She sang three songs in all. Her hearers would gladly have made it six; but Andreas Hausberger knew his trade, and stuck firm to his programme. When all was finished, the foreign Herrschaft crowded round; Herr Florian shook Linnet’s hand; Herr Will pressed it tenderly. The grand lady with the diamonds was graciousness itself. “With a voice like that, my child,” she said, “you shouldn’t be singing here; you should be training for the stage in some great musical centre.” Many of the other guests, too, gathered round and congratulated her. It was noised abroad in the room that this was the pretty peasant girl’s absolute _début_, and that Mr Deverill and Mr Wood had met her as a _sennerin_ at an inn in the Zillerthal. More voices than one praised her voice enthusiastically. But Will Deverill whispered low, “You have done yourself justice. As I told you at St Valentin, so I tell you again—Heaven only knows how high that voice may carry you.” One thing Linnet noticed for herself, unprompted. That first appearance in operatic peasant dress as a musician in a troupe, had raised her at a bound in the scale of social precedence. At St Valentin, she was an alp-girl; at Innsbruck, all those fine-dressed ladies and gentlemen accepted her at first sight as a public singer. They spoke to her with a politeness to which she was hitherto unused. They bent forward towards her with a quiet sort of deference and equality which she felt instinctively the very same persons would never have shown to the _sennerin_ in her châlet. Their curiosity was less frank; their questions were less blunt and better put than she was used to. It was partly the costume, no doubt, but partly also the function: she was a peasant girl in the Zillerthal; at Innsbruck she was a member of the musical profession. She had only a second or two with Will that night. While the other guests crowded round her, uttering their compliments for the most part in rather doubtful German, which Linnet answered (by Andreas Hausberger’s wise advice) in her pretty broken English, Will dropped but a few words of praise and congratulation. After all was over, however, and they were going away for the night to the Golden Eagle, he stood at the door, bare-headed, his hat in his hand, to say goodbye to her. Andreas Hausberger’s keen eye watched their interview close. Will held Linnet’s hand—that transfigured Linnet’s, in her snow-white sleeves and her corset-laced bodice—held it lingering in his own with a mutual pressure, as he murmured, not too low for Andreas to overhear (’twas wisest so), “I’m pleased to see you wore my necklet.” And Linnet, half-afraid how she should answer him aright, with Andreas standing by and straining his ear for every word, replied in German, with a timid smile, raising her eyes to his shyly, “I’m so glad you were pleased. I wanted to wear it. It’s a beautiful present. Thank you so very much for it.”