Chapter 12 - Page 2

she was, she determined from the first moment no
course was left open for her save to remain at Perugia. She
couldn't go away so soon from the spot where Alan was laid,--from
all that remained to her now of Alan. Except his unborn baby,--
the baby that was half his, half hers,--the baby predestined to
regenerate humanity. Oh, how she longed to fondle it! Every
arrangement had been made in Perugia for the baby's advent; she
would stand by those arrangements still, in her shuttered room,
partly because she couldn't tear herself away from Alan's grave;
partly because she had no heart left to make the necessary
arrangements elsewhere; but partly also because she wished Alan's
baby to be born near Alan's side, where she could present it after
birth at its father's last resting-place. It was a fanciful wish,
she knew, based upon ideas she had long since discarded; but these
ancestral sentiments echo long in our hearts; they die hard with us
all, and most hard with women.

She would stop on at Perugia, and die in giving birth to Alan's
baby; or else live to be father and mother in one to it.

So she stopped and waited; waited in tremulous fear, half longing
for death, half eager not to leave that sacred baby an orphan. It
would be Alan's baby, and might grow in time to be the world's true
savior. For, now that Alan was dead, no hope on earth seemed too
great to cherish for Alan's child within her.

And oh, that it might be a girl, to take up the task she herself
had failed in!

The day after the funeral, Dr. Merrick called in for the last time
at her lodgings. He brought in his hand a legal-looking paper,
which he had found in searching among Alan's effects, for he had
carried them off to his hotel, leaving not even a memento of her
ill-starred love to Herminia. "This may interest you," he said
dryly. "You will see at once it is in my son's handwriting."

Herminia glanced over it with a burning face. It was a will in her
favor, leaving absolutely everything of which he died possessed "to
my beloved friend, Herminia Barton."

Herminia had hardly the means to keep herself alive till her baby
was born; but in those first fierce hours of ineffable bereavement
what question of money could interest her in any way? She stared
at it, stupefied. It only pleased her to think Alan had not
forgotten her.

The sordid moneyed class of England will haggle over bequests and
settlements and dowries on their bridal eve, or by the coffins of
their dead. Herminia had no such ignoble possibilities. How could
he speak of it in her presence at a moment like this? How obtrude
such themes on her august sorrow?

"This was drawn up," Dr. Merrick