"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."
"Do you know what it is?"
He paused before replying.
"Well,--hardly! But I have a guess!"
"Is that so? Then I'll admit you're cleverer than I am!"
"Thats a great compliment! But even Miss Lydia Herbert, brilliant woman of the world as she is, doesn't know EVERYTHING!"
"Not quite!" she replied, stifling a tiny yawn--"Nor do you! But most things that are worth knowing I know. There's a lot one need never learn. The chief business of life nowadays is to have heaps of money and know how to spend it. That's Morgana's way."
Mr. Sam Gwent folded up his newspaper, flattened it into a neat parcel, and put it in his pocket.
"She has a great deal too much money"--he said, "and-to my thinking--she does NOT know how to spend it,--not in the right womanly way. She has gone off in the midst of many duties to society at a time when she should have stayed--"
Miss Herbert opened her brown, rather insolent eyes wide at this and laughed.
"Does it matter?" she asked. "The old man left his pile to her 'absolutely and unconditionally'--without any orders as to society duties. And I don't believe YOU'VE any authority over her, have you? Or are you suddenly turning up as a trustee?"