"I see! I think I quite understand!" said Morgana--"And it is just what I have always imagined--there is no great happiness in marriage. If it is only a matter of 'rubbing along pleasantly together' two friends can always do that without any 's.e.x' attraction, or tying themselves up together for life. And it's not much joy to bring children into the world and waste treasures of love on them, if after you have done all you can, they leave you without a regret,--like the birds that fly from a nest when once they know how to use their wings."

Lady Kingswood's eyes were sorrowful.

"My daughter was a very pretty girl,"--she said--"Her father and I were proud of her looks and her charm of manner. We spared every shilling we could to give her the best and most careful education--and we surrounded her with as much pleasure and comfort at home as possible,--but at the first experience of 'society,' and the flattery of strangers, she left us. Her choice of a husband was most unfortunate--but she would not listen to our advice, though we had loved her so much--she thought 'he' loved her more."

Morgana lifted her eyes. The "fey" light was glittering in them.

"Yes! She thought he loved her! That's what many a woman thinks--that 'he'--the particular 'he' loves her! But how seldom he does! How much more often he loves himself!"

"You must not be cynical, my dear!" said Lady Kingswood, gently--"Life is certainly full of disappointments, especially in love and marriage--but we must endure our sorrows patiently and believe that G.o.d does everything for the best."

This was the usual panacea which the excellent lady offered for all troubles, and Morgana smiled.

"Yes!--it must be hard work for G.o.d!" she said--"Cruel work! To do everything for the best and to find it being turned into the worst by the very creatures one seeks to benefit, must be positive torture!

Well, dear 'd.u.c.h.ess,' I asked you all these questions about love and marriage just to know if you could say anything that might alter my views--but you have confirmed them. I feel that there is no such thing in the world as the love _I_ want--and marriage without it would be worse than any imagined h.e.l.l. So I shall not marry."

Lady Kingswood's face expressed a mild tolerance.

"You say that just now"--she said--"But I think you will alter your mind some day! You would not like to be quite alone always--not even in the Palazzo d'Oro."

"YOU are quite alone?"

"Ah, but I am an old woman, my dear! I have lived my day!"

"That's not true," said Morgana, decisively--"You have not 'lived your day' since you are living NOW! And if you are old, that is just a reason why you should NOT be alone. But you ARE. Your husband is dead, and your daughter has other ties. So even marriage left you high and dry on the rocks as it were till my little boat came along and took you off them!"

"A very welcome little boat!" said Lady Kingswood, with feeling--"A rescue in the nick of time!"

"Never mind that!" and Morgan waved her pretty hand expressively--"My point is that marriage--just marriage--has not done much for you. It is what women clamour for, and scheme for,--and nine out of ten regret the whole business when they have had their way. There are so many more things in life worth winning!"

Lady Kingswood looked at her interestedly. She made a pretty picture just then in her white morning gown, seated in a low basket chair with pale blue silk cushions behind her on which her golden head rested with the brightness of a daffodil.

"So many more things!" she repeated--"My air-ship for instance!--it's worth all the men and all the marriages I've ever heard of! My beloved 'White Eagle!'--my own creation--my baby--SUCH a baby!" She laughed.

"But I must learn to fly with it alone!"

"I hope you will do nothing rash!"--said Lady Kingswood, mildly; she was very ignorant of modern discovery and invention, and all attempt to explain anything of the kind to her would have been a hope less business--"I understand that it is always necessary to take a pilot and an observer in these terrible sky-machines--"

She was interrupted by a gay little peal of laughter from Morgana.

"Terrible?--Oh, dear 'd.u.c.h.ess,' you are too funny! There's nothing 'terrible' about MY 'sky-machine!' Do you ever read poetry? No?--Well then you don't know that lovely and prophetic line of Keats--"

'Beautiful things made new For the surprise of the sky-children.'

"Poets are always prophetic,--that is, REAL poets, not modern verse mongers; and I fancy Keats must have imagined something in the far distant future like my 'White Eagle!' For it really IS 'a beautiful thing made new'--a beautiful natural force put to new uses--and who knows?--I may yet surprise those 'sky-children!'"

