s
handkerchiefs?"

"Certain people's--yes," unblushing, he promptly owned.

"M.D. under a princely crown, I think you said?" she mused. "It occurs
to me that Maria Dolores of Zelt-Neuminster's pocket-handkerchiefs might
be so embroidered."

"Ah?" said John. "Zelt-Neuminster? That would be a daughter of the man
who owns this Castle?"

"No, she is a sister of the man who owns this Castle."

"I understand," said John. "I wonder that the sister of the man who owns
this Castle never comes here to see how fine it is."

"She has been here quite recently," said Maria Dolores. "She has been
here visiting her foster-mother, who lives in the pavilion beyond the
clock. She came to make a sort of retreat--to think something over."

"Yes--?" questioned he.

"Her brother is very anxious to marry her off. He is anxious that she
should marry her second cousin, the Prince of Zelt-Zelt. She came here
to make up her mind."

"Has she made it up?" he asked.

"I am not sure," said she.

"Yet you seem to be deep in her confidence," said he.

"Yes--but she is not quite sure herself."

"Oh--?" said John.

"She is one of those foolish women who dream of marriage as a high
romance."

"Wise men," said John, "dream of it as the highest."

She shook her head.

"A marriage with her cousin would be an end to all romance for ever. She
was thinking a little while ago, I believe, of marrying a plain
commoner, the nephew of a farmer. That would have been indeed romantic.
Now, I hear, she is considering, a future member of your English House
of Lords."

"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