The child felt her mother’s hand tremble quivering in her own, as she led her from the church; but never a word did Herminia say, lest her heart should break with it.  As soon as she was outside, little Dolly looked up at her. (It had dwindled from Dolores to Dolly in real life by this time; years bring these mitigations of our first fierce outbursts.) “Who was that grand old gentleman?” the child asked, in an awe-struck voice.

And Herminia, clasping her daughter to her breast, answered with a stifled sob, “That was your grandpa, Dolly; that was my father, my father.”

The child put no more questions just then as is the wont of children; but she treasured up the incident for long in her heart, wondering much to herself why, if her grandpa was so grand an old gentleman, she and her mamma should have to live by themselves in such scrubby little lodgings.  Also, why her grandpa, who looked so kind, should refuse so severely to kiss her mammy.

It was the beginning of many doubts and questionings to Dolores.  A year later, the Dean died suddenly.  People said he might have risen to be a bishop in his time, if it hadn’t been for that unfortunate episode about his daughter and young Merrick.  Herminia was only once mentioned in his will; and even then merely to implore the divine forgiveness for her.  She wept over that sadly.  She didn’t want the girls’ money, she was better able to take care of herself than Elsie and Ermyntrude; but it cut her to the quick that her father should have quitted the world at last without one word of reconciliation.

However, she went on working placidly at her hack-work, and living for little Dolly.  Her one wish now was to make Dolly press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling she herself by mere accident had missed so narrowly.  Her own life was done; Alan’s death had made her task impossible; but if Dolly could fill her place for the sake of humanity, she would not regret it.  Enough for her to have martyred herself; she asked no mercenary palm and crown of martyrdom.

And she was happy in her life; as far as a certain tranquil sense of duty done could make her, she was passively happy.  Her kind of journalism was so commonplace and so anonymous that she was spared that worst insult of seeing her hack-work publicly criticised as though it afforded some adequate reflection of the mind that produced it, instead of being merely an index of taste in the minds of those for whose use it was intended.  So she lived for years, a machine for the production of articles and reviews; and a devoted mother to little developing Dolly.

On Dolly the hopes of half the world now centred.

XV.

Not that Herminia had not at times hard struggles and sore temptations.  One of the hardest and sorest came when Dolly was about six years old.  And this was the manner of it.