Linnet. Allen Grant

made some politely condescending remark, of the sort so obnoxious to the late Mr. Lowell, as to the correctness and delicacy of her English accent, and then, in order to show himself quite abreast of the times, inquired expansively if she knew the Van Rensselaers.

      “No; I haven’t had that pleasure,” the Vision of Beauty answered, curtly.

      “The Livingstones, perhaps?” Florian adventured, in tentative tones.

      The Vision shook her head.

      “My friends the Vanderbilts?” Florian essayed once more, eager to find a connecting link. “I stayed with them at Newport.”

      “No; nor yet the Vanderbilts,” the Vision answered, smiling.

      Florian paused and reflected. “Ah, then, you’re from Boston, no doubt,” he suggested, with charitable promptitude. The fine friends he had mentioned, at whose houses he had stopped, were all New Yorkers.

      “No; not from Boston,” the Vision answered with prompt negation.

      “Washington, I suppose?” Florian adventured again. They were the only three places a self-respecting American could admit she came from without shipwreck of her dignity. He would not pay so much grace and eloquence the very bad compliment, as it seemed to him, of supposing it could “register” from St. Louis or New Orleans.

      The pretty woman smiled once more, a self-restrained smile. “I come from New York,” she said, simply. “I’ve lived there long. It’s my native place. But there are a good many of us there who don’t aspire to know the Roosevelts or the Livingstones.”

      Florian withdrew, with quiet tact, from this false departure. He led aside the conversation, by graceful degrees, to the old Dutch families, the New England stock⁠—⁠Emerson, Longfellow, Channing, the Concord set: Howells, James, and Stedman, the later American poets. On these last he waxed warm. But the Vision of Beauty, herself cosmopolitan to the core, was all for our newest school of English bards. She doted on Lang and Austin Dobson.

      “And have you seen the last Illustrated?” she asked, after awhile, with a burst of enthusiasm. “It’s on the table in the salon there. And there are three, oh, such lovely, lovely stanzas in it,⁠—⁠‘Among Alps,’ by Will Deverill.”

      Her words sent a thrill of pleasure through Will’s modest soul. He had published but little, and ’twas seldom he heard his own name thus familiarly unhandled. Still, a harassing doubt possessed his soul. Could the Vision of Beauty have seen his name in the visitors’ book of the hotel, noticed the coincidence with the lines in the Illustrated, which he had sent from the Zillerthal, and managed this little coup with feminine adroitness, on purpose to deceive him? Yet she didn’t look guileful. With poetic trustfulness, he cast the evil suggestion at once behind him. “I’m so glad you liked them,” he said, timidly, looking down at his plate, and playing in nervous jerks with his fork in the chicken. “I wrote them in the Tyrol here. They’re fresh-fed from the glaciers.”

      The Vision laid down her knife and fork and stared at him, speechless. “You’re not Will Deverill,” she exclaimed, in some excitement, after a moment’s pause.

      “That’s my name,” Will answered, somewhat abashed, still perusing his plate. “But I’m very little used to⁠—⁠to⁠—⁠to meeting people who have heard of it.”

      The pretty American clasped her hands with delight “Well, I am glad to meet you,” she said, “though I’d have given you the benefit of the Mr, of course, if I’d known it was you. I just love your verses. I have ‘Voices from the Hills’ in my box upstairs, bound in calf, this minute.”

      “No; not really?” Will cried, with a young author’s delight at unexpected recognition.

      “I’ll go upstairs after dinner and fetch it down to show you,” his pretty admirer answered, with some pride. “And your friend, too, is he a poet?”

      “In soul; in soul only!” Florian interposed, airily, dashing in at a tangent; for it irked him thus to play second fiddle to Will’s first hand, and he longed to assert his “proper position.” “I string no sonnets; I play no harmonies; I take the higher place. I sit on a critical throne, weighing and appraising all arts impartially. Deverill rhymes; another man paints; a third man strums; a fourth acts, or carves stone⁠—⁠and all for me. I exercise none of these base handicrafts myself; but I live supreme in the Palace of Art they build, subordinating each in due place to my soul’s delight, like a subtle architect.”

      “Just the same as all the rest of us,” the pretty American put in, interrupting his period. “We all do that. We sit still and listen. The difficulty is⁠—⁠to produce, like Mr. Deverill.”

      Florian stood aghast. To think a mere woman should thus slight his pretensions! But the pretty American, disregarding him, turned to Will once more. “And your friend’s name?” she said, interrogatively.

      “My friend’s name,” Will answered, “is Florian Wood. You must know it.”

      “Ah, Mr. Florian Wood,” the pretty stranger echoed; “I’ve heard of him, of course. I’m glad to meet him. It’s so nice to see people in the flesh at last one has often heard talked about.”

      “But you’ve heard about everybody, Mrs. Palmer,” the first giggling inarticulate interposed, with a gurgle of admiration.

      Florian clapped his hand to his head in theatrical disappointment. “Mrs Palmer!” he cried, markedly. “Did I hear aright, Mrs Palmer? This is indeed a blow! Then, I take it, you’re married!”

      From anyone else on earth, the remark would have been rude; from Florian, it was only exaggerated compliment. The Vision of Beauty accepted it as such with American frankness.

      “Well, you needn’t go and take a draught of cold poison offhand,” she retorted, a little saucily, “for there’s still a chance for you. Remember, a woman may be maid, wife, … or widow.”

      “Dear me,” Florian ejaculated, half-choking himself in his haste, “I never thought of that. You don’t mean to say⁠——”

      “Yes, I do,” Mrs. Palmer responded, cutting him short with a merry nod. “Any time these last five years. Now, you’re sorry you spoke. Mr. Deverill, may I trouble you to pass the mustard?”

CHAPTER XI

       Table of Contents

PRIVATE INQUIRY

       Table of Contents

      During the rest of the young men’s stay at Innsbruck the pretty American was, as Florian remarked, “a distinct feature.” Such is the fickleness of man, indeed, that she almost superseded poor Linnet in their minds as an object of interest. She was attractive beyond a doubt; she was clever; she was lively; and she was so delighted to make a real live poet’s acquaintance, that Will hardly knew how to receive her almost obtrusive attentions. She brought him butter in a lordly dish, as Florian phrased it. That same evening, in the salon, according to promise, she came down with “Voices from the Hills,” Will’s thin little volume of fugitive verse, which she had had gorgeously bound in red calf in Paris, and made that sensitive young bard blush up to his eyes with modesty, by insisting on pointing out which pieces she liked best, in a voice that was audible to half the guests in the establishment. Ossian’s Tomb was her favourite⁠—⁠she knew that one by heart; but Khosru Khan was sweet too; and Sister Clare made her cry; and then Gwyn!⁠—⁠ah, that dear Gwyn was just too lovely for anything!

      And yet, Will liked her. In spite of her open praise, and his blushes, he liked her. The surest way to a poet’s heart is to speak well of his poetry. And besides, he said to himself, Mrs. Palmer