e named one or
the other."

"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk
familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?"

"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised.
"He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And
he is English,--and I like English people. And he is intelligent,--his
conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,--so
different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What
can his name matter?"

"But"--Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her
voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to
the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance--"but is he noble?" It was
to her what--nay, more than what--the question, "Is he respectable?"
would have been to an Englishwoman.

Maria Dolores laughed.

"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I
devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the
middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer."

Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and
expressed profound reprehension.

"But you were speaking with him familiarly--you were speaking with him
almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated accents, in accents of
consternation.

Again Maria Dolores laughed.

"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if
he _were_ noble. Then I should have to remember our respective
positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk
familiarly without fear. _Ca n'engage a rien_."

Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings;
she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise.

"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it.
It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English."

"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be
entirely different."

"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he
aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an
equal. What if he should fall in love with you?"

"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a
mental reservation.

"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had
an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the
dangerous age. He is good-looking. W