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 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 went on in his austere voice, "the very day before my late son left London. But, of course, you will have observed it was never executed."

And in point of fact Herminia now listlessly noted that it lacked Alan\'s signature.

"That makes it, I need hardly ............