The pretty, picturesque villa was very small; there was no room
available for a nursery. Wherever Dora sat, there must the
little ones be; and although they were very charming to the
mother and the nurse, the continued cries and noise irritated
Ronald greatly. Then he grew vexed; Dora cried, and said he did
not love them, and so the barrier grew day by day between those
who should have been all in all to each other.
The children grew. Little Beatrice gave promise of great beauty.
She had the Earle face, Ronald said. Lillian was a fair, sweet
babe, too gentle, her mother thought, to live. Neither of them
resembled her, and at times Dora wished it had been otherwise.
Perhaps in all Ronald Earle's troubled life he never spent a more
unsettled or wretched year than this. "It is impossible to
paint," he said to himself, "when disturbed by crying babies."
So the greater part of his time was spent away from home. Some
hours of every day were passed with Valentine; he never stopped
to ask himself what impulse led him to seek her society; the calm
repose of her fair presence contrasted so pleasantly with the
petty troubles and small miseries of home.
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