e them as
one or two."

Lady Blanchemain shifted her sunshade, and screwed herself half round,
so as to face him, her soft old eyes full of smiling scrutiny and
suspicion.

"I never can tell whether or not you're serious," she complained. "If
you _are_ serious,--well, _a quand le mariage_?"

"The marriage?" cried John. "How could I marry her? Such a thing's out
of all question.

"Why?" asked she.

"A miller's daughter!" said John. "Would you have me marry the daughter
of a miller?"

"You said yourself yesterday--" the lady reminded him.

"Ah, yes," said he. "But night brings counsel."

"If she's well educated," said Lady Blanchemain, "if she's well-bred,
what does it matter about her father? Though a nobody in Austria, where
nothing counts but quarterings, he's probably what we'd call a gentleman
in England. Suppose he's a barrister? Or the editor of a newspaper?
Or--"

She paused, thoughtful-eyed, to think of respectable professions. At
last she gave up the effort.

"Well, anything decent," she concluded, "so long as he had plenty of
money."

"Ah," said John, sadly, and with perhaps mock humility. "If he had
plenty of money, he'd never consent to his daughter marrying a son of
poverty like me."

"Pooh! For a title?" cried Lady Blanchemain. "Besides, you have
prospects. Isn't your name Prospero?"

"I have precious little faith in oracles," said John.

"I advise you to have more," said Lady Blanchemain, with a smile that
seemed occult.

And now her carriage entered the village, and she put him down at the
telegraph office.

"Don't wait," said John. "The walk from here to the Castle is nothing,
and it would take you out of your way."

"Well, good-bye, then," said she. "And cultivate more faith in
oracles--when they're auspicious."

Alone, she drew from some recondite fold of her many draperies a letter,
an unsealed letter, which she opened, spread out, and proceeded to read.
It was a long letter in her ladyship's own handsome, high-bred,
old-fashioned handwr

My Friend Prospero

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