As for Herminia, many men had paid her attentions already in her

unwedded widowhood. Some of them, after the fashion of men, having

heard garbled versions of her tragic story, and seeking to gain

some base advantage for themselves from their knowledge of her

past, strove to assail her crudely. Them, with unerring womanly

instinct, she early discerned, and with unerring feminine tact,

undeceived and humbled. Others, genuinely attracted by her beauty

and her patience, paid real court to her heart; but all these fell

far short of her ideal standard. With Harvey Kynaston it was

different. She admired him as a thinker; she liked him as a man;

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and she felt from the first moment that no friend, since Alan died,

had stirred her pulse so deeply as he did.

For some months they met often at the Fabian meetings and

elsewhere; till at last it became a habit with them to spend their

Sunday mornings on some breezy wold in the country together.

Herminia was still as free as ever from any shrinking terror as to

what "people might say;" as of old, she lived her life for herself

and her conscience, not for the opinion of a blind and superstitious

majority. On one such August morning, they had taken the train from

London to Haslemere, with Dolly of course by their side, and then

had strolled up Hind Head by the beautiful footpath which mounts at

first through a chestnut copse, and then between heather-clad hills

to the summit. At the loneliest turn of the track, where two purple

glens divide, Harvey Kynaston seated himself on the soft bed of

ling; Herminia sank by his side; and Dolly, after awhile, not

understanding their conversation, wandered off by herself a little

way afield in search of harebells and spotted orchises. Dolly found

her mother's friends were apt to bore her; she preferred the society

of the landlady's daughters.

It was a delicious day. Hard by, a slow-worm sunned himself on the

basking sand. Blue dragon-flies flashed on gauze wings in the

hollows. Harvey Kynaston looked on Herminia's face and saw that

she was fair. With an effort he made up his mind to speak at last.

In plain and simple words he asked her reverently the same question

that Alan had asked her so long ago on the Holmwood.

Herminia's throat flushed a rosy red, and an unwonted sense of

pleasure stole over that hard-worked frame as she listened to his

words; for indeed she was fond of him. But she answered him at

once without a moment's hesitation. "Harvey, I'm glad you ask me,

for I like and admire you. But I feel sure beforehand my answer

must be NO. For I think what you mean is to ask, will I marry

you?"




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