Chapter 12

No position in life is more terrible to face than that of the
widowed mother left alone in the world with her unborn baby. When
the child is her first one,--when, besides the natural horror and
agony of the situation, she has also to confront the unknown
dangers of that new and dreaded experience,--her plight is still
more pitiable. But when the widowed mother is one who has never
been a wife,--when in addition to all these pangs of bereavement
and fear, she has further to face the contempt and hostility of a
sneering world, as Herminia had to face it,--then, indeed, her lot
becomes well-nigh insupportable; it is almost more than human
nature can bear up against. So Herminia found it. She might have
died of grief and loneliness then and there, had it not been for
the sudden and unexpected rousing of her spirit of opposition by
Dr. Merrick's words. That cruel speech gave her the will and the
power to live. It saved her from madness. She drew herself up at
once with an injured woman's pride, and, facing her dead Alan's
father with a quick access of energy,--

"You are wrong," she said, stilling her heart with one hand.
"These rooms are mine,--my own, not dear Alan's. I engaged them
myself, for my own use, and in my own name, as Herminia Barton.
You can stay here if you wish. I will not imitate your cruelty by
refusing you access to them; but if you remain here, you must treat
me at least with the respect that belongs to my great sorrow, and
with the courtesy due to an English lady."

Her words half cowed him. He subsided at once. In silence he
stepped over to his dead son's bedside. Mechanically, almost
unconsciously, Herminia went on with the needful preparations for
Alan's funeral. Her grief was so intense that she bore up as if
stunned; she did what was expected of her without thinking or
feeling it. Dr. Merrick stopped on at Perugia till his son was
buried. He was frigidly polite meanwhile to Herminia. Deeply as
he differed from her, the dignity and pride with which she had
answered his first insult impressed him with a certain sense of
respect for her character, and made him feel at least he could not
be rude to her with impunity. He remained at the hotel, and
superintended the arrangements for his son's funeral. As soon as
that was over, and Herminia had seen the coffin lowered into the
grave of all her hopes, save one, she returned to her rooms alone,--
more utterly alone than she had ever imagined any human being
could feel in a cityful of fellow-creatures.

She must shape her path now for herself without Alan's aid, without
Alan's advice. And her bitterest enemies in life, she felt sure,
would henceforth be those of Alan's household.

Yet, lonely as