In consequence, Stephen Blaine handed down to posterity his
height of just under six feet and his tendency to waver at crucial
moments, these two abstractions appearing in his son Amory. For many
years he hovered in the background of his family's life, an unassertive
figure with a face half-obliterated by lifeless, silky hair, continually
occupied in "taking care" of his wife, continually harassed by the idea
that he didn't and couldn't understand her.
But Beatrice Blaine! There was a woman! Early pictures taken on her
father's estate at Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, or in Rome at the Sacred Heart
Convent--an educational extravagance that in her youth was only for the
daughters of the exceptionally wealthy--showed the exquisite delicacy
of her features, the consummate art and simplicity of her clothes. A
brilliant education she had--her youth passed in renaissance glory,
she was versed in the latest gossip of the Older Roman Families; known by
name as a fabulously wealthy American girl to Cardinal Vitori and Queen
Margherita and more subtle celebrities that one must have had some
culture even to have heard of.
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