“No; I don’t think I would marry him,” Linnet answered, after a short pause, with a deliberative air, as though weighing well in her own mind all the pros and cons of it. “He’d take me if I chose, no doubt, and so also would Fridolin. Franz says he has left three other girls for me. But I don’t like him, of course, any better for that. He ought to have kept to them.”
“And you like him?” Will went on, drawing circles with his stick on the grass as he spoke, and glancing timidly askance at her.
“Yes; I like him—well enough,” Linnet responded, doubtfully. “I liked him better once, perhaps. But of late, I care less for him. I never cared for him much indeed; I was never his Mädchen. He had no right to say that, no right at all, at all—for with us, you know, in Tyrol, that means a great deal. How much, I couldn’t tell you. But I never gave him any cause at all to say so.”
“And of late you like him less?” Will inquired, pressing her hard with this awkward question. Yet he spoke sympathetically. He had no reason for what he said, to be sure—no reason on earth. He spoke at random, out of that pure instinctive impulse which leads every man in a pretty girl’s presence, mean he little or much, to make at least the best of every passing advantage. ’Tis pure virility that: the natural Adam within us. I wouldn’t give ten cents for the too virtuous man who by “ethical culture” has educated it out of him.
Linnet looked down at her shoes—for she possessed those luxuries. “Yes; of late I like him less,” she answered, somewhat tremulously.
“Why so?” Will insisted. His lips, too, quivered.
Linnet raised her dark eyes and met his for one instant. “I’ve seen other people since; perhaps I like other people better,” she answered, candidly.
“What other people?” Will asked, all on fire.
“Oh, that would be telling,” Linnet answered, with an arch look. “Perhaps my cousin Fridolin—or perhaps the young man with the yellow beard—or perhaps the gnädige Herr’s honoured friend, Herr Florian.”
Will drew figures with his stick on the grass for a minute or two. Then he looked up and spoke again. “But, in any case,” he said, “you don’t mean, whatever comes, to marry Franz Lindner?” It grieved him to think she should so throw herself away upon a village bully.