The Hausbergers spent that winter in Italy. Andreas thought the London air was beginning to tell upon Linnet’s throat, and he took good care, accordingly, to get her an autumn engagement in Vienna, followed by a winter one at Rome and Naples. The money was less, to be sure, but in the end ’twould repay him. Linnet was an investment, and he managed his investment with consummate prudence. Before they went away, however, he and Linnet had another slight difference of opinion about Will Deverill. On the very morning of their departure, a bouquet arrived at the door in Avenue Road, with a neat little note attached, which Linnet opened and read with undisguised eagerness. Bouquets and notes were not infrequent arrivals at that house, indeed, and Andreas, as a rule, took little or no notice of them?—?unless accompanied by a holder of the precious metals. But Linnet flushed so with pleasure as she read this particular missive that Andreas leaned across and murmured casually, “What’s up? Let me look at it.”

“I’d?—?I’d rather not, if you don’t mind,” Linnet answered, colouring up, and half-trying to hide it.

Andreas snatched the paper unceremoniously from her trembling hands. He recognised the handwriting. “Ho, Will Deverill!” he cried, with a sneer. “Let’s see what he says! It’s poetry, is it, then? He drops into verse!” And he glanced at it angrily.

“To Linnet.”

“Fair fortune gild your southward track,

Dear bird of passage, taking wing.

For me, when April wafts you back,

Will not the spring be twice the spring?”

It was imprudent of Will, to be sure; but we are all of us a leetle imprudent at times (present company of course excepted); and some small licence in these matters is accorded by common consent to poets. But Andreas was angry, and more than merely angry; he was suspicious as well?—?beginning to be afraid, in fact, of his hold over Linnet. At first, when he came to England, the wise impresario was so sure of his wife?—?so sure of keeping her, and all the money she brought him, in his own hands?—?that he rather threw her designedly into Will’s company than otherwise. He saw she sang better when she was much with Will; and for the sake of her singing, he lumped the little question of personal preference. But of late he had begun really to fear Will Deverill. It occurred to him at odd moments as just within the bounds of possibility, after all, that Will might some day rob him of his wife altogether,?—?and to rob him of his wife was to rob him of his most serious and profitable property. Why, the sale of her presents alone?—?bracelets, bouquet-holders, rings, and such like trifles?—?was quite a small fortune to him. And, all Catholic that she was, and devout at that?—?a pure woman who valued her own purity high?—?quite unlike Philippina?—?Andreas felt none the less she might conceivably go off in the end with Will Deverill. The heart is always a very vulnerable point in women. He might attack her through the heart, or some such sentimental rubbish; and Linnet had a heart such a fellow as that could strike chords upon easily.

So Andreas looked at the flowers and simple little versicles with an angry eye. Then he said, in his curt way, “Pretty things to address to a married woman, indeed! Pack them up and send them back again!”

Linnet flushed, and flared up. For once in her life, her temper failed her. “I won’t,” she answered, firmly. “I shall keep them if I choose. There’s nothing in them a poet mayn’t rightly say to a married woman. If there was, you know quite well I wouldn’t allow him to say it. . . . Besides,” she went on, warmly, “you wouldn’t have asked me to send them back if they’d been pearls or diamonds. You kept the duke’s necklet.” And she hid the note in her bosom before the very eyes of her husband.

Andreas was not a noisy man. He knew a more excellent way than that to carry his point in the end?—?by biding his time, and watching and waiting. So he said no more for the moment, except to mutter a resounding High German oath, as he flung the flowers, paper cover and all, into the dining-room fireplace. In half-an-hour more, they were at Charing Cross, on their way to Vienna. Linnet kept Will’s verses inside the bosom of her dress, and close to her throbbing heart. Andreas asked no more about them just then, but, all that winter through, he meditated his plan of action for the future, in silence.

Their two months at Vienna were a great success, professionally. Linnet went on to Rome laden with the spoils of susceptible Austrians. For the first few weeks after their arrival in Italy, she noticed that Andreas received no letters in Philippina’s handwriting; but, after that time, notes in a familiar dark-hued scrawl began to arrive for him?—?at first, once a fortnight or so, then, later, much more frequently. Andreas read them before Linnet’s eyes, and burnt them cautiously, without note or comment. Linnet was too proud to allude to their arrival in any way.

Early in April, with the swallows and sand-martins, they returned to England. The spring was in the air, and Andreas thought the bracing north would suit Linnet’s throat better now than that soft and relaxing Italian atmosphere. On the very day when they reached Avenue Road, Philippina came to see them. She greeted Andreas warmly; Linnet kissed her on both cheeks. “Well, dear,” she said in German, clasping her friend’s hand hard, “and how’s your husband?”

“What! that dreadful man! Ach, lieber Gott, my dear, don’t speak of him!” Philippina cried, holding up both her hands in holy horror. Linnet smiled a quiet smile. Florian’s forecast was correct; Andreas’s words had come true. Her hot first love had cooled down again as quickly as it had flared up, all aglow, like a straw fire in the first instance.

Then Philippina began, in her usual voluble style, to pour forth the full gravamen of her charges against Theodore. She was living with him still, oh yes, she was living with him,?—?for appearance’ sake, you understand; and then besides?—?Philip............