalusian Hidalgos, but from a mother who was partly Spanish and partly negress, with a delicate under-current of Red Indian ancestry. As he stood there on the platform, however, in his becoming evening dress, and flooded them with the light of his lustrous dark eyes⁠—⁠’twas a trick of the trade he had learned in Colorado⁠—⁠every woman in the room felt instinctively to herself he was a superb creature, while every man admitted with a grudging smile that the fellow had at least the outward air of a gentleman.

The Seer, stepping forward with a genial smile, entertained them at first with some common little tricks of so-called thought-reading, familiar enough to all those who have ever attempted to watch the ways of that simple exhibition. He found pins concealed in ladies’ skirts, and guessed the numbers of bank-notes in financiers’ pockets. Florian’s mouth curled incredulity; why, these were just the same futile old games as ever, the well-known and innocent little conjuring dodges of the Bishops and the Stuart Cumberlands! But after awhile, Mr Joaquin Holmes, waking up all at once, proceeded to try something newer and more original. A pack of cards was produced. To avoid all suspicion of collusion or trickery, ’twas a brand-new pack⁠—⁠observe, there’s no deception⁠—⁠bought by Rue herself that afternoon in Bond Street. With much air of serious mystery, the Colorado Seer pulled off the stamped cover before their very eyes, gave the cards themselves to Will to shuffle, and then proceeded to offer them to every member of the company one by one in order. Each drew a card, looked at it, and replaced it in the pack. Instantly, the Seer in a very loud voice, without one moment’s hesitation, announced it correctly as ten of spades, ace of clubs, five of hearts, or queen of diamonds. It was an excellent trick, and the performer could do it equally well with open eyes or blindfolded; he could offer the cards behind his back, after the pack had been shuffled and handed him unseen; he could even succeed in the dark, he said, if the lights were lowered, and each person in the company took his own card out to inspect it in the passage.

“That looks like genuine thought-reading,” Will was compelled to admit, thinking it over in his own mind; “but perhaps he forces his cards. One knows conjurers can do such wonderful things in the way of forcing.”

Instantly the Seer turned upon him with an air of injured innocence. “If you think there’s any conjuring about this performance,” he exclaimed, with much dignity, drawing himself up to his full height of six feet two, “you can offer them yourself, and allow each lady and gentleman in the room to pick as they choose for themselves among them. I’ll take each card, blindfold, as fast as they pick, hold it up behind my back, with my hands tied, without seeing it myself, and read off for you what it is by direct thought-transference.”

Will accepted the test⁠—⁠a fairly severe one; and, sure enough, the Seer was right. Carefully blindfolded with one of those moulded wraps, invented for the purpose, which prevent all possibility of looking down through the chinks, he yet took each card behind his back in one hand, held it up before their eyes without moving his head, and gave out its name distinctly and instantly. The audience was impressed. There was a touch of magic in it. But the Seer smiled blandly.

“Oh, that’s nothing,” he murmured aloud, with a deprecating little laugh; “a mere matter of choosing between fifty-two alternatives⁠—⁠which, after all, is easy. With Mrs Palmer’s consent,” and he turned in a gracefully deferential attitude to Rue, “I can show you something a great deal more remarkable. Here are pencils and papers. Each lady or gentleman will please take a sheet as I hand them round. Write anything you like, in English, French, German or Spanish, on the piece of paper. Then fold it up, so, and put it into one of these envelopes gummed down and fastened. After that, as this experiment requires very great concentration of thought”⁠—⁠he knitted his brows, and assumed an expression of the intensest internal effort⁠—⁠“with Mrs Palmer’s kind leave, we will turn out the electric light, which confuses and distracts one by revealing to the eye so many surrounding visible objects. And then, without breaking the envelopes in which you have enclosed the pieces of paper, I will read out to you, in the dark, what each of you has written.”

He spoke deliberately, with slow western American distinctness, though with a pleasing accent. That accent, superimposed on his native negro dialect, had cost him no small effort. The guests, half-incredulous, took the sheets of paper he distributed to them one by one, and wrote down a sentence or two, according to taste, after a little interval of whispered consultation. Then, by the Seer’s direction, they folded the slips in two and placed them in their envelopes, each bearing outside the name of the person who wrote it. Florian collected the papers, all carefully gummed down, and handed them to the Seer, who stood ready to receive them at his place on the platform. Without one moment’s delay, the lights were turned out. It was the instantaneousness, indeed, and the utter absence of the usual hocus-pocus, that distinguished Mr Joaquin Holmes’s unique performance from the ordinary style of spiritualist conjuring. In a second, the Seer’s voice rang out clear from his place: “First envelope, Mrs Palmer, containing inscription in French⁠—⁠very prettily written:

‘La vie est brève:

Un peu d’amour,

Un peu de rêve,

Et puis⁠—⁠bonjour.

La vie est vaine:

Un peu d’espoir,

Un peu de haine,

Et puis⁠—⁠bonsoir.’

“Extremely graceful verses; I don’t know the author. However, no matter! . . . Second envelope, Colonel Marchmont, containing inscription in English, ‘The general immediately ordered an advance, and the gallant 21st, regardless of danger, charged for the battery in magnificent style, sabring the enemy’s gunners in a wild outburst of military enthusiasm.’ Very characteristic! A most soldierly choice. And boldly written. . . . Third envelope, Mrs Sartoris,⁠—⁠stop, please! the lady’s thoughts are wandering; kindly fix your attention for a moment, Madam, on the words you have given me. Ah, so; that’s better.⁠—⁠‘The curfew tolls the knell of parting day; The lowing herd winds slowly o’er the lea; The ploughman homeward wends’⁠—⁠wends? wends? it should have been ‘plods’; but ‘wends’ is what you thought⁠—⁠‘The ploughman homeward wends his weary way, And leaves the world to darkness and to me.’ Very appropriate; it’s dark enough here! And I am the only speaker. Bend your minds to what you have written, please, or I may have to hesitate. Each think of your own. . . . Fourth envelope, Mr Florian Wood, containing inscription:

‘We struggle fain to enlarge

Our bounded physical recipiency,

Increase our power, supply fresh oil to life,

Repair the waste of age and sickness: no,

It skills not! life’s inadequate to joy,

As the soul sees joy, tempting life to take.’

An exceedingly appropriate quotation! I forget where it comes from. Try to concentrate your mind, Mr Wood. Ah, now I know!⁠—⁠from Browning’s Cleon.”

Florian’s mellifluous voice broke the silence in the auditory. “This is wonderful!” he said, in his impressive tone, “most wonderful! miraculous! I never heard anything in my life to equal it.”

The Seer, noting his advantage, didn’t pause for a moment to answer the interruption, but, smiling a self-satisfied though invisible smile, which could be heard in his voice in spite of the dense darkness, went on still more rapidly, “Fifth envelope, Lady Martindale, a familiar quotation, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.’ Somewhat hackneyed that, but easy enough to read on her brain for that very reason. . . . Sixth envelope, Sir Henry Martindale⁠—⁠I regret to say, a confirmed sceptic; Sir Henry didn’t believe I could read his thoughts, so he wrote down these rude words: ‘The performance is a sham, and the man’s a humbug.’ But the performance is not a sham, and the man’s a thought-reader. Sir Henry also wrote three words below in the Russian character, which he learnt in the Crimea. Now, I don’t know Russian, and I can’t pretend to read thoughts in languages I don’t understand, any more than I could pretend to repeat a conversation I happened to overhear on top of an omnibus in Japanese or Hottentot. But I can tell Sir Henry what he thought in English as he wrote those words; he thought to himself, ‘That’s a puzzler for him, that is; I’ll bet five quid that’ll beat the fellow.’ ”

The audience laughed at this unexpected sally. Sir Henry felt uncomfortable. But the Seer, unabashed, went on as before, without an instant’s pause, to the succeeding envelopes. He ran through them all in the same rapid manner, till he reached the last, “Miss Violet Farrar,⁠—⁠kindly concentrate your thoughts on the subject, Señorita,⁠—⁠Miss Farrar wrote a couple of lines from Swinburne:

‘Thou hast forgotten, O summer swallow,

But the world shall end when I forget.’

That’s the last I received!” He drew a deep sigh. Then without one instant interposed, “Turn up the lights, please,” he said. “To show all’s fair, I’ll return you your envelopes.”

Will turned the light on again in a turmoil of surprise. He had never before seen anything that looked so like a genuine miracle. There stood the Seer, erect and smiling, with all the envelopes in a huddled heap on the little round table on the platform beside him. With a quiet air of triumph, he stepped down to the floor, and reading out the names as he walked along the rows, replaced in each outstretched hand⁠—⁠its own envelope, unopened. The visitors tore the covers off before his eyes, and found inside⁠—⁠their own manuscript, exactly as they had written it. It was a most convincing trick, and the Colorado Seer had good cause to be proud of the astounded way in which his company received it.

