ff! 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 mass
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 quantity 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 accumulate, 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
d