"Have you ever been to the East?" asked Lady Kingswood.
"No--but I'm going! My 'White Eagle' will take me there in a very short time! But, as I've already told you, I must learn to fly alone."
"What does the Marchese Rivardi say to that?"
"I don't ask him!" replied Morgana, indifferently--"What I may decide to do is not his business." She broke off abruptly--then continued--"He is coming to luncheon,--and afterwards you shall see my air-ship. I won't persuade you to go up in it!"
"I COULDN'T!" said Lady Kingswood, emphatically--"I've no nerve for such an adventure."
Morgana rose from her chair, smiling kindly.
"Dear 'Duchess' be quite easy in your mind!" she said--"I want you very much on land, but I shall not want you in the air! You will be quite safe and happy here in the Palazzo d'Oro"--she turned as she saw the shadow of a man's tall figure fall on the smooth marble pavement of the loggia--"Ah! Here is the Marchese! We were just speaking of you!"
"Tropp' onore!" he murmured, as he kissed the little hand she held out to him in the Sicilian fashion of gallantry--"I fear I am perhaps too early?"
"Oh no! We were about to go in to luncheon--I know the hour by the bell of the monastery down there--you hear it?"
A soft "ting-ting tong"--rang from the olive and ilex woods below the Palazzo,--and Morgana, listening, smiled.
"Poor Don Aloysius!" she said--"He will now go to his soup maigre--and we to our poulet, sauce bechamel,--and he will be quite as contented as we are!"
"More so, probably!" said Rivardi, as he courteously assisted Lady Kingswood, who was slightly lame, to rise from her chair--"He is one of the few men who in life have found peace."
Morgana gave him a keen glance.
"You think he has really found it?"
"I think so,--yes! He has faith in God--a great support that has given way for most of the peoples of this world."
Lady Kingswood looked pained.
"I am sorry to hear you say that!"
"I am sorry myself to say it, miladi, but I fear it is true!" he rejoined--"It is one sign of a general break-up."
"Oh, you are right! You are very right!" exclaimed Morgana suddenly, and with emphasis--"We know that when even one human being is unable to recognise his best friend we say--'Poor man! His brain is gone!' It's the same thing with a nation. Or a world! When it is so ailing that it cannot recognise the Friend who brought it into being, who feeds it, keeps it, and gives it all it has, we must say the same thing--'Its brain is gone!'"