“Oh?” said Maria Dolores, her eyebrows going up.  “Is that his name?  You mean the young Englishman who lives with the parroco?”

The old lady’s eyebrows, which were thick and dark, went up too.

“Is it possible you didn’t know his name?” was her surprised ejaculation.  Then she said, “I wonder whether he is anywhere about?”

“I fancy he’s asleep,” said Maria Dolores.

“Asleep?  At this hour?” The dark eyebrows frowned their protest.  “That sounds like a sad slugabed.”

Maria Dolores looked serious.  “He was up all night.  We have a child ill here, and he was up all night, watching.”

The stranger’s grey eyes filled with concern and sympathy.  “I hope, I’m sure, it’s not that pretty little girl, the niece of the parroco?” she said.

“Unhappily, it is,” said Maria Dolores.  “She has been very ill indeed.”

“I am extremely sorry to hear it, extremely sorry,” the old lady declared, with feeling.  “If I can be of any sort of use—­if I can send anything—­or in any way help—­” Her eyes completed the offer.

“Oh, thank you, thank you,” replied Maria Dolores.  “You are most kind, but I don’t think there is anything any one can do.  Besides, she is on the mend now, we hope.  The doctor says the worst is probably over.”

“Well, thank God for that,” exclaimed the visitor, with a will.  She considered for a moment, and then reverted to the previous question.  “So you did not know that my vivid young friend’s name was Blanchemain?”

“No,” said Maria Dolores.

“It is a good name—­there’s none better in England,” averred the old lady, with a nod of emphasis that set the wheat-ears in her bonnet quivering.

“Oh—?” said Maria Dolores, looking politely interested.

“He’s the nephew and heir of Lord Blanchemain of Ventmere,” her instructress went on.  “That is one of our most ancient peerages.”

“Really?” said Maria Dolores. (What else did she say in her heart?  Where now was her cobbler’s son?)

“And I’m glad to be able to add that I’m his sort of connection—­I’m the widow of the late Lord Blanchemain.”  The lady paused; then, with that smile of hers which we know, that smile which went as an advance-guard to disarm resentment, “People of my age are allowed to be inquisitive,” she premised.  “I have introduced myself to you—­won’t you introduce yourself to me?”

“My name is Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster,” answered the person questioned, also smiling.

The widow of the late Lord Blanchemain inwardly gasped, but she was quick to suppress all outward symptoms of that circumstance.  The daughter of Eve in her gasped, but the practised old Englishwoman of the world affably and imperturbably pronounced, with a gracious movement of the head, “Ah, indeed?  You are then, of course, a relation of the Prince?”

“I am the Prince’s sister,” said Maria Dolores.  And, as if an explanation of her presence was in order, she added, “I am here visiting my old nurse and governess, to whom my brother has given a pavilion of the Castle for her home.”