A buzz of voices ran humming round the room for some minutes together as the Seer concluded. Everybody hazarded some conjecture of his own, more or less inept, as to how the man did it. The younger ladies were mostly of opinion that he “must have a confederate”⁠—⁠though how a confederate could help him with this particular trick, they didn’t deign to explain, not having, indeed, any clear picture of their own in their sapient heads as to the nature of the confederacy. They merely threw out the hint in the self-same expansive and generous spirit in which they are wont to opine that “it’s done by electricity,” or, that “the thing has springs in it.” Mr Arthur Sartoris, the East End curate, and two old maids with amiable profiles in a back row, were inclined to set it down to “cerebral undulations in the ethereal medium”⁠—⁠which, of course, would be competent to explain almost anything, if they only existed. Lady Martindale leaned rather towards the extremer view that “the man had dealings with a familiar spirit,” and objected to take any further part in such doubtful proceedings. Sir Henry, while not venturing to offer any direct explanation, was yet reminded at once of some very remarkable and surprising feats he had seen performed by a fakir in India, who had told him the name of his future wife, made a mango-tree grow and bear fruit before his eyes, and sent a boy to climb up a loose end of twine till he disappeared in space, whence he was precipitated in fragments a few minutes later, to get up and walk away one moment afterwards, at the first touch of the fakir’s wand, as cool and unconcerned as if nothing had happened. Everybody had a theory which satisfied himself; and every theory alike seemed pure bosh to Will Deverill.

To everybody’s surprise, however, Florian’s melodious voice, after that one interruption, took no further part in the brisk discussion. The world rather expected that Florian would intervene with some abstruse hypothesis of telepathic action, or enlarge on the occult influence of soul upon soul, without the need for any gross and palpable link of material connection. But Florian held his peace. He had an idea of his own, and he wasn’t going to impart it for nothing to anybody. Only once did he speak. “The man has eyes in the back of his head,” a lady had cried after one trick in profound astonishment.

“Say, rather, the man has eyes in the tips of his fingers,” Florian corrected gravely. For he was no fool, Florian.

The Seer heard him, and darted a strange glance at his face. This man Wood was too clever. The Seer must square him!

The evening wore away, and conjecture died down. The Seer mixed with the throng in his private capacity, told good stories to the men with a strong Western flavour, said pretty things to the women with Parisian grace, and flashed his expressive eyes into theirs to point them. Everybody allowed he was a most agreeable man, and everybody thought his performance “simply marvellous.”

Florian waited on the door-step as the Seer was leaving. “I’ll walk home with you,” he said, with an air of quiet determination.

The Seer stared at him hard. “As you like,” he answered, coldly; but it was clear from his tone he distrusted Florian.

They walked round the corner for some yards in silence. Then Florian spoke first. “There was only one thing I didn’t quite understand,” he began, with a confidential air, “and that was how the dickens you managed to get those gummed envelopes open.”

The Seer stood still for a second, and fronted him. They were in a lonely street. “Now, you look here, Mr Florian Wood,” the American said quietly, dropping back all at once into his native dialect and his native accent, “you lay low this evening. You thought you spotted it. I saw you lay low, and I knew pretty well you meant to come round and have it out some time with me. Well, sir, what do you mean by insinuating to a gentleman like me that I broke those there envelopes? That’s an imputation on my honesty and honour; and out West, you know, we answer questions like that only one way . . . with a six-shooter.”

He spoke with the menacing air of an angry bully. But Florian wasn’t exactly the sort of man to be bullied; small as he was, he did not lack for courage. If Mr Joaquin Holmes was tall and big-built, why, Florian was backed up by all the strength of the police of London. The Englishman smiled. “Yes, you do, out West, I know,” he answered, calmly; “but in London, that style’s very much out of fashion. We keep a police force on purpose to prevent it. Now, don’t let’s be two fools. I lay low, as you say. If you want me to go on lying low in future, you’ll answer me sensibly, like a man of the world, and trust my honour. If you want me to expose you, you’ll tell lies and bluster. You’ve had twenty pounds down from my friend Mrs Palmer for this evening’s entertainment. That’s first-rate pay. You can’t earn it again, if your system’s blown upon.”

The Coloradan darted a furtive side-glance at Florian. This sleek-faced, innocent-looking, high-flown little Englishman was more dangerous, after all, than the Westerner imagined. But he blustered still for a while about his honour and his honesty; he was ashamed to throw up the sponge so easily. Florian listened, unmoved. All this talk fell flat upon him. At last, when the Seer had exhausted his whole stock of available indignation, Florian interposed once more, bland and suave as ever: “It’s a very good trick,” the small man said, smiling, “and I don’t know how you managed that part about the envelopes. . . . Besides, I never met such delicacy of touch in my life before⁠—⁠in a sighted person!”

At that word, Joaquin Holmes gave a perceptible start. He saw its implications. It is the term which the blind in asylums or the like invariably apply to the outside world with normal vision.

Florian noticed the little start, all involuntary as it was; and the Seer in turn observed that he noticed it. No man can play the thought-reading or spiritualist game unless endowed with exceptional quickness of perception.

“How did you know I’d ever been blind?” he asked, quickly, taken aback for a moment, and making just that once an unguarded admission.

“I didn’t know it,” Florian answered, with equal frankness. “I didn’t even guess it. But I saw at once you’d at least been bred and brought up among the blind. My own grandfather was blind, you see, and my uncle as well; and I’ve inherited from them, myself, some germs of the same faculty. But you’ve got it stronger than anyone I ever saw in my life till now. . . . Besides, I want to know how you managed those envelopes. I hate being baffled. When I see a good trick, I like to understand it. Remember, I have influence in the press and in Society. I can serve your purpose. But I make it the price of my lying low in future that you tell me the way you managed about the envelopes.”

The Seer seized his arm. “You’re a durned smart chap,” he said, with genuine admiration. “Nobody, even in America, ever guessed that trick; and we’re smarter out there, I reckon, than the run of the old country. Come along to my rooms, and we’ll talk this thing over.”

“No thank you,” Florian answered, with a quiet little smile. “My friends wouldn’t know where I’d gone to-night. Your hint about six-shooters is quite too pregnant. But if you care to come home to my humble chambers in Grosvenor Gardens, and make terms of surrender, we can see this thing out over a whiskey and soda.”

CHAPTER XXIV

THE ART OF PROPHESYING

They walked on, side by side, to the house in Grosvenor Gardens. Florian let himself in with a latch-key, and rang the bell for his servant. While he waited, he wrote a name on the back of a card, carelessly. “Look here, Barnes,” the butterfly of Society said, as his eminently respectable man-of-all-work entered; “this is Mr Joaquin Holmes,”⁠—⁠and he handed him the card⁠—⁠“you can read the name there. He comes from America. I particularly desire you to remark Mr Joaquin Holmes’s appearance and features. You may be called upon to identify him.” Then he turned with his bland smile to the discomfited Seer, and observed, in that unfailingly honeyed voice of his, “You must excuse me, Mr Holmes, but as a gentleman from out West, addicted to the frequent use of the six-shooter, I’m sure you’ll appreciate the delicacy of my motives for this little precaution. You can go now, Barnes. A mere matter of form, so that, in case your evidence should be needed in court, you’ll be able to swear to Mr Holmes’s identity, and give evidence that he was here, in my company, this evening.”

Barnes glanced at the card, and retired to the door, discreetly. The Seer flung himself down in an easy-chair with true Western sangfroid. He knew he was detected; but he wasn’t going to give up the game so soon, without seeing how much Florian really understood of his secret and his methods. Meanwhile, Florian produced a couple of pretty little old-fashioned stoneware jugs and some Venetian glasses from a dainty corner cupboard. A siphon stood on a Moorish tray at his side by the carved Bombay black-wood fireplace. “Caledonian or Hibernian?” Florian asked, turning to his visitor, with his most charming smile⁠—⁠“I mean, Scotch or Irish?”

“Thanks, Scotch,” the Coloradan answered, relaxing his muscles a little, as he began to enter into the spirit of his entertainer’s humour.

Florian poured it out gracefully, and touched the knob of the siphon. Then he handed it, foaming, still bland as ever, to the hesitating American. “Now, let’s be frank with one another, Mr Holmes,” he said, with cheerful promptitude. “I don’t want to hurt you. You’re a very smart man, and I admire your smartness. I lay low to-night, as you justly observed, and I’m game to lie low⁠—⁠if you’ll take my terms⁠—⁠in future. I’m not going to blow upon you, and I’m not going to stand in the way of your success in life; but I just want to know⁠—⁠how did you manage those envelopes?”

“If you think it’s a trick, why, the envelopes would be a long chalk the easiest part of it,” the Seer responded, with a dry little cough. “The real difficulty, of course, would be to read in the dark what folks had written. And that’s the part, I claim, that I do myself by pure force of thought⁠—⁠in short, by psychic transference.”

He stared hard at his host. Their eyes met searchingly. It was seldom that Florian did a vulgar or ungraceful thing; but, as Mr Joaquin Holmes uttered those high-sounding words, and looked him straight in the face with great solemnity, Florian gravely winked at him. Then he raised that priceless Venetian glass goblet to his curling lips, took a long pull at the whiskey without speaking a word, and went over to a desk by the big front window. From it he took out a pack of cards, and returned with them in his hand. “Shuffle them,” he said, briefly, to the uneasy Seer, in his own very tone. And the American shuffled them.

Florian picked one out at random, and held it before him, face down, for some seconds in silence. “Now, I can’t do this trick like you,” he said, in a very business-like voice; “but I can do it a little. Only, I’m obliged to feel the card all over with my fingers like this; and I’m often not right as to the names of the suits, though I can generally make a good shot at the pips and numbers. This is a three that I’ve drawn⁠—⁠I think, the three of spades; but it may be clubs⁠—⁠I don’t feel quite certain.”

He turned it up. Sure enough, it was a three, but of clubs not spades. “I’ll try another,” he said, unabashed. And he drew one and felt it.

