“Wouldn’t even that be rather romantic—­if a step down constitutes romance?” John suggested.

“Oh, a British peer is scarcely a step down,” she returned.  “Besides, there are people who don’t care—­what is the expression?—­twopence about rank.”

“When I said that,” John explained, “I had no inkling that her rank was so exalted.”

“Did you think she was the daughter of a cobbler?” Maria Dolores quickly, with some haughtiness, inquired.

“I thought she was a daughter of the stars,” John answered.

“And you feared her name was Smitti,” she said, haughtiness dissolving in mirth.  “I will never tell you what she feared that yours was.”

“See,” said John, “how they are hanging the heavens with banners.  It must be in honour of some great impending event.”

Yesterday the west had been a sea.  To-day it was a city, a vast grey and violet city, with palaces and battlemented towers, and countless airy spires and pinnacles; and here, there, everywhere, its walls were gay with gold and crimson, as with drooping banners.

“’Tis a city en fete,” said John. “’Tis the city where marriages are made.  They must have one in hand.”

“Hark,” said she, putting up a finger.  “There are your nightingales beginning.”

But the raised finger reminded him of something.  “Have you a rooted objection to rings?” he asked.

“Why?” asked she.

“I notice that you don’t wear any.”

“Oh, sometimes I wear many,” she said.  “Then one has moods in which one leaves them off.”

“I have a ring in my pocket which I think belongs to you,” said he.

“Really?  I don’t know that any of my rings are missing.”

“Here it is,” said he.  He produced the little old shagreen case he had received from Lady Blanchemain, opened, and offered it.

“It is a singularly beautiful ring,” said she, her eyes admiring.  “But it doesn’t belong to me.”

“I think it does,” said he.  “May I try it on your finger?”

She put forth her right hand.

“No—­your left hand, please,” he said.  He dropped upon one knee before her, and when the delicate white hand was surrendered, I imagine he made of getting the ring upon the alliance finger a longer business by a good deal than was necessary.  “There,” he said in the end, “you see.  It looks as if it had grown there.  Of course it belongs to you.”  He still held her hand, warm and firm and velvet-soft.  I think in another second he would have touched it with his lips.  But she drew it away.

She gazed into the depths of the heart-shaped ruby, tremulous with liquid light, and smiled as at secret thoughts.

“But I don’t see,” said John, getting to his feet, “how any man can ask a Princess of the House of Zelt to marry him and live on six hundred pounds a year.”

“She would have to modify her habits a good deal, that is very certain,” said Maria Dolores.