“Dolly,” Herminia moaned, wringing her hands in her despair, “my child, my darling, how I have loved you! how I have watched over you!  Your life has been for years the one thing I had to live for.  I dreamed you would be just such another one as myself.  Equal with other people!  Why, I thought I was giving you the noblest heritage living woman ever yet gave the child of her bosom.  I thought you would be proud of it, as I myself would have been proud.  I thought you would accept it as a glorious birthright, a supreme privilege.  How could I foresee you would turn aside from your mother’s creed?  How could I anticipate you would be ashamed of being the first free-born woman ever begotten in England?  ’Twas a blessing I meant to give you, and you have made a curse of it.”

“You have made a curse of it!” Dolores answered, rising and glaring at her.  “You have blighted my life for me.  A good man and true was going to make me his wife.  After this, how can I dare to palm myself off upon him?”

She swept from the room.  Though broken with sorrow, her step was resolute.  Herminia followed her to her bed-room.  There Dolly sat long on the edge of the bed, crying silently, silently, and rocking herself up and down like one mad with agony.  At last, in one fierce burst, she relieved her burdened soul by pouring out to her mother the whole tale of her meeting with Walter Brydges.  Though she hated her, she must tell her.  Herminia listened with deep shame.  It brought the color back into her own pale cheek to think any man should deem he was performing an act of chivalrous self-devotion in marrying Herminia Barton’s unlawful daughter.  Alan Merrick’s child!  The child of so many hopes!  The baby that was born to regenerate humanity!

At last, in a dogged way, Dolly rose once more.  She put on her hat and jacket.

“Where are you going?” her mother asked, terrified.

“I am going out,” Dolores answered, “to the post, to telegraph to him.”

She worded her telegram briefly but proudly: 

“My mother has told me all.  I understand your feeling.  Our arrangement is annulled.  Good-by.  You have been kind to me.”

An hour or two later, a return telegram came:—­

“Our engagement remains exactly as it was.  Nothing is changed.  I hold you to your promise.  All tenderest messages.  Letter follows.”

That answer calmed Dolly’s mind a little.  She began to think after all,—­if Walter still wanted her,—­she loved him very much; she could hardly dismiss him.

When she rose to go to bed, Herminia, very wistful, held out her white face to be kissed as usual.  She held it out tentatively.  Worlds trembled in the balance; but Dolly drew herself back with a look of offended dignity.  “Never!” she answered in a firm voice.  “Never again while I live.  You are not fit to receive a pure girl’s kisses.”

And two women lay awake all that ensuing night sobbing low on their pillows in the Marylebone lodging-house.