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Updated: May 5, 2025
"Mother," she cried, with the air of a wild creature at bay, "were you married to my father?" Herminia's cheek blanched, and her pale lips quivered as she nerved herself to answer; but she answered bravely, "No, darling, I was not. It has always been contrary to my principles to marry." "YOUR principles!" Dolores echoed in a tone of ineffable, scorn. "YOUR principles!
A wave of conscious pleasure broke over Herminia's cheek, blush rose on white lily; but she answered nothing. She was glad this kindred soul should seem in such a hurry to renew her acquaintance. Next afternoon, about two o'clock, Alan called with a tremulous heart at the cottage. Herminia had heard not a little of him meanwhile from her friend Mrs. Dewsbury.
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.
Alan was given to sketching, and he sketched a great deal in his idle times on the common. He translated the cottages from real estate into poetry. On such occasions, Herminia's walks often led her in the same direction. For Herminia was frank; she liked the young man, and, the truth having made her free, she knew no reason why she should avoid or pretend to avoid his company.
Turning over in his mind the pros and cons of the situation, he had wisely determined that Herminia's confinement had better take place somewhere else than in England.
As yet no one in London knew anything officially as to his relations with Herminia; and for Herminia's sake, Alan had hitherto kept them perfectly private. But now, further reticence was both useless and undesirable; he determined to make a clean breast of the whole story to his father.
So the great doctor called a few days later at Herminia's lodgings, and having first ascertained that Herminia herself was out, had five minutes' conversation alone with her landlady. There were times, no doubt, when Mrs. Barton was ill? The landlady with the caution of her class, admitted that might be so. And times no doubt when Mrs. Barton was for the moment in arrears with her rent?
Next came that more difficult matter, the discussion of ways and means, the more practical details. Alan hardly knew at first on what precise terms it was Herminia's wish that they two should pass their lives together. His ideas were all naturally framed on the old model of marriage; in that matter, Herminia said, he was still in the gall of bitterness, and the bond of iniquity.
The child who was born to free half the human race from aeons of slavery must be kept from all contagion of man's gold and man's bribery. Yet Dolly never forgot the grand gentleman's name, though she hadn't the least idea why he gave that yellow coin to her. Out of this small episode, however, grew Herminia's great temptation.
"At what cottage?" "Mrs. Burke's, not far from the station." "May I come to see you there?" Herminia's clear brown eyes gazed down at him, all puzzlement. "Why, surely," she answered; "I shall be delighted to see you!" She paused for a second. "We agree about so many things," she went on; "and it's so rare to find a man who can sympathize with the higher longings in women."
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