And Herminia, flushing scarlet at the unexpected question, the

first with which Dolly had yet ventured to approach that dangerous

quicksand, replied with a deadly thrill, "No, my darling. Why do

you ask me?"

"Because," Dolly answered abashed, "I just wanted to know why your

name should be Barton, the same as poor grandpapa's."

Herminia didn't dare to say too much just then. "Your dear

father," she answered low, "was not related to me in any way."

Dolly accepted the tone as closing the discussion for the present;

but the episode only strengthened her underlying sense of a mystery

somewhere in the matter to unravel.

In time, Herminia sent her child to a day-school. Though she had

always taught Dolly herself as well as she was able, she felt it a

matter of duty, as her daughter grew up, to give her something more

than the stray ends of time in a busy journalist's moments of

leisure. At the school, where Dolly was received without question,

on Miss Smith-Water's recommendation, she found herself thrown much

into the society of other girls, drawn for the most part from the

narrowly Mammon-worshipping ranks of London professional society.

Here, her native tendencies towards the real religion of England,

the united worship of Success and Respectability, were encouraged

to the utmost. But she noticed at times with a shy shrinking that

some few of the girls had heard vague rumors about her mother as a

most equivocal person, who didn't accept all the current

superstitions, and were curious to ask her questions as to her

family and antecedents. Crimson with shame, Dolly parried such

enquiries as best she could; but she longed all the more herself to

pierce this dim mystery. Was it a runaway match?--with the groom,

perhaps, or the footman? Only the natural shamefacedness of a

budding girl in prying into her mother's most domestic secrets

prevented Dolores from asking Herminia some day point-blank all

about it.

But she was gradually becoming aware that some strange atmosphere

of doubt surrounded her birth and her mother's history. It filled

her with sensitive fears and self-conscious hesitations.

And if the truth must be told, Dolly never really returned her

mother's profound affection. It is often so. The love which

parents lavish upon their children, the children repay, not to

parents themselves, but to the next generation. Only when we

become fathers or mothers in our turn do we learn what our fathers

and mothers have done for us. Thus it was with Dolly. When once

the first period of childish dependence was over, she regarded

Herminia with a smouldering distrust and a secret dislike that

concealed itself beneath a mask of unfelt caresses. In her heart

of hearts, she owed her mother a grudge for not having put her in a

position in life where she could drive in a carriage with a

snarling pug and a clipped French poodle, like Aunt Ermyntrude's

children. She grew up, smarting under a sullen sense of injustice,

all the deeper because she was compelled to stifle it in the

profoundest recesses of her own heart.




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