Dr. Merrick took them up, and slank noiselessly from the room,

murmuring as he went some inarticulate words to the effect that he

had only desired to serve her. As soon as he was gone, Herminia's

nerve gave way. She flung herself into a chair, and sobbed long

and violently.

It was no time for her, of course, to think about money. Sore

pressed as she was, she had just enough left to see her safely

through her confinement. Alan had given her a few pounds for

housekeeping when they first got into the rooms, and those she

kept; they were hers; she had not the slightest impulse to restore

them to his family. All he left was hers too, by natural justice;

and she knew it. He had drawn up his will, attestation clause and

all, with even the very date inserted in pencil, the day before

they quitted London together; but finding no friends at the club to

witness it, he had put off executing it; and so had left Herminia

entirely to her own resources. In the delirium of his fever, the

subject never occurred to him. But no doubt existed as to the

nature of his last wishes; and if Herminia herself had been placed

in a similar position to that of the Merrick family, she would have

scorned to take so mean an advantage of the mere legal omission.

By this time, of course, the story of her fate had got across to

England, and was being read and retold by each man or woman after

his or her own fashion. The papers mentioned it, as seen through

the optic lens of the society journalist, with what strange

refraction. Most of them descried in poor Herminia's tragedy

nothing but material for a smile, a sneer, or an innuendo. The

Dean himself wrote to her, a piteous, paternal note, which bowed

her down more than ever in her abyss of sorrow. He wrote as a dean

must,--gray hairs brought down with sorrow to the grave; infinite

mercy of Heaven; still room for repentance; but oh, to keep away

from her pure young sisters! Herminia answered with dignity, but

with profound emotion. She knew her father too well not to

sympathize greatly with his natural view of so fatal an episode.

So she stopped on alone for her dark hour in Perugia. She stopped

on, untended by any save unknown Italians whose tongue she hardly

spoke, and uncheered by a friendly voice at the deepest moment of

trouble in a woman's history. Often for hours together she sat

alone in the cathedral, gazing up at a certain mild-featured

Madonna, enshrined above an altar. The unwedded widow seemed to

gain some comfort from the pitying face of the maiden mother.

Every day, while still she could, she walked out along the

shadeless suburban road to Alan's grave in the parched and crowded

cemetery. Women trudging along with crammed creels on their backs

turned round to stare at her. When she could no longer walk, she

sat at her window towards San Luca and gazed at it. There lay the

only friend she possessed in Perugia, perhaps in the universe.




readonlinefreebook.com Copyright 2016 - 2024