Lady Kingswood's mind floundered helplessly in this flood of what, to her, was incomprehensibility. Morgana went on in the sweet fluting voice which was one of her special charms.

"If you haven't read Keats, you must have read at some time or other the 'Arabian Nights' and the story of 'Sindbad the Sailor'? Yes? You think you have? Well, you know how poor Sindbad got into the Valley of Diamonds and waited for an eagle to fly down and carry him off! That's just like me! I've been dropped into a Valley of Diamonds and often wondered how I should escape--but the Eagle has arrived!"

"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you"--said Lady Kingswood--"I'm rather dense, you know! Surely your Valley of Diamonds--if you mean wealth--has made your 'Eagle' possible?"

Morgana nodded.

"Exactly! If there had been no Valley of Diamonds there would have been no Eagle! But, all the same, this little female Sindbad is glad to get out of the valley!"

Lady Kingswood laughed.

"My dear child, if you are making a sort of allegory on your wealth, you are not 'out of the valley' nor are you likely to be!"

Morgana sighed.

"My vulgar wealth!" she murmured.

"What? Vulgar?"

"Yes. A man told me it was."

"A vulgar man himself, I should imagine!" said Lady Kingswood, warmly.

Morgana shrugged her shoulders carelessly.

"Oh, no, he isn't. He's eccentric, but not vulgar. He's aristocratic to the tips of his toes--and English. That accounts for his rudeness.

Sometimes, you know--only sometimes--Englishmen can be VERY rude! But I'd rather have them so--it's a sort of well-bred clumsiness, like the manners of a Newfoundland dog. It's not the 'make-a-dollar' air of American men."

"You are quite English yourself, aren't you?" queried her companion.

"No--not English in any sense. I'm pure Celtic of Celt, from the farthest Highlands of Scotland. But I hate to say I'm 'Scotch,' as slangy people use that word for whisky! I'm just Highland-born. My father and mother were the same, and I came to life a wild moor, among mists and mountains and stormy seas--I'm always glad of that! I'm glad my eyes did not look their first on a city! There's a tradition in the part of Scotland where I was born which tells of a history far far back in time when sailors from Phoenicia came to our sh.o.r.es,--men greatly civilised when we all were but savages, and they made love to the Highland women and had children by them,--then when they went away back to Egypt they left many traces of Eastern customs and habits which remain to this day. My father used always to say that he could count his ancestry back to Egypt!--it pleased him to think so and it did n.o.body any harm!"

"Have you ever been to the East?" asked Lady Kingswood.

"No--but I'm going! My 'White Eagle' will take me there in a very short time! But, as I've already told you, I must learn to fly alone."

"What does the Marchese Rivardi say to that?"

"I don't ask him!" replied Morgana, indifferently--"What I may decide to do is not his business." She broke off abruptly--then continued--"He is coming to luncheon,--and afterwards you shall see my air-ship. I won't persuade you to go up in it!"

"I COULDN'T!" said Lady Kingswood, emphatically--"I've no nerve for such an adventure."

Morgana rose from her chair, smiling kindly.

"Dear 'd.u.c.h.ess' be quite easy in your mind!" she said--"I want you very much on land, but I shall not want you in the air! You will be quite safe and happy here in the Palazzo d'Oro"--she turned as she saw the shadow of a man's tall figure fall on the smooth marble pavement of the loggia--"Ah! Here is the Marchese! We were just speaking of you!"

"Tropp' onore!" he murmured, as he kissed the little hand she held out to him in the Sicilian fashion of gallantry--"I fear I am perhaps too early?"

"Oh no! We were about to go in to luncheon--I know the hour by the bell of the monastery down there--you hear it?"

A soft "ting-ting tong"--rang from the olive and ilex woods below the Palazzo,--and Morgana, listening, smiled.

"Poor Don Aloysius!" she said--"He will now go to his soup maigre--and we to our poulet, sauce bechamel,--and he will be quite as contented as we are!"