Chapter 8

They were bound for Italy; so Alan had decided. Turning over in his
mind the pros and cons of the situation, he had wisely determined
that Herminia's confinement had better take place somewhere else
than in England. The difficulties and inconveniences which block
the way in English lodgings would have been well-nigh insufferable;
in Italy, people would only know that an English signora and her
husband had taken apartments for a month or two in some solemn old
palazzo. To Herminia, indeed, this expatriation at such a moment
was in many ways to the last degree distasteful; for her own part,
she hated the merest appearance of concealment, and would rather
have flaunted the open expression of her supreme moral faith before
the eyes of all London. But Alan pointed out to her the many
practical difficulties, amounting almost to impossibilities, which
beset such a course; and Herminia, though it was hateful to her thus
to yield to the immoral prejudices of a false social system, gave
way at last to Alan's repeated expression of the necessity for
prudent and practical action. She would go with him to Italy, she
said, as a proof of her affection and her confidence in his
judgment, though she still thought the right thing was to stand by
her guns fearlessly, and fight it out to the bitter end undismayed
in England.

On the morning of their departure, Alan called to see his father,
and explain the situation. He felt some explanation was by this
time necessary. As yet no one in London knew anything officially
as to his relations with Herminia; and for Herminia's sake, Alan
had hitherto kept them perfectly private. But now, further
reticence was both useless and undesirable; he determined to make a
clean breast of the whole story to his father. It was early for a
barrister to be leaving town for the Easter vacation; and though
Alan had chambers of his own in Lincoln's Inn, where he lived by
himself, he was so often in and out of the house in Harley Street
that his absence from London would at once have attracted the
parental attention.

Dr. Merrick was a model of the close-shaven clear-cut London
consultant. His shirt-front was as impeccable as his moral
character was spotless--in the way that Belgravia and Harley Street
still understood spotlessness. He was tall and straight, and
unbent by age; the professional poker which he had swallowed in
early life seemed to stand him in good stead after sixty years,
though his hair had whitened fast, and his brow was furrowed with
most deliberative wrinkles. So unapproachable he looked, that not
even his own sons dared speak frankly before him. His very smile
was restrained; he hardly permitted himself for a moment that weak
human relaxation.