Linnet’s face fell fast. She clasped her dark hands tight. “Ah, that dear mother,” she said, with a deep-drawn sigh, and a mute prayer to Our Lady. “She died last winter, when I was away from home—away down in Venice. I couldn’t get back to her. ’Twas the Herr Vicar’s fault. He never wrote she was ill till the dear God had taken her. It was too late then. I couldn’t even go home to say a pater noster over her.”
“So now you’re alone in the world,” Will murmured, gazing hard at her.
“Yes; now I’m alone in the world,” Linnet echoed, sadly.
“But you have your husband, of course,” Florian put in, with a wicked smile, and a side glance at Andreas, who for his part was engaged in paying court most assiduously to the rich young widow.
Linnet looked up with parted lips. “Ah, yes; I have my husband,” she answered, as by an afterthought, in a very subdued tone, which sent a pang and a thrill through Will’s heart at once—so much did it tell him. He knew from those few words she wasn’t happy in her married life. How could she be, indeed—such a soul as hers, with such a man as Andreas?
Their first gossip was over, and they were just getting ready to start for supper, when one of the box-keepers knocked at the door with a card in his hand, which he passed to Andreas Hausberger. “There’s a gentleman here who’s been waiting outside for some time to see you,” he said; “and he asked me to give you this card at once, if you’ll kindly step down to him, sir.”
Andreas took it with a smile, and gazed at it unconcernedly. But a dash of colour mounted suddenly into those pale brown cheeks, as his eye caught the words neatly engraved on the card, “Mr Franz Lindner,” and below in the corner, “Signor Francesco, The London Pavilion.”