Poor Herminia was sore tried. As for the hundred a year, she

couldn't dream of accepting it; but like a flash it went through

her brain how many advantages Dolly could enjoy in that wealthy

household that the hard-working journalist could not possibly

afford her. She thought of the unpaid bills, the empty cupboard,

the wolf at the door, the blank outlook for the future. For a

second, she half hesitated. "Come, come!" Sir Anthony said; "for

the child's own sake; you won't be so selfish as to stand in her

way, will you?"

Those words roused Herminia to a true sense of her duty. "Sir

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Anthony Merrick," she said holding her breath, "that child is my

child, and my dear dead Alan's. I owe it to Alan,--I owe it to

her,--to bring her up in the way that Alan would approve of. I

brought her into the world; and my duty is to do what I can to

discharge the responsibilities I then undertook to her. I must

train her up to be a useful citizen. Not for thousands would I

resign the delight and honor of teaching my child to those who

would teach her what Alan and I believed to be pernicious; who

would teach her to despise her mother's life, and to reject the

holy memory of her father. As I said to you before, that day at

Perugia, so I say to you now, 'Thy money perish with thee.' You

need never again come here to bribe me."

"Is that final?" Sir Anthony asked. And Herminia answered with a

bow, "Yes, final; quite final."

Sir Anthony bent his head and left. Herminia stood face to face

with abject poverty. Spurred by want, by indignation, by terror,

by a sense of the absolute necessity for action, she carried her

writing materials then and there into Dolly's sick-room, and

sitting by her child's cot, she began to write, she hardly knew

what, as the words themselves came to her. In a fever of

excitement she wrote and wrote and wrote. She wrote as one writes

in the silence of midnight. It was late before she finished. When

her manuscript was complete, she slipped out and posted it to a

weekly paper. It appeared that same Saturday, and was the

beginning of Herminia's most valuable connection.

But even after she had posted it the distracted mother could not

pause or rest. Dolly tossed and turned in her sleep, and Herminia

sat watching her. She pined for sympathy. Vague ancestral

yearnings, gathering head within her, made her long to pray,--if

only there had been anybody or anything to pray to. She clasped

her bloodless hands in an agony of solitude. Oh, for a friend to

comfort! At last her overwrought feelings found vent in verse.

She seized a pencil from her desk, and sitting by Dolly's side,

wrote down her heart-felt prayer, as it came to her that moment,--




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