“This is a nine of diamonds,” he continued, more confidently, after a moment’s pause. The American took it from him, without turning up its face, drew his forefinger almost imperceptibly over the unexposed side, and answered without hesitation, “Yes; you’re right⁠—⁠that’s it⁠—⁠the nine of diamonds.”

Florian pulled out a third, and felt it again carefully with the tips of his fingers. “It’s a picture card this time,” he went on: “King, Queen, or Knave of Hearts, I’m not sure which. I’m no good at picture cards. They’re all a blur to me. I can tell them only by the single pips in the corners.”

The Seer took it from him, hardly touching it perceptibly. “That’s not a heart!” he answered in a sharp voice, without a second’s hesitation; “that’s the Jack of Spades! You’re right as to the general shape, but you’ve neglected the handle.”

He turned it up as he spoke. The Knave of Spades indeed it was. Florian corrected him solemnly.

“In good English society,” he murmured, still polite and still inscrutable, “we say Knave, not Jack. Remember that in future. To call it a Jack’s an odious vulgarism. I merely mention this fact because I notice how cleverly you’ve managed to acquire the exact little tricks of accent and manner which are sure to take with an English audience. I should be sorry to think a man of your brains, and a man of your moral character⁠—⁠positive or negative⁠—⁠should be thought the less of in this town of London for so very unimportant a matter of detail.”

“Thank you,” the Seer responded quietly, with another searching look. “I believe, Mr Florian Wood, we two understand each other. But mind you”⁠—⁠and he looked very wise and cunning⁠—⁠“I didn’t pass my finger over the cards at Mrs Palmer’s.”

“So I saw,” Florian replied, with unabated good-humour. “But I looked at them close⁠—⁠and I noticed they were squeezers. What’s more, I observed you took them always by the left-hand corner (which was the right hand, upside down) whenever they were passed to you. That gave me the clue. I saw you could read, with one touch of your finger, the number and suit marked small in the corner. I recognised how you did it, though I couldn’t come near it myself. Your sense of touch must be something simply exquisite.”

The American’s mouth curled gently at the corners. Those words restored his confidence. He took up a casual book from the table at his side⁠—⁠’twas the first edition of Andrew Lang’s “Ballades in Blue China”⁠—⁠for Florian, as a man of taste, adored first editions. “Look here,” the Seer said, carelessly. He turned it face downwards and opened it at random. Then, passing one finger almost imperceptibly over the face of a page, he began to read, as fast as the human voice can go, the very first verses he chanced to light upon.

“Ballade of Primitive Man.”

“He lived in a cave by the seas;

He lived upon oysters and foes;

But his list of forbidden degrees

An extensive morality shews.

Geological evidence goes

To prove he had never a pan,

But he shaved with a shell when he chose.

’Twas the manner of Primitive Man.”

He read it like print. Florian leaned back in his chair, clasped his dainty hands on his small breast before him, and stared at the Seer in unaffected astonishment. “I knew you did it that way,” he said, after a pause, nodding his head once or twice; “I felt sure that was the trick of it; but now I see you do it, why, it’s more wonderful, almost, than if it were nothing more than a mere ordinary miracle. Miracles are cheap; but sleight of hand like this⁠—⁠well, it’s priceless, priceless!”

“Now, you’re a man of honour,” the Seer said, leaning forward anxiously. “You’ve found me out, fair and square, and I don’t deny it. But you’re not going to round on me and spoil my business, are you? It’s taken me years and years to work up this sense by constant practice; and if I thought you were going to cut in right now, and peach upon me⁠—⁠why, hanged if I don’t think, witness or no witness, I’d settle this thing still, straight off, with a six-shooter. Yes, sir⁠—⁠r⁠—⁠r, I’d settle it straight off, I would, and let ’em scrag me if they would for it!”

Florian stirred the fire languidly with a contemplative poker (a poker’s a very good weapon to fall back upon, one knows, in case of necessity). “That’d be a pity,” he drawled out calmly, in an unconcerned voice. “I wouldn’t like you to make such a nasty mess on my Damascus carpet. This is a real old Damascus, observe, and I paid fifty guineas for it. It’s a nice one, isn’t it? Good colour, good pattern! Besides, as you say, I’m a man of honour. And I’ve a fellow-feeling, too⁠—⁠being clever myself⁠—⁠for all other clever fellows. I’ve promised you not to peach, if only you’ll tell me how you managed those envelopes. That’s a mere bit of ordinary everyday conjuring; it’s nothing to the skill and practice required to read, as you do, with the tips of your fingers.”

The Seer drew a long breath, and passed his dark hand wearily across his high brown forehead.

“That’s so!” he answered, with a sigh. “You may well say that.” Then he dropped spontaneously into his own Western manner. “See here, stranger,” he said, eyeing Florian hard, and laying one heavy hand on his entertainer’s arm; “it’s bred in the bone with me to some extent; but all the same, it’s cost me fifteen years of practice to develop it. I come of a blind family, I do; father was blind, and mother as well; made their match up at the Indiana State Asylum. Grandfather was blind in mother’s family, and two aunts in father’s. I was born sighted; but at five year old I was taken with the cataract. They weren’t any great shakes at the cataract in Colorado where I was raised; I was fifteen year old before they tried to couch it. So I learned to read first with embossed print on Grandfather’s old blind Boston Bible. I learned to read first-rate; that was as easy as A.B.C., for the tips of my fingers were always sensitive. I learnt to make mats a bit, too, and to weave in colours. Weaving in colours develops the sensitiveness of the nerves in the hand; you get to distinguish the different strands by the feel, and to know whereabouts you’re up to in the pattern.”

“And at fifteen you recovered your sight?” Florian murmured reflectively, still grasping the poker.

“Yes, sir⁠—⁠r⁠—⁠r; at fifteen they took me to New York and got my eyes couched there. As soon as ever I could see, I began to learn more things still with the tips of my fingers; my eyes sort of helped me to interpret what I felt with them. Pretty soon I saw there was money in this thing. People in Colorado didn’t care to play poker with me; they found out I’d a wonderful notion what was printed on a card by just drawing my finger, like this, over the face of it. I see you’re a straight man, and haven’t got many prejudices; so I don’t mind telling you now my first idea was to go in for handling the cards as a profession. However, I soon caught on that that wasn’t a good game; people in our section observed how I worked it, and it was apt to lead in the end to bowies and other unpleasantness. Several unpleasantnesses occurred, in fact, in Denver City, before I retired from that branch of the business. So then I began to reflect this thought-reading trick would come in more handy; one might do a bit at the cards now and again for a change; but if one tried it too often, it might land one at last in free quarters at the public expense; and the thought-reading’s safer and more gentlemanly any way. So I worked at learning to read, as time afforded, till I could read a printed book as easy with my fingers as I could read it with my eyes. It took me ten years, I guess, to bring that trick to perfection.”

“You made us write with a pencil, I noticed,” Florian interposed, with a knowing smile. “That’s easier to read, of course, for a pencil digs in so.”

The Seer regarded him with no small admiration. “You’re a smart man, and no mistake, sir,” he answered, emphatically. “That’s just how I do it. I read it from the back, where it’s raised into furrows, in relief as it were, by the digging-in; I read it backwards. I gave ’em each a pad with the paper, you may have noticed. That pad supplies just the right amount of resistance. I had to stop once or twice to-night, where I couldn’t read a sentence, and fill in the space meanwhile with a little bit of patter about concentrating their thoughts upon it, and that sort of nonsense. Mrs Sartoris’s hand was precious hard to decipher, and there was one young lady who pressed so light, she almost licked me.”

“And the envelopes?” Florian asked once more.

The Seer smiled disdainfully. “Why, that’s nothing,” he answered, with a contemptuous curl of the lip. “Any fool could do that; it’s as easy as lying. The lower side-flap of the envelopes is hardly fastened at all, with just a pin’s head of gum,”⁠—⁠he drew one from his pocket⁠—⁠“See here,” he said; “it’s got a bit left dry to wet and fasten afterwards. I draw out the paper, so, and read it with my finger; then I push it back, gum down again, and pull out the next one. It’s the rapidity that tells, and it’s that that takes so many years of practice.”

“But Browning’s Cleon?” Florian exclaimed. “And Sir Henry Martindale’s having learnt the Russian character in the Crimea? He told me it was there he picked it up himself. How on earth did you get at those, now?”

The Seer stretched out his legs with a self-satisfied smirk, and took a pull at his whiskey. “See here, my dear sir,” he said, stroking his smooth chin placidly; “a man don’t succeed in these walks of life unless he’s got some nous in him to start with. He’s bound to observe, and remember, and infer, a good deal; he’s bound to have an eye for character, and be a reader of faces. Now, it happens you wrote those self-same lines in Mrs Palmer’s album; and I chanced to read them there while I waited for her in the drawing-room this very morning. A man’s got to be smart, you bet, and look out for coincidences, if he’s going to do much in occult science to astonish the public. Well, I’ve noticed every one has certain pet quotations of his own, which he uses frequently; and you’d be surprised to find how often the same quotation turns up, time after time, in these psychical experiments. ‘The curfew tolls the knell,’ or, ‘Not a drum was heard,’ are pretty sure to be given six times out of seven that one holds a séance. But yours was a new one; so I learnt it by heart, and observed you set it down to Browning’s Cleon. As for the Russian character⁠—⁠well, where was an English officer likely to learn it except in the Crimea? That was risky, of course; I might have been mistaken; but one bad shot don’t count against you, while a good one carries conviction straight off to the mind of your subject.”

