ng.

"This is my Capua," she said laughingly, to her hostess.

It invited every luxurious instinct to come forth and sun itself. Marion
Fenwick's soft, sweet voice, singing Italian songs to the accompaniment
of the guitar, repeated the invitation.

It was like a fairy gift. Energy would be required to refuse it. And
why, in heaven's name, if she might not have what she really wanted, was
she to be denied even the poor little triumphs of ornamental womanhood?
Was the social order which had frustrated her own ambitions to dominate
her conscience, and persuade her voluntarily to resign that _one_
kingdom which cannot be taken from a woman, so long as her beauty lasts?

Why should she abdicate? The human being was obviously susceptible to
personality beyond all other things. And beauty moved that absurd
creature preposterously. _There_, at least, the woman who chanced to be
born with these superficial attractions, had a royal territory, so long
as she could prevent her clamorous fellows from harassing and wearing
those attractions away. By no direct attack could the jealous powers
dethrone her. They could only do it indirectly, by appealing to the
conscience which they had trained; to the principles that they had
instilled; by convincing the woman that she owed herself, as a debt, to
her legal owner, to be paid in coined fragments of her being, till she
should end in inevitable bankruptcy, and the legal owner himself found
her a poor investment!

It would have startled that roomful of people, who expressed everything
circuitously, pleasantly, without rough edges, had they read beneath
Mrs. Temperley's spoken words, these unspoken thoughts.

Marion Fenwick's songs and the alluring softness of her guitar, seemed
the most fitting accompaniment to the warm summer night, whose breath
stirred gently the curtains by the open window, at the far end of the
room.

Lady Engleton was delighted with the success of her efforts. Mrs.
Temperley had not looked so brilliant, so full of life, since her
mother's illness. Only yesterday, when she met her returning from the
Cottage, her eyes were like those of a dying woman, and now----!

"People say ill-natured things about Mrs. Temperley," she confided to an
intimate friend, "but that is because they don't understand her."

People might have been forgiven for not understanding her, as perhaps
her hostess felt, noticing Hadria's animation, and the extraordinary
power that she was wiel