"Morgana!"
The call echoed through emptiness. She was gone. He called again,—the long vowel in the strange name sounding like "Mor-ga-ar-na" as a shivering note on the G string of a violin may sound at the conclusion of a musical phrase. There was no reply. He was—as he had desired to be,—alone.
CHAPTER III
"She left New York several weeks ago,—didn't you know it? Dear me!—I thought everybody was convulsed at the news!"
The speaker, a young woman fashionably attired and seated in a rocking chair in the verandah of a favourite summer hotel on Long Island, raised her eyes and shrugged her shoulders expressively as she uttered these words to a man standing near her with a newspaper in his hand. He was a very stiff-jointed upright personage with iron grey hair and features hard enough to suggest their having been carved out of wood.
"No—I didn't know it"—he said, enunciating his words in the deliberate dictatorial manner common to a certain type of American—"If I had I should have taken steps to prevent it."
"You can't take steps to prevent anything Morgana Royal decides to do!" declared his companion. "She's a law to herself and to nobody else. I guess YOU couldn't stop her, Mr. Sam Gwent!"
Mr. Sam Gwent permitted himself to smile. It was a smile that merely stretched the corners of his mouth a little,—it had no geniality.
"Possibly not!" he answered—"But I should have had a try! I should certainly have pointed out to her the folly of her present adventure."