He opened the box door with stately dignity. At St Valentin or in London, he was a person of importance. Linnet entered, quivering. She still wore her primrose brocade, as all through the last act, and she looked in it, even yet, a very great lady. Not Rue herself looked so great or so grand—charming, smiling Rue—as she rose to greet her. They stood and faced each other. One second Rue paused; then a womanly instinct all at once overcame her. Leaning forward with the impulse, she kissed the beautiful, stately creature on both cheeks with effusion, in unfeigned enthusiasm.
“Why, Linnet,” she said, simply, as if she had always known her; “we’re so glad to see you—to be the very first to congratulate you on your success this evening!”
A flood of genuine passion rushed hot into Linnet’s face. Her warm southern nature responded at once to the pressure of Rue’s hand. She seized her new friend by either arm, and returned her double kiss in a transport of gratitude. “Dear lady,” she said, with fervour, in her still imperfect English, “how sweet that you receive me so! How kind and good you English are to me!”
Andreas Hausberger’s white shirt-front swelled with expansive joy. This all meant money. They were really making wonderful strides in England.
Will held his hand out timidly. “Have you forgotten me, Frau Hausberger?” he asked her in German.
Linnet’s face flushed a still deeper crimson than before, as she answered frankly, “Forgotten you, Herr Will. Ach, lieber Gott, no! How kind of you . . . to come and hear my first performance!”
“Nor me either, Linnet, I hope,” Florian interposed more familiarly, in his native tongue; for he had caught at the meaning of that brief Teutonic interlude. “I shall always feel proud, Herr Andreas, to think it was I who first discovered this charming song-bird’s voice among its native mountains.”
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.