The very pictures in the gallery failed to interest Herminia, she

knew not why. Alan couldn't rouse her to enthusiasm over his

beloved Buonfigli. Those naive flaxen-haired angels, with sweetly

parted lips, and baskets of red roses in their delicate hands, own

sisters though they were to the girlish Lippis she had so admired

at Florence, moved her heart but faintly. Try as she might to like

them, she responded to nothing Perugian in any way.

At the end of a week or two, however, Alan began to complain of

constant headache. He was looking very well, but grew uneasy and

restless. Herminia advised him to give up sketching for a while,

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those small streets were so close; and he promised to yield to her

wishes in the matter. Yet he grew worse next day, so that

Herminia, much alarmed, called in an Italian doctor. Perugia

boasted no English one. The Italian felt his pulse, and listened

to his symptoms. "The signore came here from Florence?" he asked.

"From Florence," Herminia assented, with a sudden sinking.

The doctor protruded his lower lip. "This is typhoid fever," he

said after a pause. "A very bad type. It has been assuming such a

form this winter at Florence."

He spoke the plain truth. Twenty-one days before in his bedroom at

the hotel in Florence, Alan had drunk a single glass of water from

the polluted springs that supply in part the Tuscan metropolis.

For twenty-one days those victorious microbes had brooded in

silence in his poisoned arteries. At the end of that time, they

swarmed and declared themselves. He was ill with an aggravated

form of the most deadly disease that still stalks unchecked through

unsanitated Europe.

Herminia's alarm was painful. Alan grew rapidly worse. In two

days he was so ill that she thought it her duty to telegraph at

once to Dr. Merrick, in London: "Alan's life in danger. Serious

attack of Florentine typhoid. Italian doctor despairs of his life.

May not last till to-morrow.--HERMINIA BARTON."

Later on in the day came a telegram in reply; it was addressed to

Alan: "Am on my way out by through train to attend you. But as a

matter of duty, marry the girl at once, and legitimatize your child

while the chance remains to you."

It was kindly meant in its way. It was a message of love, of

forgiveness, of generosity, such as Herminia would hardly have

expected from so stern a man as Alan had always represented his

father to be to her. But at moments of unexpected danger angry

feelings between father and son are often forgotten, and blood

unexpectedly proves itself thicker than water. Yet even so

Herminia couldn't bear to show the telegram to Alan. She feared

lest in this extremity, his mind weakened by disease, he might wish

to take his father's advice, and prove untrue to their common

principles. In that case, woman that she was, she hardly knew how

she could resist what might be only too probably his dying wishes.

Still, she nerved herself for this trial of faith, and went through

with it bravely. Alan, though sinking, was still conscious at

moments; in one such interval, with an effort to be calm, she

showed him his father's telegram. Tears rose into his eyes. "I

didn't expect him to come," he said. "This is all very good of

him." Then, after a moment, he added, "Would you wish me in this

extremity, Hermy, to do as he advises?"




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