"But--but--you are interested in him?" Lydia suggested.
"Interested? Oh, yes! Who would not be interested in a man who says he can destroy half the world if he wants to! He a.s.sumes to be a sort of deity, you know!--Jove and his thunderbolts in the shape of a man in a badly cut suit of modern clothes! Isn"t it fun!" She gave a little peal of laughter. "And every one in the room to-night thinks I am going to marry him!"
"And are you not?"
"Can you imagine it! ME, married? Lydia, Lydia, do you take me for a fool!" She laughed again--then grew suddenly serious. "To think of such a thing! Fancy ME!--giving my life into the keeping of a scientific wizard who, if he chose, could reduce me to a little heap of dust in two minutes, and no one any the wiser! Thank you! The sensational press has been pretty full lately of men"s brutalities to women,--and I"ve no intention of adding myself to the list of victims! Men ARE brutes! They were born brutes, and brutes they will remain!"
"Then you don"t like him?" persisted Lydia, moved, in spite of herself, by curiosity, and also by a vague wonder at the strange brilliancy of complexion and eyes which gave to Morgana a beauty quite unattainable by features only--"You"re not set on him?"
Morgana held up a finger.
"Listen!" she said--"Isn"t that a lovely valse? Doesn"t the music seem to sweep round and tie us all up in a garland of melody! How far, far above all these twirling human microbes it is!--as far as heaven from earth! If we could really obey the call of that music we should rise on wings and fly to such wonderful worlds!--as it is, we can only hop round and round like motes in a sunbeam and imagine we are enjoying ourselves for an hour or two! But the music means so much more!" She paused, enrapt;--then in a lighter tone went on--"And you think I would marry? I would not marry an emperor if there were one worth having--which there isn"t!--and as for Roger Seaton, I certainly am not "set" on him as you so elegantly put it! And he"s not "set" on me.
We"re both "set" on something else!"
She was standing near an open window as she spoke, and she looked up at the dark purple sky sprinkled with stars. She continued slowly, and with emphasis--
"I might--possibly I might--have helped him to that something else--if I had not discovered something more!"
She lifted her hand with a commanding gesture as though unconsciously,--then let it drop at her side. Lydia Herbert looked at her perplexedly.
"You talk so very strangely!" she said.
Morgana smiled.
"Yes, I know I do!" she admitted--"I am what old Scotswomen call "fey"!
You know I was born away in the Hebrides,--my father was a poor herder of sheep at one time before he came over to the States. I was only a baby when I was carried away from the islands of mist and rain--but I was "fey" from my birth--"
"What is fey?" interrupted Miss Herbert.
"It"s just everything that everybody else is NOT"--Morgana replied--""Fey" people are magic people; they see what no one else sees,--they hear voices that no one else hears--voices that whisper secrets and tell of wonders as yet undiscovered--" She broke off suddenly. "We must not stay talking here"--she resumed-"All the folks will say we are planning the bridesmaids" dresses and that the very day of the ceremony is fixed! But you can be sure that I am not going to marry anybody--least of all Roger Seaton!"
"You like him though! I can see you like him!"
"Of course I like him! He"s a human magnet,--he "draws"! You fly towards him as if he were a bit of rubbed sealing-wax and you a snippet of paper! But you soon drop off! Oh, that valse! Isn"t it entrancing!"
And, swinging herself round lightly like a bell-flower in a breeze she danced off alone and vanished in the crowd of her guests.
Lydia Herbert recalled this conversation now, as she stood looking from the vine-clad verandah of her hotel towards the sea, and again saw, as in a vision, the face and eyes of her "fey" friend,--a face by no means beautiful in feature, but full of a sparkling attraction which was almost irresistible.
"Nothing in her!" had declared New York society generally--"Except her money! And her hair--but not even that unless she lets it down!"
Lydia had seen it so "let down," once, and only once, and the sight of such a glistening rope of gold had fairly startled her.
"All your own?" she had gasped.
And with a twinkling smile, and comic hesitation of manner Morgana had answered.
"I--I THINK it is! It seems so! I don"t believe it will come off unless you pull VERY hard!"