Florian paused, and considered. Before the end of the evening, indeed, he had learnt a good many things about the trade of prophet; and Mr Joaquin Holmes had taken, incidentally, every drop as much whiskey as was good for his constitution. When at last he rose to go, he clasped Florian’s delicate hand hard. “You’re a straight man, I believe, stranger,” he said, significantly, “and I’m sure you’re a smart one. But mind this from me, Mr Florian Wood, if ever you round on me, Colorado or London, the six-shooter’ll settle it.”

Florian smiled, and pressed his hand. “I don’t care that for your six-shooter,” he answered, calmly, with a resonant snap of his tiny left forefinger. “But I don’t want to spoil a man’s prospects in life, when he’s taken fifteen years to make a consummate rogue of himself. You’re perfect in your way, Mr Holmes, and I adore perfection. If ever I breathe a single word of this to my dearest friend⁠—⁠well, I give you free leave to whip out that six-shooter you’re so fond of bragging about.”

CHAPTER XXV

A DRAMATIC VENTURE

Among the minor successes of that London season, all the world reckoned the Colorado Seer’s Psycho-physical Entertainment at the Assyrian Hall in Bond Street, and Will Deverill’s dainty operetta, “Honeysuckle,” at the Duke of Edinburgh’s Theatre in Long Acre. The Seer, indeed, had been well advertised beforehand by the Morning Post and other London dailies, which gave puffs preliminary of his marvellous performance, “as privately exhibited to a select audience at Mrs Palmer’s charming and hospitable residence in Hans Place, Chelsea.” A well-known society writer, with a lingering love of the occult and the supernatural, saw in Mr Joaquin Holmes’s abstruse gifts “a genuine case of Second Sight, and a curious modern parallel to the most famous feats of the Delphic oracle and the Indian Yogis.” The Spectator suggested in a learned article that “Mahatmas were about”; the Daily News averred that “Nothing like Mr Holmes’s extraordinary powers had been seen on earth since the Egyptian magicians impiously counterfeited the miracles of Moses and Aaron before the throne of Pharaoh.” Every one of the accounts particularly insisted on the presence at the first trial of Mr Florian Wood, the distinguished musical and dramatic critic; whose inmost thoughts the Seer had read offhand like an open book, and whose quotations from little-known and unpopular sources he had instantly assigned to their proper origin. But when Florian himself was questioned on the subject, he shook his head with an air of esoteric knowledge, put two soft white fingers to his delicate lips, and smiled mysteriously. To say the truth, Florian loved a mystery. It flattered his sense of personal importance. Nay, he would almost have joined Mr Joaquin Holmes as a confederate in his little tricks for pure love of mystification, were it not for a wholesome and restraining dread that others might find them out as he himself had done. So the Seer, thus well and cheaply advertised by anticipation, made a hit for the moment, as dozens of such quacks have done before and since, from Home and Bishop to the Little Georgia Magnet.

As for Will Deverill’s play, the first night was crowded. All London was there, in the sense that the Savage, the Garrick, and the Savile give to all London. Rue had taken tickets for stalls with reckless extravagance, and bestowed them right and left, as if on the author’s behalf, to every influential soul among her fine acquaintance. Florian whipped up a fair number of first-nighters of the literary clique, and not a few great ladies from Belgravia drawing-rooms. The audience was distinctly and decidedly favourable. But not all the packed houses that ever were can save a bad play, if bad it is, from condign damnation. The incorruptible pit and the free and independent electors of the gallery are no respecters of persons, in their critical capacity. Fortunately, however, as it happened, Will’s play was a good one. It didn’t take the audience by storm at the first hearing, but it pleased and satisfied them. One or two of the melodies had a catchy ring; one or two of the scenes were both brilliant and pathetic. The house encored all the principal tunes; and when the curtain fell on virtue triumphant, in the person of Honeysuckle, vociferous cries arose on every side for “Author! Author!”

Will sat in a stage box, throughout the whole performance, with Florian, Rue, his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the amiable East End curate. It was a three-act piece. As far as the end of the second act, Maud Sartoris was delighted; it was a distinct success, and Rue was very well pleased. Maud thought that was good; after all, whether she “smelt of drapery” or not, it’s well for one’s brother to produce a favourable impression on a woman with a fortune of seven hundred thousand. But the third act, she felt sure, was distinctly inferior to the two that preceded it. She said as much to Rue, while Will, trembling with excitement from head to foot, slipped off to make his expected bow before the curtain.

At those words of hers, Rue turned pale. She had thought so all through, though she would hardly acknowledge it, even to herself, and she feared in her own heart she knew the reason. Could Will have written the first two acts during those happy days when his head was stuffed full of Linnet at Meran, and gone on with the third in a London lodging after he learned of her marriage to Andreas Hausberger? Rue more than half-suspected that obvious explanation⁠—⁠for Honeysuckle was Linnet⁠—⁠and the thought disquieted her.

“You’re quite right,” Florian interposed, with his airy eloquence. “The first two acts are good⁠—⁠distinctly good. Will wrote them in the Tyrol. The third’s a poor thing⁠—⁠mere fluff and feather: oh, what a falling off was there! It was written in London! But who can sing aright of Arcady in the mud of Mayfair? Who can sing of Zion by the willows of Babylon? Will drew his first inspiration from the sparkling air of Meran; it faded like a mist with the mists of the Channel.”

“The audience doesn’t seem to think so,” Rue put in, somewhat anxiously, as a hearty round of applause greeted Will by the footlights. “They feel it’s all right. They’re evidently satisfied, on the whole, with the nature of the dénoument.”

“If you look at the papers to-morrow morning,” Florian answered, carelessly, “you’ll find every candid critic disagrees with the audience and agrees with Mrs Sartoris. But what matter for that! It’s a very good play, with some very good tunes in it; and the actors have made it. I really didn’t think our dear friend Will could do anything so good⁠—⁠till I saw it interpreted. I call the reception, on the whole, most promising.”

Rue felt positively annoyed that Florian should speak so condescendingly of Will’s beautiful music. He damned it with faint praise, while Rue herself felt for it a genuine enthusiasm. For she knew it was good,⁠—⁠all except that third act,⁠—⁠and even there she saw touches of really fine composition.

In a minute or two more, Will came back to them, radiant. Florian boarded him at once. “Ten thousand congratulations, dear boy,” he cried, affectedly. “We’re all delighted. Laurel wreaths for the victor! Bays drape your lute. Everybody’s been saying the first two acts are a triumphal progress, though the third, we agree, fails to sustain the attention⁠—⁠flags in interest somewhat.”

Will coloured up to his eyes. Rue noted the blush; her heart sank at sight of it. “I knew it was weak myself,” he admitted, a little shamefacedly. “The inspiration died down. Perhaps it was natural. You see, Maud,” he went on, turning round to his sister as to a neutral person, and avoiding Rue’s eye, “I wrote and composed the first two acts at Innsbruck and Meran, under the immediate influence of the Tyrolese air and the Tyrolese music; they welled up in me in the midst of peasant songs and cow-bells. The third act, I had to manufacture at my rooms in Craven Street. Surroundings, of course, make a deal of difference to this sort of thing. I was in the key there, and out of it in London. Pumped-up poetry and pumped-up music are poor substitutes after all for the spontaneous article.”

He didn’t dare to look at Rue as he spoke those words. He was conscious all the while, let him boggle as he might, that she knew the real reason for the failure of the dénoument. And he was conscious, too, though he was a modest man, that Rue would feel hurt at the effect Linnet’s marriage had had upon his music. As for Rue herself, poor girl, her face was crimson. To think she should have done so much, and wronged her modesty so far with Mr Wildon Blades to get Will’s operetta put on the stage that evening; to think she should have risked her own money to ensure its success, and then to find it owed its inspiration wholly and solely to the charms of her peasant rival, Linnet! Rue was more than merely vexed; she was shamed and humiliated. Will’s triumph was turned for her into gall and bitterness. His heart, after all, was still fixed on his cow-girl!

They drove home together in Rue’s luxurious brougham to Hans Place, Chelsea⁠—⁠Mr Sartoris and Florian following close in a hansom. The party were engaged to sup at Rue’s. Florian had invited them, indeed, to a banquet at Romano’s, as more strictly in keeping with the evening’s entertainment; but Maud Sartoris had objected to such a plan as “improper,” and likely to damage dear Arthur’s prospects. So at Rue’s they supped. But, in spite of Will’s success, and his health which they drank in Rue’s finest champagne, with musical honours, the party somehow lacked go and spirit. Will was dimly conscious in his own soul of having unwittingly behaved rather ill to Rue; Rue was dimly conscious of harbouring some deep-seated but indefinite resentment towards Will and Linnet. It was some consolation, at least, to know that the girl was now decently married and done for; sooner or later, for certain, such a man as Will Deverill was sure to get over a mere passing fancy for a handsome up-standing Tyrolese peasant-girl.

After supper, Will Deverill and the Sartorises went home in a party. But Florian lingered late. This was an excellent opportunity. Rue was annoyed with Will, and therefore all the more likely to accept another suitor. He gazed around the room⁠—⁠that little palace of art he had decorated with such care for his soul to dwell in. “Upon my word, Rue,” he murmured at last, after some desultory talk, glancing around him complacently, “I’m proud of this place; I never knew before what a decorator I was. It’s simply charming.” He gazed at her fixedly. “It’s the sweetest home in all London,” he went on in a rapt voice, “and it’s inhabited by the sweetest and brightest creature in the whole of Christendom. I sometimes think, Rue, as I gaze round this house, how happy I should be⁠—⁠if I too lived in it.”

