"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.