"I don't know. We have no children. She may long for a child."
"Do you feel the want of children?" Susan asked bluntly.
"Yes. I should have liked a child. Our houses are silent—infernally silent. A house without children seems under a curse, somehow."
Susan looked at him with open-eyed wonder. This trivial cousin of hers, who seemed to live only for ephemeral delights, this man to sigh for offspring, to want his futile career echoed by a son. He who was neither soldier nor senator, who had no rag of reputation to bequeath: what should he want with an heir? And to want childish voices in his home—to complain of loneliness! He who was never alone!
Mrs. Bellenden had not been invited to the Villa Provana after the night when Susie had made her protest, nor had Claude urged his wife to invite her. Mrs. Bellenden had begun to be talked about in Rome very much as she had been talked about in London. The noblest of the Roman palaces had not opened their Cyclopean doors to her. There were certain afternoons when all that was most distinguished in Roman Society crossed those noble thresholds, as by right—went in and came out again, not much happier or richer in ideas, perhaps, for the visit, but just a shade more conscious of superiority.
Mrs. Bellenden, driving up and down the Corso, saw the carriages waiting, and scowled at them as she went by. Mrs. Bellenden was not bien vue in Rome. The painters and sculptors raved about her, and she had to give sittings—for head and bust—to several of them. She was one man's Juno, and another man's Helen of Troy. Her portrait, by a famous American painter, was to be the rage at next year's picture show. If to be worshipped for her beauty could satisfy a woman, Mrs. Bellenden might have been content; but she was not.
Her exclusion from those three or four monumental palaces made her feel herself an outsider; and she bristled with fury when no more cards of invitation came from the Villa Provana.
"I suppose that white rag of a woman is jealous," she thought; but she had just so much womanly pride left in her as to refrain from asking Claude Rutherford why his wife ignored her.
Lady Susan had not even spoken of Mrs. Bellenden after the night when she had delivered herself of a friendly warning. But although she did not talk to Vera of the siren, she had plenty to say to other people about her, and plenty to hear.
"I hope that foolish cousin of mine is not carrying on with that odious woman," she had said tentatively to more than one great lady.