Not that Herminia had not at times hard struggles and sore temptations. One of the hardest and sorest came when Dolly was about six years old. And this was the manner of it.

One day the child who was to reform the world was returning from some errand on which her mother had sent her, when her attention was attracted by a very fine carriage, stopping at a door not far from their lodgings. Now Dolly had always a particular weakness for everything "grand;" and so grand a turn-out as this one was rare in their neighborhood. She paused and stared hard at it. "Whose is it, Mrs. Biggs?" she asked awe-struck of the friendly charwoman, who happened to pass at the moment,—the charwoman who frequently came in to do a day\'s cleaning at her mother\'s lodging-house. Mrs. Biggs knew it well; "It\'s Sir Anthony Merrick\'s," she answered in that peculiarly hushed voice with which the English poor always utter the names of the titled classes. And so in fact it was; for the famous gout doctor had lately been knighted for his eminent services in saving a royal duke from the worst effects of his own self-indulgence. Dolly put one fat finger to her lip, and elevated her eyebrows, and looked grave at once. Sir Anthony Merrick! What a very grand gentleman he must be indeed, and how nice it must seem to be able to drive in so distinguished a vehicle with a liveried footman.

As she paused and looked, lost in enjoyment of that beatific vision, Sir Anthony himself emerged from the porch. Dolly took a good stare at him. He was handsome, austere, close-shaven, implacable. His profile was clear-cut, like Trajan\'s on an aureus. Dolly thought that was just how so grand a gentleman ought to look; and, so thinking, she glanced up at him, and with a flash of her white teeth, smiled her childish approval. The austere old gentleman, unwontedly softened by that cherub face,—for indeed she was as winsome as a baby angel of Raphael\'s,—stooped down and patted the bright curly head that turned up to him so trustfully. "What\'s your name, little woman?" he asked, with a sudden wave of gentleness.

And Dolly, all agog at having arrested so grand an old gentleman\'s attention, spoke up in her clear treble, "Dolores Barton."

Sir Anthony started. Was this a trap to entangle him? He was born suspicious, and he feared that woman. But he looked into Dolly\'s blue eyes of wonder, and all doubt fled from him. Was it blood? was it instinct? was it unconscious nature? At any rate, the child seemed to melt the grandfather\'s heart as if by magic. Long years after, when the due time came, Dolly remembered that melting. To the profound amazement of the footman, who stood with the carriage-door ready open in his hand, the old man bent down and kissed the child\'s red lips. "God bless you, my dear!" he murmured, with unwonted tenderness to his son\'s daughter. Then he took out his purse, and drew from it a whole gold sovereign. "That\'s for you, my child," he said, fondling the pretty golden curls. "Take it home, and tell your mammy an old man in the street gave it to you."

But the coachman observed to the footman, as they drove on together to the next noble patient\'s, "You may take your oath on it, Mr. Wells, that little \'un there was Mr. Alan\'s love-child!"

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, ............