How she got through that song, how she got through that scene, Linnet never knew. She was conscious of but two things?—?Will Deverill’s presence and the Blessed Madonna. Remorse and shame almost choked her utterance. But mechanically she went on, and sang her part out to the end?—?sang it exquisitely, superbly. Have you ever noticed that what we do most automatically, we often do best? It was so that night at the Harmony with Linnet. She knew her music well; she had studied it carefully; and the very absence of self-consciousness which this recognition gave her, made her sing it more artlessly, yet more perfectly than ever. She forgot the actress and the singer in the woman. That suited her best of all. Her mental existence was divided, as it were, into two distinct halves; one conscious and personal, absorbed with Will Deverill and Our Dear Lady in Britannia metal; the other unconscious and automatic, pouring forth with a full throat the notes and words it was wound up to utter. And the automatic self did its work to perfection. The audience hung entranced; Andreas Hausberger, watching them narrowly from a box at the side, hugged his sordid soul in rapture at the thought that Linnet had captured them on this her first night in that golden England.

She sang on and on. The audience sat enthralled. Gradually, by slow stages, the sense of hearing came back to her. But she had done as well, or even better without it. The act went off splendidly. Andreas Hausberger was in transports. At the first interval between the scenes, Rue debated in her own soul what to do about Linnet; but, being a wise woman in her way, she determined to wait till the end of the piece before deciding on action. Act the Second, Act the Third, Act the Fourth followed fast; in Act the Fifth when Linnet, no longer a peasant girl, but the bride of the Grand Duke, came on in her beautiful pale primrose brocade, cut square in the bodice like a picture of Titian’s, the audience cheered again with a vociferous outburst. Linnet blushed and bowed; a glow of conscious triumph suffused her face; then she raised her eyes timidly to the box on the first tier. Her victory was complete. She could see by his face Will Deverill was satisfied?—?and the grand lady with the diamonds was sincerely applauding her.

Was the grand lady his wife? Why not? Why not? What could it matter to her now? She was Andreas Hausberger’s. And Will?—?why, Will was but an old Zillerthal acquaintance.

Yet she clutched Our Blessed Frau tighter than ever in her grasp, at that painful thought, and somehow hoped illogically Our Blessed Frau would protect her from the chance of the grand lady being really married to Will Deverill. Not even the gods, says Aristotle, in his philosophic calm, can make the past not have been as it was. But Linnet thought otherwise.

The curtain fell to a storm of clapping hands. After that a moment’s lull; then loud cries of “Casalmonte!” The whole theatre rang with them. The Papadopoli, revived by magic from his open-air deathbed on the blood-stained grass, came forward before the curtain, alive and well, his wounds all healed, leading Linnet on his right, and bowing their joint acknowledgments. At sight of the soprano, even the cynical critics yielded spontaneous homage. It was a great success; a very great success. Linnet panted, and bowed low. Surely she had much to be grateful for that night; surely the Blessed Madonna in heaven above had stood by her well through that trying ordeal!

But in Rue Palmer’s box, after all was over, Florian’s voice rose loud in praise of this new star in our musical firmament. “When first she swam into my ken,” he said, “on her Tyrolese hillside?—?you remember it, Deverill?—?I said to myself, ‘Behold a singer indeed! Some day, we may be sure, we shall welcome her in London.’ And now, could any mortal mixture of earth’s mould breathe purer music or more innate poesy?”

For it was Florian’s cue, as things stood, to make much of Linnet, for many reasons. In the first place, it would reflect credit and glory on his insight as a critic that he should have spotted this flaming comet of a season while as yet it loomed no larger than the eleventh magnitude. Indeed, he had gone down among the other critics between the acts, and buttonholed each of them in the lobby, separately. “A discovery of my own, I can assure you. I found her out as a peasant-girl in a Tyrolese valley, and advised her friends to have her trained and educated.” Then, again, his praise of Linnet no doubt piqued Rue; and Florian, in spite of rebuffs, had still one eye vaguely fixed in reserve on Rue’s seven hundred thousand. Faint heart, he well knew, never won fair lady. Besides, Florian felt it was a good thing Will’s cow-girl should have come back to him in London thus transformed and transfigured; for he recognised in Will his one dangerous rival for Rue’s affections, and he was bent as of old on getting rid of Will by diverting him, if possible, upon poor helpless Linnet. The mere fact of her being married mattered little to a philosopher. So he murmured more than once, as Linnet bowed deeper and deeper, “What a beautiful creature she is, to be sure! You remember, Will, what I said of her when we met her first in the Zillerthal?”

