That was all. She had no more talk than just that with her Engländer. But she went back to the Golden Eagle, and lay awake all night thinking of him. Of him, and of the fair-haired Frau who sat smiling by his side. That fair-haired Frau gave Linnet some pangs of pain. Not that she was jealous; that ugliest of all the demons that beset human nature had no place, thank Heaven, in Linnet’s great heart. But she thought to herself with a sigh how much fitter for Will was that grand fair Frau than ever she herself could be. How could she expect him to make anything of _her_, when he could sit and talk all day long in great covered courts with grand ladies like that, his natural equals? He could think, after the Frau, no more of _her_, than she, after him, could think of Franz Lindner. And yet—and at that thought the billowy wave of fire broke over her once more from head to foot—he had left the grand lady in the room outside to come in and hear her song the moment he recognised her! In the _salon_ that same evening, when Linnet was gone, Rue stood talking for a minute by the fireside to Will Deverill. “She sings like an angel,” the pretty American said, with unaffected admiration of the peasant girl’s gifts. “What a glorious voice! Florian’s quite right. It’s a pity she doesn’t get it properly trained at once. It’s fit for anything.” “So I think,” Will answered, looking her frankly in the face. “She needs teaching, of course—the very best teaching. But if only she gets it, I see no reason to doubt she might do what she likes with it.” “And she’s beautiful, too,” Rue went on, without one marring touch of any feminine _but_. “How queenly she’d look as a Mary Stuart or a Cleopatra! Your necklet suits her well.” She paused, and reflected a second. “It’s a pity,” she went on, musingly, as if half to herself, “she shouldn’t have the brooch and the earrings to match it!” And next day, sure enough, at the Golden Eagle, about one o’clock, when Linnet went up to her own room after early dinner, she found on her dressing-table a small cardboard box containing some coral ornaments to go with the necklet, and this little inscription in a feminine hand inside it:—“For Linnet, from one who admired last night her beautiful singing.” Then Linnet knew at least that the fair-haired lady too had a great heart, and owed her no grudge for the possession of Will Deverill’s necklet. For she divined by pure instinct what admirer had sent them. CHAPTER XIV AND IF FOR EVER