Lady Kingswood's mind floundered helplessly in this flood of what, to her, was incomprehensibility. Morgana went on in the sweet fluting voice which was one of her special charms.
"If you haven't read Keats, you must have read at some time or other the 'Arabian Nights' and the story of 'Sindbad the Sailor'? Yes? You think you have? Well, you know how poor Sindbad got into the Valley of Diamonds and waited for an eagle to fly down and carry him off! That's just like me! I've been dropped into a Valley of Diamonds and often wondered how I should escape--but the Eagle has arrived!"
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow you"--said Lady Kingswood--"I'm rather dense, you know! Surely your Valley of Diamonds--if you mean wealth--has made your 'Eagle' possible?"
Morgana nodded.
"Exactly! If there had been no Valley of Diamonds there would have been no Eagle! But, all the same, this little female Sindbad is glad to get out of the valley!"
Lady Kingswood laughed.
"My dear child, if you are making a sort of allegory on your wealth, you are not 'out of the valley' nor are you likely to be!"
Morgana sighed.
"My vulgar wealth!" she murmured.
"What? Vulgar?"
"Yes. A man told me it was."
"A vulgar man himself, I should imagine!" said Lady Kingswood, warmly.
Morgana shrugged her shoulders carelessly.
"Oh, no, he isn't. He's eccentric, but not vulgar. He's aristocratic to the tips of his toes--and English. That accounts for his rudeness. Sometimes, you know--only sometimes--Englishmen can be VERY rude! But I'd rather have them so--it's a sort of well-bred clumsiness, like the manners of a Newfoundland dog. It's not the 'make-a-dollar' air of American men."
"You are quite English yourself, aren't you?" queried her companion.
"No--not English in any sense. I'm pure Celtic of Celt, from the farthest Highlands of Scotland. But I hate to say I'm 'Scotch,' as slangy people use that word for whisky! I'm just Highland-born. My father and mother were the same, and I came to life a wild moor, among mists and mountains and stormy seas--I'm always glad of that! I'm glad my eyes did not look their first on a city! There's a tradition in the part of Scotland where I was born which tells of a history far far back in time when sailors from Phoenicia came to our shores,--men greatly civilised when we all were but savages, and they made love to the Highland women and had children by them,--then when they went away back to Egypt they left many traces of Eastern customs and habits which remain to this day. My father used always to say that he could count his ancestry back to Egypt!--it pleased him to think so and it did nobody any harm!"