Will sat down on a wooden chair by the rough little table, held his face in his hands, and listened all aghast to Philippina’s artless outpourings. The sennerin, unheeding his obvious distress, went on to describe in her most glowing terms the magnificence of the wedding, and of the wirth’s entertainment. St Valentin hardly knew itself. Andreas had had a wedding-dress, oh, a beautiful wedding-dress, made beforehand, as a surprise, at Meran for Linnet—a white silk wedding-dress from a Vienna clothes-maker’s on the Promenade, by the Stephanie Garten; it was cut to measure from an old bodice of Linnet’s, which he abstracted all unknown from her box on purpose; and it fitted her like a glove, and she was ever so much admired in it. And all the young men thought Andreas the luckiest dog in the whole Tyrol; and cousin Fridolin had almost wanted to fight him for his bride; but Linnet intervened, and wouldn’t let them have it out for her. “And on the morning after the marriage,” Philippina concluded, with wide open eyes, “there wasn’t a cradle at the door, though Linnet was a sennerin—not one single cradle.”
“Of course not!” Franz Lindner cried, bridling up at the bare suggestion, and frowning native wrath at her.
“But perhaps if you’d been there, Franz——” Philippina put in saucily, and then broke off short, like a discreet maiden.
The Robbler rose above himself in his generous indignation that anyone should dare even to hint such things about their peerless Linnet. He clenched his fist hard. “If a man had said that, my girl,” he cried, fingering his knife involuntarily, “though she’s Andreas Hausberger’s wife, he’d have paid with his blood for it.”
Philippina for a moment stood silent and overawed. Then, recovering herself at once, with a sudden little recollection, she thrust her hand into her bosom and drew out a small note, which she passed to Will openly. “Oh, I forgot,” she exclaimed; “I was to give you this, Herr Will. Linnet asked me to take it to you on the morning of her marriage.”
Will opened it, and read. It was written in a shaky round hand like a servant’s, and its German orthography was not wholly above criticism. But it went to Will’s heart like a dagger for all that.
“Dear Herr Will,” it began, simply, “I write to you to-night, the last night that I may, on the eve of my wedding; for to-morrow I may not. When Andreas asked me first, it seemed to me impossible. But the Herr Vicar told me it was sin to love a heretic; you did not mean to marry me, and if you did, you would drag my soul down to eternal perdition. And then, the good Mother, and the dear Father in purgatory! So between them they made me do it, and I dared not refuse. It is hard to refuse when one’s priest commands one. Yet, dear Herr Will, I loved you; ah, how I loved you! and I know it is sin; but, may Our Dear Frau forgive me, as long as I live, I shall always love you! Though I never must see you again.—Your heart-broken Linnet.”
Will folded it reverently, and slipped it into the pocket just over his heart. “And tell her, Philippina,” he said, “when you see her at Verona, I had come back to-day to ask her to marry me.”