Lady Blanchemain fanned herself.  “A miller’s daughter!” she thought, with a silent laugh at John’s expense and her own.  “I am very glad to have made your acquaintance,” she said, “and I hope this may not be our last meeting.  I’m afraid I ought now to be hastening back to Roccadoro.  I wonder whether you will have the kindness, when you see him, to convey my parting benediction to Mr. Blanchemain.  Oh, no, I would not let him be wakened, not for worlds.  Thank you.  Good-bye.”

And with a great effect of majesty and importance, like a conscious thing, her carriage rolled away.

III

“My romance is over, my April dream is ended,” said the Princess, with an air, perhaps a feint, of listless melancholy, to Frau Brandt.

“What mean you?” asked Frau Brandt, unmoved.

“My cobbler’s son has disappeared—­has vanished in a blaze of glory,” her Serene Highness explained, and laughed.

“I don’t understand,” said Frau Brandt.  “He has not left Sant’ Alessina?”

“No, but he isn’t a cobbler’s son at all—­he’s merely been masquerading as one—­his name is not Brown, Jones, or Robinson—­his name is the high-sounding name of Blanchemain, and he’s heir to an English peerage.”

“Ah, so?  He is then noble?” Frau Brandt inferred, raising her eyes, with satisfaction.

“As noble as need be.  An English peer is marriageable.  So here’s adieu to my cottage in the air.”

“Here’s good riddance to it,” said Frau Brandt.

That evening, at the hour of sunset, Maria Dolores met John in the garden.

“You had a visitor this afternoon,” she announced.  “A most inspiritingly young old lady, as soft and white as a powder-puff, in a carriage that was like a coach-and-four.  Lady Blanchemain.  She is leaving to-morrow for England.  She desired me to give you her farewell blessing.”

“It will be doubly precious to me by reason of the medium through which it comes,” said John, with his courtliest obeisance.

There was a little pause, during which she looked at the western sky.  But presently, “Why did you tell me you had an uncle who was a farmer?” she asked, beginning slowly to pace down the pathway.

“Did I tell you that?  I suppose I had a boastful fit upon me,” John replied.

“But it very much misled me,” said Maria Dolores.

“Oh, it’s perfectly true,” said John.

“You are the heir to a peerage,” said Maria Dolores.

John had a gesture.

“There you are,” he said; “and my uncle, the peer, spends much of his time and most of his money breeding sheep and growing turnips.  If that isn’t a farmer, I should like to know what is.”

“I hope you displayed less reticence regarding your station in the world to that woman you were in love with,” said she.

“That woman I was in love with?” John caught her up.  “That woman I am in love with, please.”