"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.