’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 ............