From California to Sicily is a long way. It used to be considered far longer than it is now but in these magical days of aerial and motor travelling, distance counts but little,--indeed as almost nothing to the mind of any man or woman brought up in America and therefore accustomed to "hustle." Morgana Royal had "hustled" the whole business, staying in Paris a few days only,--in Rome but two nights; and now here she was, as if she had been spirited over sea and land by supernatural power, seated in a perfect paradise-garden of flowers and looking out on the blue Mediterranean with dreamy eyes in which the lightning flash was nearly if not wholly subdued.
About quarter of a mile distant, and seen through the waving tops of pines and branching oleander, stood the house to which the garden belonged,--a "restored" palace of ancient days, built of rose-marble on the classic lines of Greek architecture. Its "restoration" was not quite finished; numbers of busy workmen were employed on the facade and surrounded loggia; and now and again she turned to watch them with a touch of invisible impatience in her movement. A slight smile sweetened her mouth as she presently perceived one figure approaching her,--a lithe, dark, handsome man, who, when he drew near enough, lifted his hat with a profoundly marked reverence, and, as she extended her hand, raised it to his lips.
"A thousand welcomes, Madama!" he said, speaking in English with a scarcely noticeable foreign accent--"Last night I heard you had arrived, but could hardly believe the good fortune! You must have travelled quickly?"
"Never quickly enough for my mind!" she answered--"The whole world moves too slowly for me!"
"You must carry that complaint to the buon Dio!" he said, gaily--"Perhaps He will condescend to spin this rolling planet a little faster! But in my mind, time flies far too rapidly! I have worked--we all have worked--to get this place finished for you, yet much remains to be done--"
She interrupted him.
"The interior is quite perfect"--she said--"You have carried out my instructions more thoroughly than I imagined could be possible. It is now an abode for fairies to live in,--for poets to dream in--"
"For women to love in!" he said, with a sudden warmth in his dark eyes.
She looked at him, laughing.
"You poor Marchese!"--she said--"Still you think of love! I really believe Italians keep all the sentiment of le moyen age in their hearts,--other peoples are gradually letting it go. You are like a child believing in childish things! You imagine I could be happy with a lover--or several lovers! To moon all day and embrace all night! Oh fie! What a waste of time! And in the end nothing is so fatiguing!" She broke off a spray of flowering laurel and hit him with it playfully on the hand. "Don't moon or spoon, caro amico! What is it all about? Do I leave you nothing on which to write poetry? I find you out in Sicily--a delightful poor nobleman with a family history going back to the Caesars!--handsome, clever, with beautiful ideas--and I choose and commission you to restore and rebuild for me a fairy palace out of a half-ruined ancient one, because you have taste and skill, and I know you can do everything when money is no object--and you have done, and are doing it all perfectly. Why then spoil it by falling in love with me? Fie, fie!"