Even poets are human. There was a malicious little twinkle in the corner of Will’s eye as he answered briskly, “Oh yes; I remember it word for word, my dear fellow. You said, you thought with time and training, she ought to serve Andreas Hausberger’s purpose well enough for popular entertainments. Her voice, though undeveloped, was not wholly without some natural compass.”

Will had treasured up those words. Florian winced at them a little?—?they were not quite as enthusiastic as he could have wished just now; but he recovered himself dexterously. “And I told Hausberger,” he went on, “it was a sin and a shame to waste a throat like that on a Tyrolese troupe; and, happily, he took my advice at once, and had her prepared for the stage by the very best teachers in Italy and Germany. I’m proud of her success. It’s insight, after all?—?insight, insight alone, that makes and marks the Heaven-born Critic.”

Rue was writing meanwhile a hurried little note in pencil on the back of a programme. She had debated with herself during the course of the piece whether or not to send down and ask Linnet to visit them. Her true woman’s nature took naturally at last the most generous course?—?which was also the safest one. She folded the piece of paper into a three-cornered twist, and handed it with one of her sunny smiles to the Seer. It was addressed “Herr Hausberger.” “Will you take that down for me, Mr Holmes?” she asked, with a little tremor, “and tell one of the waiting-girls to give it at once to Madame Casalmonte’s husband.”

The Seer accepted the commission with delighted alacrity. In a moment he had spied game; his quick eye, intuitive as a woman’s, had read at a glance conflicting emotions on Rue’s face, and Will’s and Florian’s. Whatever else it might mean, it meant grist for the mill; he would make his market of it. A suspicion of intrigue is the thought-reader’s opportunity.

Linnet was standing at the wings in a flutter of excitement, all tremulous from her triumph, and wondering whether or not Will would come down to ask for her, when Andreas Hausberger bustled up, much interested, evidently, with some pleasurable emotion. He had seen his wife between the acts already, and assured her of his satisfaction at so fortunate an event for the family exchequer. But now he came forward, brimming over with fresh pleasure, and waving a note in his hand, as he said to her briskly in German, “Don’t wait to change, Linnet. This is really most lucky. Mrs Palmer?—?the lady we met at Innsbruck, you know?—?wants to see you in her box. She’s immensely rich, I’m told; and Florian Wood’s up there with her. The manager assures me he’s one of the most influential critics in London. Come along, just as you are, and mind you speak nicely to her.”

The lights were left burning long in the passages, as is often the case on first nights in London. Andreas led the way; Linnet followed him like one blindfolded. Oh, Blessed Madonna, how strangely you order things on this earth of yours sometimes! It was her husband himself, then, of all men in the world, who was taking her to the box where Will Deverill was waiting for her!

As for Andreas Hausberger, he stalked on before, elated, hardly thinking of Will?—?as indeed he had no cause to do. The rich woman of the world and the influential critic monopolised his attention. Tyrolese though he was, he was by no means jealous; greed of gain had swallowed up in him all the available passions of that phlegmatic nature. Linnet was his chattel now; he had married her and trained her; her earnings were his own, doubly mortgaged to him for life, and no poet on earth, be he ever so seductive, could charm them away from him.

He opened the box door with stately dignity. At St Valentin or in London, he was a person of importance. Linnet entered, quivering. She still wore her primrose brocade, as all through the last act, and she looked in it, even yet, a very great lady. Not Rue herself looked so great or so grand?—?charming, smiling Rue?—?as she rose to greet her. They stood and faced each other. One second Rue paused; then a womanly instinct all at once overcame her. Leaning forward with the impulse, she kissed the beautiful, stately creature on both cheeks with effusion, in unfeigned enthusiasm.

“Why, Linnet,” she said, simply, as if she had always known her; “we’re so glad to see you?—?to be the very first to congratulate you on your success this evening!”

