That was kind, Linnet thought, far kinder than she ever could have expected from Andreas. But that wasn’t all. He had provided in many ways, or intended to provide, for the good mother’s comfort. Then the Herr Vicar went on to speak still more of Andreas, who slipped out as he spoke, leaving priest and penitent alone together. So Herr Andreas, it seemed, was going to marry her! For a girl like her, that was a very great honour. And the sooner the better, indeed; the sooner the better! These were grave and painful rumours now afloat in St Valentin—and the Herr Vicar shook his head in solemn warning—grave and painful rumours, how Linnet had been seen on the hillsides more than once—with an English heretic. And he had followed her to Innsbruck! and then to Meran! and now, Heaven knew what he was trying to do with her! ’Twas a dangerous thing, a compromising thing (the Herr Vicar thought) for a girl to get involved in an affair like that with a man so much above herself in position and station. But Herr Andreas was so kind, and consented to overlook it; there were very few men who in a similar case would act like Herr Andreas. In other matters the Herr Vicar had withstood him to his face, because he was to be blamed; but in this, he had behaved like a generous gentleman. To all which, poor Linnet, hiding her face in her hands, only made answer once more, “I can never marry Andreas Hausberger.” “Why not?” the priest asked, sharply. And Linnet, hardly knowing how to answer him for fear and shame, yet murmured very low, “Because I don’t love him.” Then the Herr Vicar, thus aroused, went off at a tangent into a clerical exhortation on the nature, duties, and inducements of matrimony. We must remember that, in these matters, the wishes of the flesh were not alone or even chiefly to be consulted. They were of minor importance. There was her duty as a daughter, for example: Herr Andreas was rich; how much might he not do to lighten her mother’s old age? how much to release her poor father’s soul from the flames of purgatory? There was her duty as a woman, and a child of the Church; how much might not Herr Andreas’s money enable her to accomplish for the good of the world and for the souls of her people? She was still a giddy girl. What temptations such a marriage would enable her to avoid; what a brilliant future in the end it might open out before her! And then these floating rumours had disturbed him much; on his way from Jenbach, if she would only believe him, he had said prayers on her behalf to Our Lady, to preserve her honour. But Linnet, raising her head, and looking him straight in the eyes, made answer at last in these wicked, rebellious words, “I love the Engländer! Ah, I love the Engländer! If ever I marry at all, I’ll marry the Engländer!”