For a moment, Rue stared at him without quite understanding what he meant to convey by this singular intimation. Then all at once it flashed across her. In spite of her distress, a smile stole over her face. She held out her hand frankly. “Good night, Florian,” she said, in a very decided tone. “Let me urge upon you to be content with your chambers in Pimlico. You’re a delightful and always most amusing friend; I hope you’re not going to make your friendship impossible for me. I like you very much, in your own sort of way; but if ever you re-open that subject again, . . . I’m afraid I could give you no further opportunity of admiring your own handicraft in this pretty little house of mine. That’s why I say good-night to you now so plainly. It’s best to be plain⁠—⁠best to understand one another, once for all, and for ever.”

Two minutes later, a dejected creature named Florian Wood found himself walking disconsolate, with his umbrella up, on the sloppy wet flags of ill-lighted Sloane Street. He had sustained a loss of seven hundred thousand pounds on a turn of fortune’s wheel, at an inauspicious moment. And Rue, with her face in her hands by the fire, was saying to herself with many tears and sighs that, Linnet or no Linnet, she never would and never could love anyone in the world except that dear Will Deverill.

CHAPTER XXVI

A WOMAN’S HEART

The papers next morning, with one accord, were almost unanimous in their praise of Honeysuckle. Will’s operetta didn’t set the Thames on fire, to be sure⁠—⁠a first work seldom does⁠—⁠but it secured such an amount of modest success as decided him to change his plans largely for the future. It was certain, now, that he might take himself seriously as a musical purveyor. So he began to drop off to some extent from the hack work of journalism, and devote his energies in earnest to his new task in life as a playwright and composer. Rue had nothing to pay for her guarantee of Honeysuckle; on the contrary, Will received a very solid sum for his royalties on the run through the remainder of that season. He never knew, indeed, how much he had been indebted to the pretty American’s not wholly disinterested act of kindness; for Mr Blades kept his word; and, in spite of what he said, Rue’s timely intervention had decided him not a little in accepting that first piece by an unknown author.

Thus, during the next few years, as things turned out, Will’s position and prospects improved very rapidly. He was regarded as one of our most rising composers; critics spoke of him as the sole representative and restorer of the serious English poetical opera. Monetary troubles no longer oppressed his soul; he had leisure to write⁠—⁠and to write, if he would, the thing that pleased him. His position was secured⁠—⁠so much so, indeed, that judicious mammas gave him frequent invitations to their gayest At Homes and garden parties. But he successfully avoided all snares so set for him. Many people expressed no little surprise that so nice a young man⁠—⁠and a poet to boot⁠—⁠with a position like his, and such excellent Principles, should refrain from marriage. Society expects that every man will do his duty; it intends him to marry as soon as he has means to relieve it becomingly of one among its many superfluous daughters. But, in spite of Society, Will still remained single, and met all the casual feelers of interested acquaintances as to the reasons which induced him so to shirk his duty as a British citizen with a quiet smile of self-contained resolution.

Rue came to London now for each succeeding season. Will was much at her house, and a very real friendship existed between them. Busybodies wondered, indeed, that those two young people, who were so thick together, didn’t stop scandal’s mouth by marrying as they ought to do. The busybodies could see no just cause or impediment why they should not at once be joined together in holy matrimony. The young woman was rich; the young man was a genius. She was “mad for him,” every one said, in every one’s usual exaggerated phraseology; and as for him, though perhaps he wasn’t quite so wildly in love, yet he liked her so well, and was so often in her company, that it would surely be better to avoid whispers at once by marrying her offhand, like the earl in the “Bab Ballads,” “quite reg’lar, at St George’s!” The busybodies were surprised he didn’t see it so himself; it really was almost somebody’s duty, they thought, to suggest the idea to him. But perhaps Mrs Palmer’s money was strictly tied up; in which case, of course⁠—⁠Society broke off short, and shrugged its sapient shoulders.

To some extent, in fact, Will agreed with them himself. He almost fancied he would have proposed to Rue⁠—⁠if he wasn’t so fond of her. As he sat with her one evening by the drawing-room fire at Hans Place, before the lights were turned on, during blind-man’s holiday, he said to her suddenly, after a long, deep pause, “I daresay, Rue, you sometimes wonder why it is I’ve never tried to ask you to marry me.”

Rue gave a little start of half-tremulous surprise. He could see how the colour mounted fast to her cheek by the glow of the firelight. She gave a faint gasp as she answered candidly, with American frankness, “Well, to tell you the truth, Will, I’ve fancied once or twice you were just going to do it.”

Will looked across at her kindly. She was very charming. “I won’t be cruel enough, Rue,” he said, leaning forward to her like a brother, “to ask you what answer you meant to give, if I’d done as you expected. I hope you won’t think me conceited if I say I half believe I know it already. And that’s just why I want to tell you now the reason that has prevented me from ever asking you. If your nature were a little less deep, and a little less womanly than it really is, I might have asked you long ago. But, Rue, you know⁠—⁠I feel sure you know⁠—⁠how deeply I loved that other woman. I love her still, and I won’t pretend to deny it. I’ve waited and wondered whether in time her image might fade out of my heart; but it never has faded. She’s another man’s wife, and probably I shall never see her again; yet I love her as dearly and regret her as much as I did on the day when I first heard she’d thrown herself away for life upon Andreas Hausberger.”

“I’ve felt sure you did,” Rue answered, with downcast eyes. “I’ve felt it, Will⁠—⁠and for that very reason, I’ve wondered all the less you didn’t ask me.”

Will looked across at her again. She was beautiful as she sat there with the glow of the fire on her pensive features. “Dear Rue,” he said, softly, “you and I are no mere children. We know our own minds. We’re grown man and woman. We can venture to talk freely to one another of these things, without the foolish, childish nonsense of false shame or false blushes. In spite of Linnet, I’d have asked you long ago to be my wife⁠—⁠if I hadn’t respected and admired you so deeply. But I feel you’re not a woman who could ever put up with half a man’s heart, or half a man’s confidence; and half my heart is all I could give you. I love Linnet still, and I shall always love her. I never shall cease to feel an undying regret that I didn’t marry her, instead of that fellow Hausberger. Now, there are women not a few I might still have asked to marry me, in spite of that regret; but you’re not one of them. I love you better than I ever have loved anyone else on this earth⁠—⁠anyone else, but Linnet; and, therefore, I don’t ask you to marry a man who could give you a second place only in his affections.”

The tears stood dim in Rue’s swimming eyes. She looked at him steadily, and let them trickle one by one down her cheeks, unheeded. “Dear Will,” she answered him back, with equal frankness, “it was kind of you to speak, and I’m glad you’ve spoken. It’ll make our relations all the easier in future! I guessed how you felt; I guessed it all long ago; but I’m glad, all the same, to have heard from your own lips the actual facts of it. And, Will, you quite rightly interpret my feelings. I’m an American at heart, and, you know, we Americans are very exacting in matters of affection. Some savage strain of monopoly exists in us still. I can’t help it. I acknowledge it. I won’t deny to you”⁠—⁠and she stretched out her hand quite frankly, and let him hold it in his own for a few brief moments⁠—⁠“I won’t deny that I’m very very fond indeed of you. If you could have given me your whole heart, I would have accepted it gratefully. I admired you with a deep admiration from the very first day I ever met you. I loved you from the time we sat together on the Lanser Kopf that afternoon at Innsbruck. I’m not ashamed to tell you so⁠—⁠nay, rather, dear, I’m proud of it; for, Will, you’re a man any woman might be proud to waste her love upon. But much as I love you, much as I admire you, I never could accept you if you feel like that. As an American born, with my monopolist instincts, I must have a whole man to myself all alone⁠—⁠or I won’t have any of him.”

“I knew it,” Will answered, caressing her hand with his fingers, and bending over it chivalrously. “And that’s why I never have ventured to ask you. But I’ve loved you all the same, Rue⁠—⁠as one loves the woman who stands best of all . . . save one . . . in one’s affections.”

Rue withdrew her hand gently. Her tears were falling faster. “Well, now,” she said, with a quiet sigh, “we can be friends in future⁠—⁠all the better, I hope, for this little explanation. I’m rich, of course, Will; and a great many men, circumstanced as you were, would have been glad to marry me for the sake of my money. I liked you all the more, I like you the more to-day, in that that has never counted for one moment with you. If you’d been a mercenary man, you’d have dissembled and pretended; you need never have let me see how much you loved that girl; or, if you had, you might have led me to suppose you had gradually forgotten her. . . . Dear friend”⁠—⁠and she turned to him once more with a sudden burst of uncontrollable feeling⁠—⁠“we are man and woman, as you say, not boy and girl; so why should I be ashamed to open my whole heart to you? You’ve told me the truth, like a man; why shouldn’t I tell you the truth, in return, like a woman? I will. I can’t help it. I have waited and watched and thought often to myself, ‘In time, he must surely, surely get over it. He must cease to love her; he can never really have loved her so much as he imagines; he must turn at last to me, when he forgets all about her.’ So I waited and watched, and, month after month, I thought at last you must surely begin to forget her. But, month after month, I have seen you loved her still; and while you loved her still, . . . Will, Will, dear Will, I didn’t want you to ask me.”

Will seized her hand once more, and kissed it tenderly. “Oh, how good you are!” he cried, in a very melting voice. “Rue, do you know, when you talk like that, you make me love you!”

“But not better than her?” Rue murmured, softly.

