"I don't think women ought to call him unsatisfactory. He is the most indulgent husband I know. He adores his wife, and she reigns like a queen in that great house of his--and in their Roman villa." "That kind of indulgence is a dangerous thing for a young woman--especially if she is capricious and full of strange fancies." "Poor little Vera. You don't seem to have a high opinion of her." "I don't want to be unkind. She has passed through an ordeal that only a woman of high principles and strong brain can pass without deterioration. A girlhood of poverty and deprivation, under close surveillance, and a married life of inordinate luxury and liberty. She was married at eighteen, remember, Claude--before her character could be formed. Nor was Lady Felicia the person to lay the foundation of a fine character. One ought not to speak ill of the dead--but poor Felicia was sadly trivial and worldly-minded." "_Madre mia_, what a sermon. If you think poor little Vera is in danger, why don't you contrive to see a little more of her? She would love to have you for a real friend. She has a host of acquaintances, but not too many friends. Susan Amphlett is devoted to her; but Lady Susie is not a tower of strength." "I believe they suit each other. They are both feather-headed, and both _poseuses_." At this Claude fired, and was almost fierce. "Vera is no _poseuse_," he said. "She is utterly without self-consciousness. I don't think she knows that she is lovely, in spite of the Society papers. Fortunately she has no time to read them. She is too absorbed in her poets--Browning, Shakespeare, Dante. I doubt if she reads a page of prose in a day." "And is not that a pose? Her idea is to be different from other women--a creature of imagination--in the world, but not of it. That is what people say of Madame Provana.--So charming! So different! "She can't help what people say, any more than she can help looking more like Undine than a woman whose clothes come from the Rue de la Paix." Mrs. Rutherford let the subject drop. She did not want to bring unhappiness into the sweetest hour of her life, the hour her son gave her; and she knew she could not talk of Vera without the risk of unhappiness. He who was the joy of her life was also the cause of much sorrow; but from the day he left the Army, under some kind of cloud, never fully understood, but divined, by his mother, she had never let him know what a disappointment his broken career had been to her. She was a soldier's daughter, and a soldier's widow; and to be distinguished as a leader of men was to her mind almost the only way to greatness. Yet she had smiled when this cherished son had made light of military fame, and told her he would rather be another Millais than another Arthur Wellesley. She had expressed no regret, a few years later, when he told her that art was of all professions the most hateful--and that he did not mean to follow up the flashy success of his early pictures.