’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