They were bound for Italy; so Alan had decided. 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. The difficulties and inconveniences which block

the way in English lodgings would have been well-nigh insufferable;

in Italy, people would only know that an English signora and her

husband had taken apartments for a month or two in some solemn old

palazzo. To Herminia, indeed, this expatriation at such a moment

was in many ways to the last degree distasteful; for her own part,

she hated the merest appearance of concealment, and would rather

have flaunted the open expression of her supreme moral faith before

the eyes of all London. But Alan pointed out to her the many

practical difficulties, amounting almost to impossibilities, which

beset such a course; and Herminia, though it was hateful to her thus

to yield to the immoral prejudices of a false social system, gave

way at last to Alan's repeated expression of the necessity for

prudent and practical action. She would go with him to Italy, she

said, as a proof of her affection and her confidence in his

judgment, though she still thought the right thing was to stand by

her guns fearlessly, and fight it out to the bitter end undismayed

in England.

On the morning of their departure, Alan called to see his father,

and explain the situation. He felt some explanation was by this

time necessary. 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. It was early for a

barrister to be leaving town for the Easter vacation; and though

Alan had chambers of his own in Lincoln's Inn, where he lived by

himself, he was so often in and out of the house in Harley Street

that his absence from London would at once have attracted the

parental attention.

Dr. Merrick was a model of the close-shaven clear-cut London

consultant. His shirt-front was as impeccable as his moral

character was spotless--in the way that Belgravia and Harley Street

still understood spotlessness. He was tall and straight, and

unbent by age; the professional poker which he had swallowed in

early life seemed to stand him in good stead after sixty years,

though his hair had whitened fast, and his brow was furrowed with

most deliberative wrinkles. So unapproachable he looked, that not

even his own sons dared speak frankly before him. His very smile

was restrained; he hardly permitted himself for a moment that weak

human relaxation.




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