“How about six hundred pounds a year?”

“Six hundred pounds—?” Frau Brandt computed.  “That would be six thousand florins, no?  It would depend upon their station in the world.”

“Well, suppose their station were about my station—­and my lord’s?”

“You,” said Frau Brandt, with a chuckle of contentment, swaying her white-bonneted head.  “You would need twice that for your dress alone.”

“One could dress more simply,” said Maria Dolores.

“No,” said Frau Brandt, her good eyes beaming, “you must always dress in the very finest that can be had.”

“But then,” Maria Dolores asked with wistfulness, “what am I to do?  For six hundred pounds is the total of his income.”

“You have, unless I am mistaken, an income of your own,” Frau Brandt remarked.

“Yes—­but he won’t let me use it,” said Maria Dolores.

“He?  Who?” demanded Frau Brandt, bridling.  “Who is there that dares to say let or not let to you?

“My future husband,” said Maria Dolores.  “He has peculiar ideas of honour.  He does not like the notion of marrying a woman who is richer than himself.  So he will marry me only on the condition that I send my own fortune to be dropped in the middle of the sea.”

“What nonsense is this?” said Frau Brandt, composed.

“No, it is the truth,” said Maria Dolores, “the true truth.  He is too proud to live in luxury at his wife’s expense.”

“I like a man making conditions, when it is a question of marrying you,” said Frau Brandt, with scorn.

“So do I,” said Maria Dolores, with heartiness.

“Well, at any rate, I am glad to see that he is not after you for your money,” Frau Brandt reflected.

“I suppose we shall have to dress in sackcloth and dine on lentils,” said Maria Dolores.

“Of course you will tell him to take his conditions to the Old One,” said Frau Brandt.  “It is out of the question for you to change the manner of your life.”

“I feel indeed as if it were,” admitted Maria Dolores.  “But if he insists?”

“Then tell him to go to the Old One himself,” was Frau Brandt’s blunt advice.

Maria Dolores laughed.  “It seems like an impasse,” she said.  “Who is to break the news to my brother?”

“We will wait until there is some news to break,” the old woman amiably grumbled.

Again at the sunset hour Maria Dolores met him in the garden.  He was seated on one of their marble benches, amongst marble columns, (rose-tinted by the western light, and casting long purple shadows), in a vine-embowered pergola.  He was leaning forward, legs crossed, brow wrinkled, as one deep in thought.  But of course at the sound of her footstep he jumped up.

“What mighty problem were you revolving?” she asked.  “You looked like Rembrandt’s philosophe en meditation.”

“I was revolving the problem of human love,” he answered.  “I was mutilating Browning.