My Friend Prospero

ing-room, a vast, square, bare room, with a marble floor and a painted ceiling, with Venetian blinds to shelter i

ria Dolores, answering th

atured 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 brow

ension at the presbytery," said M

u Brandt. "Wha

ith disengagement real or feigned. "H

name?" persist

ria Dolores. "Or it may even be Black, Smith, or Jo

or seemly for you to talk familiarly with

e will eat me. And he is English,-and I like English people. And he is intelligent,-his conversation amuses me. And he has

she was about to ask a question to the Teutonic mind of quite supreme importance-"but is he noble?" It w

olores

t, and I devoutly hope not. He belongs I expect to what they ca

showed her profoundly shocked, a

e speaking with him almost as an equal," she prono

ia Dolore

le. Then I should have to remember our respective positions. But where the differe

a minute, with many meanings; she nodded it

rother would not like it. It is not becoming.

olores, "if he were Austrian, i

"Is he aware that he is hobanobbing with a Serene Highness? You

laughed Maria Dolores, possib

pression. But there is a greater danger still. You are both at the dangerous

res, lightly, her chin a little in the

Brandt, half risi

ired 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,

her chair, and was nodding he

of these high-flown, unpractical, romantic whimsies? It all comes of

ionately upon Frau Brandt's shoulder. "My dearest old Nurse! Do not distress yourself. This is not yet a ques

stood so for a long while; and I fancy there was a softer glow than ever in

so deeply about?" Frau

ttle start, and turned from

my cobbler's son,