She gave him a curt little nod, and walked lightly, rapidly up the avenue.

John’s brain was all a confusion.  He looked after her helplessly.  He only knew that there was a great ball of fire in his breast, and that the pain of it was now unmixed.

V

Maria Dolores tripped into Frau Brandt’s sitting-room, merrily singing a snatch of song.

     “Gardez vous d’etre severe
     Quand on vous park d’amour,”

she carolled.  Then she stopped singing, and blithely laughed.

Frau Brandt raised her good brown face from her knitting, and her good brown eyes looked anxiously upwards, slantwise over her tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles.

“What is the matter now?” she asked.  “What has happened to vex you now?”

“To vex me!” cried Maria Dolores, in apparent astonishment.  “Wasn’t I singing aloud from sheer exuberance of high spirits?”

“No,” said Frau Brandt, with a very positive shake of her white-capped head.  “You were singing to conceal your low spirits.  What has happened?”

“Ah, well, then, if you know so much and must know all,” said Maria Dolores, “I’ve just proposed to the man I’m in love with, and been sent about my business.”

“What do you mean?” asked Frau Brandt, phlegmatic.  “What nonsense is this?”

“I mean my cobbler’s son,” Maria Dolores answered.  “I, a Princess of the Empire, humbly offered him, a cobbler’s son, my hand, heart, and fortune,—­and the graceless man rejected them with scorn.”

“That is a likely story,” said Frau Brandt, wagging her chin.  Her blunt brown fingers returned to their occupation.  “I see your Serene Highness offering her hand.”

“At all events, will you kindly tell Josephine to pack our boxes.  To-morrow we’ll be flitting,” her Serene Highness in a casual way announced.

“What say you?” cried Frau Brandt, dropping her knitting into her lap.

“Yes—­to Mischenau, to my brother,” the Princess pursued.  “Of course you’ll have to come with us, poor dear.  You can’t let me travel alone with Josephine.”

“No,” said Frau Brandt.  “I will go with you.”

“And you can remain for my wedding,” Maria Dolores added.  “I am going home to meet my brother’s wishes, and to marry my second cousin, the high and mighty Maximilian, Prince of Zelt-Zelt.”

“Herr Gott!” said Frau Brandt, glancing with devotion at the ceiling.

VI

John, wild-eyed, was still where she had left him, in the avenue, savouring and resavouring his woe.  “If only,” he brooded, “she were of one’s own rank in the world, then her wealth might perhaps not be such an absolutely hopeless impediment as it is.  But to marry, as they say, beneath one, and to marry money into the bargain,—­that would be a little too much like the fortune-hunter of tradition.”  He still sat where she had left him, on the marble bench, disconsolate, when the parroco approached hurriedly, from the direction of the house.