efinements." Then he slipped
out of the room, and spoke seriously to Herminia. "Let her come to
me," he urged. "I'll adopt her, and give her her father's name.
It will be better for herself; better for her future. She shall be
treated as my granddaughter, well-taught, well-kept; and you may
see her every six months for a fortnight's visit. If you consent,
I will allow you a hundred a year for yourself. Let bygones be
bygones. For the child's sake, say YES! She needs so much that
you can never give her!"

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
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 fi