“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.