A flood of genuine passion rushed hot into Linnet’s face. Her warm southern nature responded at once to the pressure of Rue’s hand. She seized her new friend by either arm, and returned her double kiss in a transport of gratitude. “Dear lady,” she said, with fervour, in her still imperfect English, “how sweet that you receive me so! How kind and good you English are to me!”

Andreas Hausberger’s white shirt-front swelled with expansive joy. This all meant money. They were really making wonderful strides in England.

Will held his hand out timidly. “Have you forgotten me, Frau Hausberger?” he asked her in German.

Linnet’s face flushed a still deeper crimson than before, as she answered frankly, “Forgotten you, Herr Will. Ach, lieber Gott, no! How kind of you ... to come and hear my first performance!”

“Nor me either, Linnet, I hope,” Florian interposed more familiarly, in his native tongue; for he had caught at the meaning of that brief Teutonic interlude. “I shall always feel proud, Herr Andreas, to think it was I who first discovered this charming song-bird’s voice among its native mountains.”

But Will found no such words. He only gazed at his recovered peasant-love with profound admiration. Fine feathers make fine birds, and it was wonderful how much more of a personage Linnet looked as she stood there to-night in her primrose brocade, than she had looked nearly four years since in her bodice and kirtle on the slopes of the Zillerthal. She was beautiful then, but she was queenly now?—?and it was not dress alone, either, that made all the difference. Since leaving the Tyrol, Linnet had blossomed out fast into dignified womanhood. All that she had learnt and seen meanwhile had impressed itself vividly on her face and features. So they sat for awhile in blissful converse, and talked of what had happened to each in the interval. Rue sent Florian down with a message to ask their friend the manager not to turn his gas off while the party remained there. The manager, bland and smiling, and delighted at his prima donna’s excellent reception, joined the group in the box, and insisted that they should all accompany him to supper. To this, the Sartorises demurred, on the whispered ground of dear Arthur’s position. Dear Arthur himself, indeed, resisted but feebly; it was Maud who was firm; but Maud was firm as a rock about it. Let dear Arthur go to supper with a theatrical manager, to meet a bedizened young woman from a playhouse like that?—?and him a beneficed clergyman with an eye to a canonry! Maud simply put her foot down.

So the Sartorises went home in a discreet four-wheeler; but the rest lingered on, and gossipped of old times in the Tyrol together, and heard each others’ tales with the deepest interest.

“And your mother?” Will asked at last; he was the first who had thought of her.

Linnet’s face fell fast. She clasped her dark hands tight. “Ah, that dear mother,” she said, with a deep-drawn sigh, and a mute prayer to Our Lady. “She died last winter, when I was away from home?—?away down in Venice. I couldn’t get back to her. ’Twas the Herr Vicar’s fault. He never wrote she was ill till the dear God had taken her. It was too late then. I couldn’t even go home to say a pater noster over her.”

“So now you’re alone in the world,” Will murmured, gazing hard at her.

“Yes; now I’m alone in the world,” Linnet echoed, sadly.

“But you have your husband, of course,” Florian put in, with a wicked smile, and a side glance at Andreas, who for his part was engaged in paying court most assiduously to the rich young widow.

Linnet looked up with parted lips. “Ah, yes; I have my husband,” she answered, as by an afterthought, in a very subdued tone, which sent a pang and a thrill through Will’s heart at once?—?so much did it tell him. He knew from those few words she wasn’t happy in her married life. How could she be, indeed?—?such a soul as hers, with such a man as Andreas?

Their first gossip was over, and they were just getting ready to start for supper, when one of the box-keepers knocked at the door with a card in his hand, which he passed to Andreas Hausberger. “There’s a gentleman here who’s been waiting outside for some time to see you,” he said; “and he asked me to give you this card at once, if you’ll kindly step down to him, sir.”

Andreas took it with a smile, and gazed at it unconcernedly. But a dash of colour mounted suddenly into those pale brown cheeks, as his eye caught the words neatly engraved on the card, “Mr Franz Lindner,” and below in the corner, “Signor Francesco, The London Pavilion.”

CHAPTER XXXI