She must shape her path now for herself without Alan's aid, without

Alan's advice. And her bitterest enemies in life, she felt sure,

would henceforth be those of Alan's household.

Yet, lonely as she was, she determined from the first moment no

course was left open for her save to remain at Perugia. She

couldn't go away so soon from the spot where Alan was laid,--from

all that remained to her now of Alan. Except his unborn baby,--

the baby that was half his, half hers,--the baby predestined to

regenerate humanity. Oh, how she longed to fondle it! Every

arrangement had been made in Perugia for the baby's advent; she

would stand by those arrangements still, in her shuttered room,

partly because she couldn't tear herself away from Alan's grave;

partly because she had no heart left to make the necessary

arrangements elsewhere; but partly also because she wished Alan's

baby to be born near Alan's side, where she could present it after

birth at its father's last resting-place. It was a fanciful wish,

she knew, based upon ideas she had long since discarded; but these

ancestral sentiments echo long in our hearts; they die hard with us

all, and most hard with women.

She would stop on at Perugia, and die in giving birth to Alan's

baby; or else live to be father and mother in one to it.

So she stopped and waited; waited in tremulous fear, half longing

for death, half eager not to leave that sacred baby an orphan. It

would be Alan's baby, and might grow in time to be the world's true

savior. For, now that Alan was dead, no hope on earth seemed too

great to cherish for Alan's child within her.

And oh, that it might be a girl, to take up the task she herself

had failed in!

The day after the funeral, Dr. Merrick called in for the last time

at her lodgings. He brought in his hand a legal-looking paper,

which he had found in searching among Alan's effects, for he had

carried them off to his hotel, leaving not even a memento of her

ill-starred love to Herminia. "This may interest you," he said

dryly. "You will see at once it is in my son's handwriting."

Herminia glanced over it with a burning face. It was a will in her

favor, leaving absolutely everything of which he died possessed "to

my beloved friend, Herminia Barton."

Herminia had hardly the means to keep herself alive till her baby

was born; but in those first fierce hours of ineffable bereavement

what question of money could interest her in any way? She stared

at it, stupefied. It only pleased her to think Alan had not

forgotten her.




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