I think you'll find yourself all right!" And Lady Kingswood had indeed "found herself all right." Her own daughter had never been so thoughtful for her comfort as Morgana was, and she became day by day more interested and fascinated by the original turn of mind and the bewitching personality of the strange little creature for whom the ordinary amusements of society seemed to have no attraction.

And now, installed in her own sumptuously fitted rooms in the Palazzo d'Oro, Morgana's Sicilian paradise, she almost forgot there was such a thing as poverty, or the sordid business of "making both ends meet." Walking up and down the rose-marble loggia and looking out to the exquisite blue of the sea, she inwardly thanked God for all His mercies, and wondered at the exceptional good luck that had brought her so much peace, combined with comfort and luxury in the evening of her days.

She was a handsome old lady; her refined features, soft blue eyes and white hair were a "composition" for an eighteenth-century French miniature, and her dress combined quiet elegance with careful taste.

She was inflexibly loyal to her stated position; she neither "questioned" nor "controlled" Morgana, or attempted to intrude an opinion as to her actions or movements,--and if, as was only natural, she felt a certain curiosity concerning the aims and doings of so brilliant and witch-like a personality she showed no sign of it.

She was interested in the Marchese Rivardi, but still more so in the priest, Don Aloysius, to whom she felt singularly attracted, partly by his own dignified appearance and manner, and partly by the leaning she herself had towards the Catholic Faith where "Woman" is made sacred in the person of the Holy Virgin, and deemed worthy of making intercession with the Divine.