Dolly had never held so much money in her hand before; she ran home, clutching it tight, and burst in upon Herminia with the startling news that Sir Anthony Merrick, a very grand gentleman in a very fine carriage, had given a gold piece to her.

Gold pieces were rare in the calm little attic, but Herminia caught her child up with a cry of terror; and that very same evening, she changed the tainted sovereign with Dolly for another one, and sent Sir Anthony’s back in an envelope without a word to Harley Street.  The child who was born to free half the human race from aeons of slavery must be kept from all contagion of man’s gold and man’s bribery.  Yet Dolly never forgot the grand gentleman’s name, though she hadn’t the least idea why he gave that yellow coin to her.

Out of this small episode, however, grew Herminia’s great temptation.

For Sir Anthony, being a man tenacious of his purpose, went home that day full of relenting thoughts about that girl Dolores.  Her golden hair had sunk deep into his heart.  She was Alan’s own child, after all; she had Alan’s blue eyes; and in a world where your daughters go off and marry men you don’t like, while your sons turn out badly, and don’t marry at all to vex you, it’s something to have some fresh young life of your blood to break in upon your chilly old age and cheer you.  So the great doctor called a few days later at Herminia’s lodgings, and having first ascertained that Herminia herself was out, had five minutes’ conversation alone with her landlady.

There were times, no doubt, when Mrs. Barton was ill?  The landlady with the caution of her class, admitted that might be so.  And times no doubt when Mrs. Barton was for the moment in arrears with her rent?  The landlady, good loyal soul, demurred to that suggestion; she knit her brows and hesitated.  Sir Anthony hastened to set her mind at rest.  His intentions were most friendly.  He wished to keep a watch,—­a quiet, well-meaning, unsuspected watch,—­ over Mrs. Barton’s necessities.  He desired, in point of fact, if need were, to relieve them.  Mrs. Barton was distantly connected with relations of his own; and his notion was that without seeming to help her in obtrusive ways, he would like to make sure Mrs. Barton got into no serious difficulties.  Would the landlady be so good—­a half sovereign glided into that subservient palm—­as to let Sir Anthony know if she ever had reason to suspect a very serious strain was being put on Mrs. Barton’s resources?

The landlady, dropping the modern apology for a courtesy, promised with effusion under pressure of hard cash, to accede to Sir Anthony’s benevolent wishes.  The more so as she’d do anything to serve dear Mrs. Barton, who was always in everything a perfect lady, most independent, in fact; one of the kind as wouldn’t be beholden to anybody for a farthing.