"Come and see me off!" she said--"Take a look at my car and see how you'd like to travel in it!"
Manella pursed her lips and shook her head.
"I'd rather not!" she murmured--"It's no use looking at what one can never have!"
Morgana laughed.
"As you please!" she said--"You are an odd girl, but you are quite beautiful! Don't forget that! Tell the man on the mountain that I said so!--quite beautiful! Good-bye!"
She passed through the lounge with a swift grace of movement and entered her sumptuous limousine, lined richly in corded rose silk and fitted with every imaginable luxury like a queen's boudoir on wheels, while Manella craned her neck forward to see the last of her. Her valise was quickly strapped in place, and in another minute to the sound of a high silvery bugle note (which was the only sort of "hooter" she would tolerate) the car glided noiselessly away down the broad, dusty white road, its polished enamel and silver points glittering like streaks of light vanishing into deeper light as it disappeared.
"There goes the richest woman in America!" said the hotel clerk for the benefit of anyone who might care to listen to the announcement,--"Morgana Royal!"
"Is that so?" drawled a sallow-faced man, reclining in an invalid chair--"She's not much to look at!"
And he yawned expansively.
He was right. She was not much to look at. But she was more than looks ever made. So, with sorrow and with envy, thought Manella, who instinctively felt that though she herself might be something to look at and "quite beautiful," she was nothing else. She had never heard the word "fey." The mystic glamour of the Western Highlands was shut away from her by the wide barrier of many seas and curtains of cloud. And therefore she did not know that "fey" women are a race apart from all other women in the world.