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?