Herminia, however, could dispense with all that show. She had a

little cottage of her own, she told Alan,--a tiny little cottage,

in a street near her school-work; she rented it for a small sum,

in quite a poor quarter, all inhabited by work-people. There she

lived by herself; for she kept no servants. There she should

continue to live; why need this purely personal compact between

them two make any difference in her daily habits? She would go

on with her school-work for the present, as usual. Oh, no, she

certainly didn't intend to notify the head-mistress of the school

or any one else, of her altered position. It was no alteration of

position at all, so far as she was concerned; merely the addition

to life of a new and very dear and natural friendship. Herminia

took her own point of view so instinctively indeed,--lived so

wrapped in an ideal world of her own and the future's,--that Alan

was often quite alarmed in his soul when he thought of the rude

awakening that no doubt awaited her. Yet whenever he hinted it to

her with all possible delicacy, she seemed so perfectly prepared

for the worst the world could do, so fixed and resolved in her

intention of martyrdom, that he had no argument left, and could

only sigh over her.

It was not, she explained to him further, that she wished to

conceal anything. The least tinge of concealment was wholly alien

to that frank fresh nature. If her head-mistress asked her a

point-blank question, she would not attempt to parry it, but would

reply at once with a point blank answer. Still, her very views on

the subject made it impossible for her to volunteer information

unasked to any one. Here was a personal matter of the utmost

privacy; a matter which concerned nobody on earth, save herself and

Alan; a matter on which it was the grossest impertinence for any

one else to make any inquiry or hold any opinion. They two chose

to be friends; and there, so far as the rest of the world was

concerned, the whole thing ended. What else took place between

them was wholly a subject for their own consideration. But if ever

circumstances should arise which made it necessary for her to avow

to the world that she must soon be a mother, then it was for the

world to take the first step, if it would act upon its own hateful

and cruel initiative. She would never deny, but she would never go

out of her way to confess. She stood upon her individuality as a

human being.




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