Lydia had not pulled hard, but she had felt the soft rippling ma.s.s falling from head to far below the knee, and had silently envied the owner its possession.
"It"s a great bother," Morgana declared--"I never know what to do with it. I can"t dress it "fashionably" one bit, and when I twist it up it"s so fine it goes into nothing and never looks the quant.i.ty it is.
However, we must all have our troubles!--with some it"s teeth--with others it"s ankles--we"re never QUITE all right! The thing is to endure without complaining!"
"And this curious creature who talked "so very strangely," possessed millions of money! Her father, who had arrived in the States from the wildest north of Scotland with practically not a penny, had so gathered and garnered every opportunity that came in his way that every investment he touched seemed to turn to five times its first value under his fingers. When his wife died very soon after his wealth began to acc.u.mulate, he was beset by women of beauty and position eager to take her place, but he was adamant against all their blandishments and remained a widower, devoting his entire care to the one child he had brought with him as an infant from the Highland hills, and to whom he gave a brilliant but desultory and uncommon education. Life seemed to swirl round him in a glittering ring of gold of which he made himself the centre,--and when he died suddenly "from overstrain" as the doctors said, people were almost frightened to name the vast fortune his daughter inherited, accustomed as they were to the counting of many millions. And now---?"
"California!" mused Lydia--"Sam Gwent thinks she has gone there after Roger Seaton. But what can be her object if she doesn"t care for him?
It"s far more likely she"s started for Sicily--she"s having a palace built there for her small self to live in "all by her lonesome"! Well!
She can afford it!"
And with a short sigh she let go her train of thought and left the verandah,--it was time to change her costume and prepare "effects" to dazzle and bewilder the uncertain mind of a crafty old Croesus who, having freely enjoyed himself as a bachelor up to his present age of seventy-four, was now looking about for a young strong woman to manage his house and be a nurse and attendant for him in his declining years, for which service, should she be suitable, he would concede to her the name of "wife" in order to give stability to her position. And Lydia Herbert herself was privately quite aware of his views. Moreover she was entirely willing to accommodate herself to them for the sake of riches and a luxurious life, and the "settlement" she meant to insist upon if her plans ripened to fulfilment. She had no great ambitions; few women of her social cla.s.s have. To be well housed, well fed and well clothed, and enabled to do the fashionable round without hindrance--this was all she sought, and of romance, sentiment, emotion or idealism she had none. Now and again she caught the flash of a thought in her brain higher than the level of material needs, but dismissed it more quickly than it came as--"Ridiculous! Absolute nonsense! Like Morgana!"
And to be like Morgana, meant to be like what cynics designate "an impossible woman,"--independent of opinions and therefore "not understood of the people."
CHAPTER IV
"Why do you stare at me? You have such big eyes!"
Morgana, dotted only in a white silk nightgown, sitting on the edge of her bed with her small rosy toes peeping out beneath the tiny frill of her thin garment, looked at the broad-shouldered handsome girl Manella who had just brought in her breakfast tray and now stood regarding her with an odd expression of mingled admiration and shyness.
"Such big eyes!" she repeated--"Like great head-lamps flaring out of that motor-brain of yours! What do you see in me?"
Manella"s brown skin flushed crimson.
"Something I have never seen before!" she answered--"You are so small and white! Not like a woman at all!"
Morgana laughed merrily.
"Not like a woman! Oh dear! What am I like then?"
Manella"s eyes grew darker than ever in the effort to explain her thought.
"I do not know"--she said, hesitatingly--"But--once--here in this garden--we found a wonderful b.u.t.terfly with white wings--all white,--and it was resting on a scarlet flower. We all went out to look at it, because it was unlike any other b.u.t.terfly we had ever seen,--its wings were like velvet or swansdown. You remind me of that b.u.t.terfly."
Morgana smiled.
"Did it fly away?"
"Oh, yes. Very soon! And an hour or so after it had flown, the scarlet flower where it had rested was dead."
"Most thrilling!" And Morgana gave a little yawn. "Is that breakfast?
Yes? Stay with me while I have it! Are you the head chambermaid at the Plaza?"
Manella shrugged her shoulders.