Will couldn’t lie to her. “No; not better than her,” he answered slowly, in a very low voice. “If it were otherwise, I’d have asked you this very minute, dear sister.”

Rue rose and faced him. The firelight flickered red on her soft white dress; he could see by its bright glow the tears still trickling slow down those full round cheeks of hers. “After this, Will, I must go,” she said. “Don’t come again to-morrow. Next week, you may call if you like, some afternoon, casually; but for Heaven’s sake, please, don’t refer to this interview. I have only one thing to say, and when I’ve said it, I must run from you. Remember, I’m a woman; my pride is fighting hard against my love to-night⁠—⁠and, if I let love win, I should for ever despise myself. As long as you live, don’t speak to me of this matter again, unless you speak to say, ‘Rue, Rue, I’ve forgotten her.’ If ever that day comes⁠—⁠” and she flushed rosy red⁠—⁠“you have my answer already; you know you can claim me.”

She moved over to the door, with hurried step and beating heart, hardly able to trust herself. With a true sense of delicacy, Will abstained from opening it. He stood on the hearth-rug, irresolute, and just watched her depart; he felt, in the circumstances, that course was the more respectful.

With her fingers on the handle, Rue paused, and looked round again. “I wouldn’t have said so much, even now,” she faltered, “if it weren’t for this⁠—⁠that I feel you’re the one man I’ve ever met in my life to whom the question of my money was as dust in the balance. You speak the truth, and I know I can trust you. If ever you can say to me, ‘I love you better now, Rue, than I ever loved anyone,’ I am yours: then, take me! But till that day comes, if come it ever does, let us only be friends. Never speak to me again, for Heaven’s sake, never speak, as we have spoken this evening.”

She opened the door and passed out, all tremulous. Will waited a moment, and then, with a throbbing heart, went slowly down the stairs. As he did so, something moist fell suddenly on his hand that grasped the bannister. To his immense surprise, he found it was a tear from his own eyelids⁠—⁠for he too was crying. Poet that he was, he felt more than half-inclined, while he stood there, hesitating, to rush after her as she went, and seize her in his strong arms, and cover her with warm kisses that very minute. For a poet is a man even more than the rest of us. But could he tell her with truth he had quite forgotten Linnet? Oh, no, no, no; Linnet’s image on his heart remained graven, even then, quite as deeply as ever. We men are built so.

CHAPTER XXVII

AULD LANG SYNE

A week or two later, one bright spring afternoon, Will was strolling by himself down the sunny side of Bond Street. All the world was there⁠—⁠for the world was in town⁠—⁠and the pavements were crowded. But Will moved through the stream of well-dressed dawdlers, seeing and hearing little. In the midst of all that idle throng, his head was full of melodies; he was working up rhymes to ready-made tunes, undisturbed by the hubbub and din of London. Of a sudden, somebody stopped and stood straight in front of him. “Mr Deverill, I believe!” a tuneful voice said, brusquely. Will’s eyes returned at once from heaven to earth, and saw standing before them⁠—⁠a tall young man, of somewhat defiant aspect, dressed in the black frock coat and shiny silk hat of Metropolitan respectability.

Will paused, and surveyed him. He was a good-looking young man, with much swagger in his air, and a black moustache on his upper lip; but his face seemed somehow strangely familiar to Will, while his voice stirred at once some latent chord in the dim depths of his memory. But he wasn’t one of Will’s fine London acquaintances⁠—⁠the poet saw that much at once by the cheap pretentiousness of his coat and hat, the flaring blue of his made-up silk tie, the obtrusive glitter of the false diamond pin which adorned its centre. The stranger’s get-up, indeed, was redolent of the music halls. Yet he was handsome for all that, with a certain strange air of native distinction, not wholly concealed by the vulgar tone of his costume and his solicitous jewellery. Will held out his hand with that dubitative air which we all of us display in the first moment of uncertainty towards half-recognised acquaintances.

“I see you have forgotten me, zen,” the stranger said, in very decent English, drawing himself up with great dignity, and twirling his black moustache airily between one thumb and forefinger. “It is long, to be sure, since we met in ze Tyrol. And I have changed much since zen, no doubt: I have mixed with ze world; I have grown what you call in English cosmopolitan. But I see it comes back; I see you remember me now; my voice recalls it to you.”

Will grasped his hand more cordially. “Yes, perfectly, when you speak,” he said; “though you are very much changed indeed, as you say; but I see you’re Franz Lindner.”

“Yes; I’m Mr Franz Lindner,” the stranger replied, half-imperceptibly correcting him⁠—⁠for it was indeed the Robbler. Will scanned him from head to foot, and took him in at a glance. He was a fiery young man still, and his mien, as of old, was part fierce, part saucy. But, oh, what a difference the change of dress had made in him! No conical hat, no blackcock’s feather now, whether “turned” or otherwise. In his Tyrolese costume, with his rifle in his hand, and his cartridges at his side, Franz Lindner had looked and moved of yore a typical Alpine jäger. But, in black frock-coat and shiny tall hat, strolling like a civilised snob that he was down the flags of Bond Street, all the romance and poetry had faded utterly out of him. The glamour was gone. He looked and moved for all the world to-day like any other young man of the baser mock-swell sort, dressed up in his Sunday best to lounge and ogle and bandy vulgar chaff in Burlington Arcade with his predestined companions.

“Why, what has brought you to London, then?” Will asked, much astonished.

“Art, art,” the transfigured Robbler responded, offhand, with inimitable swagger. “You must surely zen know my stage name, zough you don’t seem to have heard me.” He pulled out a printed card, and handed it to Will with a flourish. “I am ze Signor Francesco,” he continued, “all ze world is talking about.” And he threw back his chin and cocked his head on one side, looking, even as he spoke, more pretentious than ever.

“Oh, indeed!” Will answered with a bewildered little laugh. But it was the non-committing “Oh, indeed!” of mere polite acquiescence.

Franz Lindner caught the tinge of implied non-recognition in the Englishman’s voice, and hastened to add, as if parenthetically, “I perform at ze Pavilion.”

“What, the London Pavilion at the top of the Hay market?” Will exclaimed, beginning to realise.

Franz Lindner looked hurt. “I’ve seen your name often enough,” he said, asserting himself still more vigorously as Will seemed to know less of him; “and I sought, as you were a pillar of ze profession yourself, you would certainly have seen mine, if it were only on ze posters. I’m advertised largely. All London rings wis me. Ze County Council has even taken notice of me. I’m a public character! And I have had ze intention more zan once of looking you up, as also Mr Florian. But zere, here in London our time is so occupied! You and I, who are public men, wis professional engagements⁠—⁠we are ever overtaxed; we know not how to find ze leisure or ze space for ze claims of friendship.”

“Have you been long in London?” Will asked, turning down with him towards Piccadilly.

“More zan two years now,” the Robbler answered briskly, lounging on at his own pace, with a cane in his gloved hand, and staring hard, as he passed, at every pretty girl he saw on foot or in the carriages. “After I leave you at Meran, I worked my way slowly⁠—⁠singing, singing, ever singing⁠—⁠by degrees to Paris. But Paris didn’t suit me; zere is too much blague zere; zey go in for buffoons; zey laugh at a man of modest merit. I hate blague myself. So zen I came on pretty soon to London. At first I had to sing in common low music halls⁠—⁠sous side and zat; but talent, talent is sure to make its way in ze end. I rose very quick, and now⁠—⁠I am at ze head of my branch of ze profession.”

“You sing, of course?” Will interposed, restraining a smile at the Robbler’s delicious self-satisfaction. The man himself was the very same as ever, to be sure; but ’twas strange what a difference mere externals had made in him!

“Yes; I sing, and sometimes, too, I play ze zither. But mostly, I sing. It surprises me, indeed, you should not have heard of my singing.”

“And what’s the particular branch of which you’re the acknowledged head?” Will asked, still amused at the Tyroler’s complacency.

Franz Lindner held his head very high in the air, and gave a twirl to his cane, as he answered, with much importance, “My line is ze Mammoss Continental Comique; ze serio-comic foreigner; zey call me Frenchy. I sing ze well-known songs in broken English zat are in everybody’s mous⁠—⁠‘Mossoo Robert is my name,’ or ‘Lay-ces-terre Squarre,’ or ‘Ze leetle black dawg,’ or ‘Zat lohvely Matilda.’ I wonder you have not heard of me. ‘Mossoo Robert’ is all ze talk of London. Frank Wilkins writes songs especially for my voice. If you look in ze music shops, you will see on ze covers, ‘Written expressly for Signor Francesco.’ Signor Francesco⁠—⁠zat’s me!” And he tapped his breast, and swelled himself visibly.

“I remember to have seen the name, I think,” Will answered, with a slight internal shudder, well pleased, none the less, to give some tardy salve to his companion’s wounded vanity. “I’m glad you’ve got on, and delighted to find you have such kindly recollections of me.”

Franz Lindner laughed. “Oh, zat!” he said, snapping his fingers in the air very jauntily. “I was a hot young man zen; I knew little of ze world. You mustn’t sink much of what a young man did in ze days before he knew how Society is managed. I owe you no grudge. We were bose of us younger. Besides, our friend Hausberger has wiped out our old scores. I have transferred to him, entire, all my feelings in ze matter.”

“That’s well,” Will replied, anxious indeed to learn whether the Tyroler had heard anything fresh of late years about Linnet. “And Hausberger himself? What of him . . . and his wife? Have you ever knocked up against them?”

