He had strong theories on pre-natal influence, and put them into practice. He read and discussed with his wife poetry and the noblest prose works. Everywhere she turned her eyes in her home she beheld representations of female beauty—magnificent or placid. On the wall of her bed-chamber was a barbaric, richly-hued painting of a Babylonian slave-market. It showed a group of women decking themselves before entering the Market Square, which could be seen through an opening of the tent. They were of many nationalities, but each in her own way represented physically perfect womanhood.
Near to this hung a contrasting picture—a delicate symphony in blue and gold and snowy white. It was the Catholic's Madonna, with placid lips and large uplifted eyes that told of thoughts beyond this world—chaste, calm and pure.
In the corner of the room by the window stood a large cast of a famous antique nude statue of Venus. So perfect was it—the glorious muscles of the body dimpling so gently, so graciously—that even Leo's unimaginative wife could find and feel something of what is soothing and peace-giving in such beauty. Sometimes of an early morning a narrow beam of light would creep into the darkened room between the drawn curtains and illuminate just this statue. Then the young wife, lying wakeful, would fix her eyes on the form of the Goddess of Beauty, drinking in its divine influence, remembering her husband's assurance that its contemplation would go far towards making the little daughter that was to come likewise strong and beautiful.
And Leo's words proved not untrue—a more lovely baby never saw the light. But Evarne's birth cost the mother her life, and after five years of happy marriage, Leo was once again lonely.
Since the child's upbringing was thus left to her father, with his fads and fancies, it was naturally of a unique nature. Mrs. Jarman—the worthy matron whom he engaged to act as nurse to his child, and cook-housekeeper to himself—was wont to declare, both to her gentleman in person and to the village in general, that she was sure Providence had seen fit to appoint a special angel to guard that blessed motherless mite; otherwise no mortal woman could possibly have succeeded in rearing it.
Mr. Stornway would interfere in what Mrs. Jarman held to be no concern of any man—not even of a father. First of all he had been divided in opinion as to whether the infant should be wrapped in swaddling-clothes in true classical style, or should remain in equally classical nudity. The baby had arrived in the summer-time, so the latter idea prevailed, and to Mrs. Jarman's dismay the little one passed the first few months of its existence clad in very little more than its own silky skin. All the experienced dame's traditional ideas of long robes, binders, shortening-clothes, teething-rings, etc., were swept aside as modern. Thus they were unworthy of a Greek reincarnation, named after the fairest of the Nereides, and destined to show an altogether degenerate world what beauty had been in the glorious days of old. With the approaching chill of winter even Mr. Stornway agreed to the little form being warmly clad, but his aversion to modern fashions never could be uprooted.
Thus, though Evarne, as she now hastened to summon the doctor to her father's dying bed, was nigh seventeen, she had never owned a pair of corsets, or worn a dress more tight-fitting than could be managed by shaping the material into the waist by gauging or smocking. Indoors, she invariably cast aside her shoes and stockings. She could carry burdens on her head, could run, jump, and swim with the ease and lightness of a young Amazon. She slept soundly on a bed hard as wood, and had never been indulged to the extent of a pillow in her life. Of her own accord she would never have chosen such a harsh régime. But at sixteen she knew but this one mode of existence, and habit rendered it congenial enough.