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!”