V
"Who is the young man you have been talking with so long?" asked Frau Brandt, as Maria Dolores came into her sitting-room, a vast, square, bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with Venetian blinds to shelter it from the sun, and a bitter-sweet smell, as of rosemary or I know not what other aromatic herb, upon its cool air.
"Oh? You saw us?" said Maria Dolores, answering the question with question.
"Him I have seen many times—every day for a week at least," said Frau Brandt. "But I never before saw you talking with him. Who is he?" She was a small, brown, square-built, black-haired, homely-featured old woman, in a big, round starched white cap and a flowing black silk gown. She sat in an uncushioned oaken armchair by the window, with some white knitting in her bony, blunt-fingered brown hands, and tortoise-shell-rimmed spectacles on her nose. But the spectacles couldn't hide the goodness or the soundness or the sweetness that looked forth from her motherly old honest brown eyes.
"He is a young man who lives en pension at the presbytery," said Maria Dolores, "a young Englishman."
"So?" said Frau Brandt. "What is his name?"
"I don't know," said Maria Dolores, with disengagement real or feigned. "His Christian name, I believe, is John."
"But his family name?" persisted Frau Brandt.
"It is probably Brown, Jones, or Robinson," said Maria Dolores. "Or it may even be Black, Smith, or Johnson. Most Englishmen are named one or the other."
"So?" said Frau Brandt. "But is it prudent or seemly for you to talk familiarly with a young man whose name is unknown to you?"
"Why not?" asked Maria Dolores, raising her eyebrows, as if surprised. "He seems a very harmless young man. I don't think he will eat me. And he is English,—and I like English people. And he is intelligent,—his conversation amuses me. And he has nice easy, impetuous manners,—so different from the formality and restraint of Austrian young men. What can his name matter?"
"But"—Frau Brandt looked up impressively over her spectacles, and her voice was charged with gravity, for she was about to ask a question to the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance—"but is he noble?" It was to her what—nay, more than what—the question, "Is he respectable?" would have been to an Englishwoman.
Maria Dolores laughed.
"Oh, no," she said. "At least I have every reason to believe not, and I devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they call in England the middle class. He has an uncle who is a farmer."
Frau Brandt's good old brown eyes showed her profoundly shocked, and expressed profound reprehension.
"But you were speaking with him familiarly—you were speaking with him almost as an equal," she pronounced in bated accents, in accents of consternation.
Again Maria Dolores laughed.
"True," she assented gaily, "and that is exactly what I couldn't do if he were noble. Then I should have to remember our respective positions. But where the difference of rank is so great, one can talk familiarly without fear. Ça n'engage à rien."
Frau Brandt nodded her head, for full half a minute, with many meanings; she nodded it now up and down, and now shook it sidewise.
"I do not like it," she said, at last. "Your brother would not like it. It is not becoming. Well, thanks be to Heaven, he is only English."
"Oh, of course," agreed Maria Dolores, "if he were Austrian, it would be entirely different."
"But is it fair to the young man himself?" pursued Frau Brandt. "Is he aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You treat him as an equal. What if he should fall in love with you?"
"What indeed! But he won't," laughed Maria Dolores, possibly with a mental reservation.
"Who can tell?" said Frau Brandt. "His eyes, when he looked at you, had an expression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the dangerous age. He is good-looking. What if your heart should become interested in him?"
"Oh, in that case," answered Maria Dolores, lightly, her chin a little in the air, "I should marry him—if he asked me."
"What!" cried Frau Brandt, half rising from her chair.
"Yes," said Maria Dolores, cheerfully unexcited. "He is a man of breeding and education, even if he isn't noble. If I loved a man, I shouldn't give one thought to his birth. I'm tired of all our Austrian insistence upon birth, upon birth and quarterings and precedencies. If ever I love, I shall love some one just for what he is, for what God has made him, and for nothing else. It wouldn't matter if his father were a cobbler—if I loved him, I'd marry him." Her chin higher in the air, she had every appearance of meaning what she said.
Frau Brandt had sunk back in her chair, and was nodding her white-capped old head again.
"Oh, my child, my child," she grieved. "Will you never rid your fancy of these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of reading poetry." She herself, good woman, read little but her prayers.
"Oh, my dear true Heart," responded Maria Dolores, laughing. She crossed the room, and placed her hand affectionately upon Frau Brandt's shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not yet a question of actuality. Let us not cry before we are hurt." And she stooped, and kissed her nurse's brown old brow.
But afterwards she stood looking with great pensiveness out of the window, stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow than ever in her soft-glowing eyes, and perhaps a livelier rose in her pale-rose cheeks.
"What are you thinking so deeply about?" Frau Brandt asked by-and-by.
Maria Dolores woke with a little start, and turned from the window, and laughed again.
"Oh, thinking about my cobbler's son, of course," she said.