The Robbler’s brow gathered; his hand clenched his cane hard. It was clear civilisation and cosmopolitanism, however neatly veneered, hadn’t made much serious change in his underlying nature. “Zat rascal!” he exclaimed, bringing his stick down on the pavement with a noisy little thud; “zat rogue; zat liar! If ever I had come across him, it would be bad for his head. Sousand devils, what a man! . . . Here, we’re close to ze Cri; will you come and have a drink? We can talk zis over afterward. I like to offer somesing to a friend new discovered.”

“It’s not much in my line,” Will answered, smiling; “but still, for old times’ sake, I’ll go in and have a glass with you.” To say the truth, he was so eager to find out what Franz might have to communicate that he stretched a point for once, and broke through his otherwise invariable rule never to drink anything anywhere except at meal times.

Franz stalked along Piccadilly, and strode airily into the Criterion like one who knew his way well about the London restaurants. “What’ll you take?” he asked of Will in an assured tone, which showed the question in English was a very familiar one to him.

“Whatever you take yourself,” Will answered, much amused, for the Tyroler was far more at home than himself in a London bar, and far more at his ease with the London barmaid.

“Two half porters and two small Scotch, miss,” the Robbler cried briskly to the tousely-haired young woman who attended to his call. “You’ll find it a very good mixture for zis time of day, Mr Deverill. I always take it myself. It softens ze organ.”

The young woman fulfilled the order with unwonted alacrity⁠—⁠Franz was a favourite at the bar, and gave his commands leaning across it with the arch smile of an habitué⁠—⁠and Will then discovered that the mixture in question consisted of a glass of Dublin stout, well fortified with a thimbleful of Highland whisky. He also observed, what he had not at first sight noticed, that Franz Lindner’s face, somewhat redder than of old, bore evidence, perhaps, of too frequent efforts for the softening of the organ. Franz nodded to the barmaid.

“Here’s our meeting!” he said to Will. “Shall we step a little aside here? We can talk wisout overhearing.”

They drew aside to a round table for their unfinished gossip. “You’re not in town often, I suppose,” the Tyroler began, scanning his companion from head to foot with a critical scrutiny.

“Why, I live here,” Will answered, taken aback⁠—⁠“in Craven Street, Strand; I’ve always lived here.”

“Oh, indeed,” the Robbler responded, with a somewhat superior air; “I sought from your costume you’d just come up from ze country.”

Will smiled good-humouredly. He was wearing, in point of fact, a soft slouch hat and a dusty brown suit of somewhat poetical cut, which contrasted in more ways than one with the music-hall singer’s too elaborate parody of the glossy silk chimney-pot and regulation frock-coat of the orthodox Belgravian.

Then Franz came back at a bound to the subject he had quitted on the flags of Piccadilly. He explained, with much circumlocution and many needless expletives, how he had heard from time to time, through common friends at St Valentin, that Andreas Hausberger and his wife had fluctuated of late years between summer at Munich, Leipzig, Stuttgart, and winter at Milan, Florence, Naples, Venice. Linnet got on with him very well⁠—⁠oh, very well indeed⁠—⁠yes; Linnet, you know, was just the sort of girl to get on very well with pretty nearly anyone. No doubt by this time she’d settled down into tolerably amicable relations with Andreas Hausberger! Any children? Oh dear, no; Hausberger’d take care of that; a public singer’s time is far too valuable to be wasted on the troubles of a growing young family. Had she come out yet? Well, yes; that is to say, from time to time she’d sung at concerts in Munich, Florence, and elsewhere. Successfully? Of course; she’d a very good voice, as voices go, for her sort, and training was sure to do something at least for it. Franz had heard rumours she was engaged next season for San Carlo at Naples; you might count upon Hausberger’s doing his very best, now he’d invested his savings in preparing her for the stage, to make money out of his bargain.

Through all Franz said, however, there ran still, as of yore, one constant thread of undying hatred to the man who had outwitted him at Meran and St Valentin. “Then you haven’t forgiven him yet?” Will inquired at last, after one such spiteful allusion to Andreas’s meanness.

The Robbler’s hand moved instinctively of itself to his left breast pocket. He had changed his coat, but not his customs. “I carry it here still,” he answered, with the same old defiant air, just defining with finger and thumb the vague outline of the knife that bulged between them through the glossy broadcloth. “It’s always ready for him. Ze day I meet him⁠—⁠” and he stopped short suddenly, with a face like a bulldog’s.

“You Tyrolers have long memories,” Will answered, with a little shudder. “It’s very unfashionable you know, to stab a rival in London.”

Franz showed his handsome teeth. “Unfashionable or not,” he replied, with a shrug, “it is so I was born; it is so I live ever. As we say in ze song, I am made zat way. I cannot help it. I never forget an injury. . . . Zough, mind you,” he continued, after a telling little pause, during which he drove many times an imaginary knife into an invisible enemy, “it isn’t so much now zat I grudge him Linnet. Let him keep his fine Frau. Zere are better girls in ze world, you and I have found out, zan Lina Telser⁠—⁠to-day Frau Hausberger. We were younger zen; we are men of ze world now; we know higher sings, I sink, zan a Zillerthal sennerin. What I feel wis him at present is not so much zat he took away ze girl, as zat he played me so mean a trick to take her.”

Will smiled to himself in silence. How strangely human feelings and ideas differ! He himself had never forgotten the beautiful alp-girl with the divine voice; in the midst of London drawing-rooms he never ceased to miss her; while Franz Lindner thought he had left Linnet far, far behind, since he became acquainted with those higher and nobler types, the music-hall stars of the London Pavilion! “There’s no accounting for tastes,” people say; oh, most inept of proverbs! surely it’s easy for anyone to account for the reasons which made Linnet appear so different now in Franz Lindner’s eyes and in her English poet’s.

But before Franz and Will parted at the Circus that afternoon, they had made mutual promises, for old acquaintance’s sake⁠—⁠Franz, that he would graciously accept a stall, on an off-night, at the Duke of Edinburgh’s, to see Will’s new piece, The Duchess of Modena; and Will, that he would betake himself to the London Pavilion one of these next few evenings, to hear Signor Francesco, alias the Frenchy, in his celebrated and universally encored impersonation of Mossoo Robert in Regent Street.

CHAPTER XXVIII

SIGNORA CASALMONTE

Three years and more had passed since Will’s visit to the Tyrol. Events had moved fast for his fortunes meanwhile. He was a well-known man now in theatrical circles. Florian Wood went about, indeed, boasting in clubs and drawing-rooms that ’twas he who had discovered and brought out Will Deverill. “It’s all very well to be a poet,” he said, “and it’s all very well to be born with a head full of rhymes and tunes, of crochets, clefs, and quavers; but what’s the use of all that, I ask you my dear fellow, without a critic to push you? A Critic is a man with a fine eye for potentialities. Before the world sees, he sees; before the world hears, he listens. He sits by the world’s wayside, as it were, with open eye or ear, and catches unawares the first faint lisping notes of undeveloped genius. He divines in the bud the exquisite aroma and perfect hue of the full-blown blossom. Long ago, I said to Deverill, ‘You have the power within you to write a good opera!’ He laughed me to scorn; but I said to him, ‘Try!’⁠—⁠and the outcome was, Honeysuckle. He took up a battered fiddle one day at an old inn in the Zillerthal, when we two were rusticating on the emerald bosom of those charming unsophisticated Tyrolese valleys; he struck a few notes on it of his own composing; and I said to him, ‘My dear Will, Sullivan trembles on his pedestal.’ At the time he treated it as a mere passing joke; but I made him persevere; and what was the result?⁠—⁠why, those exquisite airs which found their way before long to the sheep-runs of Australia, and resounded from lumberers’ camps in the backwoods of Canada! The Critic, I say, is the true prophet and sage of our modern world; he sees what is to be, and he helps to produce it.”

But whether Florian was right in attributing Will’s success to himself or not, it is certain, at least, that Will was rapidly successful. The world recognised in him a certain genuine poetical vein which has seldom been vouchsafed to the English librettist; it recognised in him, also, a certain depth and intensity of musical sense which has seldom been vouchsafed to the English dramatic composer.

One afternoon that spring, Will returned to town from a visit to the Provinces in connection with his new opera, The Lady of Llandudno, then about to be performed in several country theatres by Mr D’Arcy Clift’s operatic company. He drove almost straight from the station to Rue’s. Florian was there in great form; and Mr Joaquin Holmes, the Colorado Seer, had dropped in for afternoon tea at his fair disciple’s. In spite of Will’s ridicule, Rue continued to believe in Mr Holmes’ thought-reading and other manifestions. For the Seer had added by this time a touch of spiritualism to the general attractions of his flagging entertainments at the Assyrian Hall; and it is a mysterious dispensation of Providence that wealthy Americans, especially widows, fall a natural prey to all forms of transcendentalism or spiritualistic quackery. It seems to be one of the strange devices which Providence adopts for putting excessive or monopolised wealth into circulation.

“Mr Holmes wants me to go to the Harmony to-night,” Rue said, with a smile⁠—⁠“you know what it is⁠—⁠the new Harmony Theatre. He says there’s a piece coming out there this evening I ought to see⁠—⁠a pretty new piece by an American composer. You’re going to be crushed, Will. They’ve got a fresh tenor there, a very good man, whom Mr Holmes thinks a deal of. I’ve half a mind to go; will you join our party?”

