s in which she had taken part during the past couple of
months. She recalled the magnificent ball given by Morgana Royal at her
regal home, when all the fashion and frivolity of the noted "Four
Hundred" were assembled, and when the one whispered topic of
conversation among gossips was the possibility of the marriage of one
of the richest women in the world to a shabbily clothed scientist
without a penny, save what he earned with considerable difficulty.
Morgana herself played the part of an enigma. She laughed, shook her
head, and moved her daintily attired person through the crowd of her
guests with all the gliding grace of a fairy vision in white draperies
showered with diamonds, but gave no hint of special favour or attention
to any man, not even to Roger Seaton, the scientist in question, who
stood apart from the dancing throng, in a kind of frowning disdain,
looking on, much as one might fancy a forest animal looking at the last
gambols of prey It purposed to devour. He had taken the first
convenient interval to disappear, and as he did not return, Miss
Herbert had asked her hostess what had become of him? Morgana, her
cheeks flushed prettily by a just-finished dance, smiled in surprise at
the question.

"How should I know?" she replied--"I am not his keeper?"

"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 assumes 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 Morgan