Linnet held up her hands, palm outward, with a pretty little gesture of polite deprecation. Her movements were always naturally graceful. “Why not?” she said, brightly, in German, with no little suppressed merriment at his astonished face. “That’s Andreas Hausberger’s plan; he believes in that way; he calls it his system. He says we Zillerthalers owe our beautiful voices—for they tell us we can sing a great deal better than the people in any other valley about—to our open-air life on the very high mountains. The air there is thin, and it suits our throats, he says.” She clasped her hand to her own as she spoke, that beautiful, well-developed, clear-toned organ, with a natural gesture of unconscious reverence. “It develops them—that’s his word; he believes there’s nothing like it. _Entwickelung; entwickelung!_ I get more good, he thinks, for my voice in the summer on the alp than I get from all my lessons in the winter in the valley. For the throat itself comes first—that’s what Andreas holds—and afterwards the teaching. Not for worlds would he let me miss my summer life on the mountains.” “And how long has he been training you?” Will inquired with real interest. This was so strange a page of life thus laid open before him. “Oh, for years and years, _gnädige Herr_,” Linnet answered, shyly, for so much open attention on the young man’s part made her awkwardly self-conscious. “Ever since my father died, he has always been teaching me.” “Has your father been dead long?” Will inquired. Linnet crossed herself devoutly. “He was killed eight years ago on the 20th of August last,” she said, looking up as she spoke towards the forest-clad mountains. “May Our Dear Lady and all holy saints deliver his honoured soul from the fires of purgatory!” “But your mother’s alive still, I suppose, Fräulein,” Florian put in with a killing smile; he had been straining his ears, and was delighted to have caught the general drift of the conversation. “Yes; thanks to the Blessed Virgin, my mother live still,” Linnet answered in English. “And I keep her comfortable, as for a widow woman, from that which Andreas Hausberger pay me for the summer, as also for the singing. But for what, mein Herr, do you make to call me Fräulein? Do you wish to mock at me? I am only an alp-girl, and I am call just Linnet.” She flushed as she spoke, and turned hastily to Will. “Tell him,” she said in German, with an impatient little toss of one hand towards Florian, “that it isn’t pretty of him to make fun of poor peasant girls like that. Why does he call me such names? He knows very well I am no real Fräulein.” Florian raised his hat at once in his dimpled small hand, with that courtly bow and smile so much admired in Bond Street. “Pardon me,” he said, with more truth and feeling than was usual with him; “you have a superb voice; with a gift like that, you are a Fräulein indeed. It extorts our homage. Heaven only knows to what height it may some day lead you.”