“You ought to hear it,” the Seer remarked, with his oracular air, turning to Will, and looking critical. “This new tenor’s a person you should keep your eye upon; I heard him rehearse, and I said to myself at once, ‘That fellow’s the very man Mr Deverill will want to write a first part for; if he doesn’t, I’ll retire at once from the prophetic business.’ He has a magnificent voice; you should get Blades to secure him next season for the Duke of Edinburgh’s. He’s worth fifty pounds a night, if he’s worth a penny.”

“Very good trade, a tenor’s,” Florian mused philosophically. “I often regret I wasn’t brought up to it.”

“What’s his name?” Will asked with languid interest, for he had no great faith in the Seer’s musical ear and critical acumen.

“His name? Heaven knows,” the Seer answered, with a short laugh; “but he calls himself Papadopoli⁠—⁠Signor Romeo Papadopoli.”

“There’s a deal in a name, in spite of that vastly overrated man, Shakespeare,” Florian murmured, musingly. “It’s my belief, if the late lamented Lord Beaconsfield had only been christened Benjamin Jacobs, or even Benjamin Israels, he never would have lived to be Prime Minister of England. But as Benjamin Disraeli⁠—⁠ah, what poetry, what mystery, what Oriental depth, what Venetian suggestiveness! And Romeo’s good, too; Signor Romeo Papadopoli! Why, ’twas of Romeo himself the Bard first asked, ‘What’s in a name? the rose,’ etcætera. And in the fulness of time, this singer man crops up with that very name to confute him. ‘Ah, Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?’ Why, because it looks so extremely romantic in a line of the playbill, and helps to attract the British public to your theatre! Papadopoli, indeed! and his real name’s Jenkins. I don’t doubt it’s Jenkins. There’s a Palazzo Papadopoli on the Grand Canal. But this fellow was born, you may take your oath, at Haggerston or Stepney!”

“Well, your own name has floated you in life, at any rate,” Rue put in, a little mischievously.

Florian gazed at her hard⁠—⁠and changed the subject abruptly. “And there’s a woman in the troupe who sings well, too, I’m told,” he interposed, with airy grace⁠—⁠the airy grace of five feet⁠—⁠turning to Joaquin Holmes. “I haven’t heard her myself; I’ve been away from town⁠—⁠you know how engaged I am⁠—⁠visits, visits in the country⁠—⁠Lady Barnes; Lady Ingleborough. But they say she sings well; really, Will, you ought to come with us.”

“Yes; she’s not bad in her way,” the Seer admitted, with a stifled yawn, stroking his long moustache, and assuming the air of a connoisseur in female voices. “She’s got a fine rich organ, a little untrained, perhaps, but not bad for a débutante. A piquante little Italian; Signora Carlotta Casalmonte she calls herself. But Papadopoli’s the man; you should come, Mr Deverill; my friend Mr Florian has secured us a box; I dine at Mrs Palmer’s, and we all go together to the Harmony afterwards.”

“I should like to go,” Will replied with truth; for he hated to leave Rue undefended in that impostor’s clutches; “but, unfortunately, I’ve invited my sister and her husband to dine with me to-night at my rooms in Craven Street.”

“Well, wire to them at once to come on and dine here instead,” Rue suggested, with American expansiveness; “and then we can all go in a party together⁠—⁠the more the merrier.”

Will thought not badly of this idea; it was a capital compromise: the more so as he had asked nobody else to meet the Sartorises, and a family tête-à-tête with Maud and Arthur wasn’t greatly to his liking. “I’ll do it,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “if they’re at home and will answer me.”

Rue sent out a servant to the nearest office with the telegram at once; and, in due time, an answer arrived by return that Arthur and Maud would be happy to accept Mrs Palmer’s very kind invitation for this evening. It was most properly worded; Maud was nothing if not proper. Her husband had now been appointed incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone; and her dignity had received an immense accession. Indeed, she debated for ten minutes with dear Arthur whether it was really quite right for them to go at all on such hasty notice; and she was annoyed that Will, after inviting her himself, should have ventured to put her off with a vicarious dinner-party. But she went all the same, partly because she thought it would be such a good thing for Will, “and for our own dear boys, Arthur, if Will were to marry that rich bourgeoise American,” and partly because she remembered it would give her such an excellent opportunity of displaying her pretty new turquoise-blue dinner-dress among the best company, in a box at the Harmony. Besides, a first night is a thing never to be despised by the wise man or woman; it looks so well to see next day in the Society papers, “Mrs Palmer’s box contained, amongst others, Mr Florian Wood, Mr W. Deverill, his sister, Mrs Sartoris, and her husband, the incumbent of St Barnabas’s, Marylebone.”

So, at half-past seven, Maud Sartoris sailed in, torquoise-blue and all, and, holding out her hand with a forgiving smile, murmured gushingly to her hostess, “We thought it so friendly of you, dear Mrs Palmer, to invite us like that at a moment’s notice, as soon as you knew we were engaged to Will, and that Will couldn’t possibly go unless he took us with him! We want to see this new piece at the Harmony so much; a first night to us quiet clerical folks, you know, is always such a treat. We’re immensely obliged to you.”

Dinner went off well, as it usually did where Florian was of the party. To give Florian his due, he bubbled and sparkled, like the Apollinaris spring, with unfailing effervescence. That evening, too, he was in specially fine form; it amused him to hear Mr Joaquin Holmes discourse with an air of profound conviction on his own prophetic art, and then watch him glancing across the table under his long dark eyelashes to see between whiles how Florian took it. The follies and foibles of mankind were nuts to Florian. It gave the epicurean philosopher a calm sense of pleasure in his own superiority to see Rue and Arthur Sartoris drinking in open-mouthed the mysterious hints and self-glorificatory nonsense of the man whom he knew by his own confession to be a cheat and a humbug. Their eyes seldom met; Joaquin Holmes avoided such disconcerting experiences; but whenever they did, Florian’s were brimful of suppressed amusement, while the Seer’s had a furtive hang-dog air as of one who at once would deprecate exposure and beseech indulgence.

After dinner, the Seer kept them laughing so long at his admirable stories of the Far West of his childhood (which Arthur Sartoris received with the conventional “Ah really, now, Mr Holmes!” of forced clerical disapprobation) that they were barely in time for the beginning of the opera. As they entered, the tenor held possession of the stage. Will didn’t think so much of him; Florian, his head on one side in a critical attitude, observed oracularly, at the end of his first song, that the Papadopoli was perhaps not wholly without capabilities. That’s the sort of criticism that Florian loved best; it enables a man to hedge in accordance with the event. If the fellow turns out well in the near future, you can say you declared from the very first he had capabilities; if the public doesn’t catch on, you can remark with justice that he hasn’t developed what little promise he once showed, and that from the beginning you never felt inclined to say much for him.

Presently, from the rear of the stage, down the mimic rocks that formed the background of the scenery, a beautiful woman, entering almost unobserved, sprang lightly from boulder to boulder of the torrent bed, with the true elastic step of a mountain-bred maiden. She had a fine ripe figure, very lithe and vigorous-looking; her features were full, but extremely regular; her mouth, though large and somewhat rich in the lips, was yet rosy and attractive. Eyes full of fire, and a rounded throat, with a waxy softness of outline that recalled a nightingale’s, gave point to her beauty. She was exquisitely dressed in a pale cream bodice, with what passes on the stage for a peasant kirtle, and round her rich brown neck she wore a drooping circlet of half-barbaric-looking lance-like red coral pendants. Before she opened her mouth, her mere form and grace of movement took the house by surprise. A little storm of applause burst spontaneous at once from stalls, boxes, and gallery. The singer paused, and curtsied. She looked lovelier still as she flushed up with excitement. Every eye in the house was instinctively fixed upon her.

Will had been gazing round the boxes as the actress entered, to see what friends of his they might contain, and to nod recognition. The burst of applause recalled him suddenly to what was passing on the stage. He looked round and stared at her. For a moment he saw only a very beautiful girl, in the prime of her days, gracefully clad for her part, and most supple in her movements. At the self-same instant, before he had time to note more, the singer opened her mouth, and began to pour forth on his ear lavish floods of liquid music. Will started with surprise; in a flash of recognition, voice and face came back to him. He seized Florian by the arm. “Great God!” he cried, “it’s Linnet!”

Florian struck a little attitude. “Oh, unexpected felicity! Oh, great gain!” he murmured, in his supremest manner. “You’re right! So it is! A most undoubted Linnet!”

And Linnet it was; dressed in the impossible peasant costume of theatrical fancy; grown fuller and more beautiful about the neck and throat; with her delicate voice highly trained and developed by all that Italian or Bavarian masters could suggest to improve it; but Linnet still for all that⁠—⁠the same beautiful, simple, sweet Linnet as ever.

Joaquin Holmes glanced at the programme. “And this,” he murmured low, “is Signora Carlotta Casalmonte that I spoke about.”

Florian’s eyes opened wide. “Why, of course!” he exclaimed with a start. “I wonder we didn’t see it. It’s a mere translation: Casalmonte⁠—⁠Hausberger: Carlotta⁠—⁠Carolina⁠—⁠Lina⁠—⁠Linnet; there you have it!” And he turned, self-applausive of his own cleverness, to Rue, who sat beside him.

As for Rue, her first feeling was a sudden flush of pain; so this girl had come back to keep Will still apart from her! One moment later that feeling gave place with lightning speed to another; would he care for this peasant woman so much, and regret her so deeply, if he saw her here in England, another man’s wife, and an actress on the stage, dressed up in all the vulgar tinsel gew-gaws, surrounded by all the sordid disenchanting realities of theatrical existence?