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That evening Morgana was in one of her hland word "fey" scarcely described her ay to romantic, and from romantic to a kind of humorous-satiric vein which ht have seemed barbed with too sharp a point were they not so quickly covered with a sweetness of manner which deprived them of all malice

She looked her best, too,--she had robed herself in a garleah crystal--her wonderful hair isted up in a coronal held in place by a band of diamonds,--tiny dialittered on her breast Her elfin beauty, totally unlike the beauty of accepted standards, exhaled a subtle influence as a lily exhales fragrance--and the knowledge she had of her own charm coave her a dangerous attractiveness As she sat at the head of her daintily adorned dinner-table she ht have posed for a fairy queen in days when fairies were still believed in and queens were envied,--and Giulio Rivardi's thoughts were swept to and fro in his brain by cross-currents of eether disinterested or virtuous

For years his spirit had been fretted and galled by poverty,--he, the descendant of a long line of proud Sicilian nobles, had been forced to earn a precarious livelihood as an art decorator and adviser to "newly rich" people who had neither taste nor judg the to the pure canons of art, in the knowledge of which he excelled,--and nohen chance or providence had thrown Morgana in his way,--Morgana with herpersonality,--he inwardly demanded why he should not win her to have and to hold for his own? He was a personable man, nobly born, finely educated,--was it possible that he had not sufficient resolution and force of character to take the precious citadel by storuely across his , now to Don Aloysius, now to Lady Kingswood, and soe to rally hiet over it!" she declared, s--"Poor Marchese Giulio! That I should have dared to steer ive me!"