themselves in
such scrubby little lodgings. Also, why her grandpa, who looked so
kind, should refuse so severely to kiss her mammy.

It was the beginning of many doubts and questionings to Dolores.
A year later, the Dean died suddenly. People said he might have
risen to be a bishop in his time, if it hadn't been for that
unfortunate episode about his daughter and young Merrick. Herminia
was only once mentioned in his will; and even then merely to
implore the divine forgiveness for her. She wept over that sadly.
She didn't want the girls' money, she was better able to take care
of herself than Elsie and Ermyntrude; but it cut her to the quick
that her father should have quitted the world at last without one
word of reconciliation.

However, she went on working placidly at her hack-work, and living
for little Dolly. Her one wish now was to make Dolly press toward
the mark for the prize of the high calling she herself by mere
accident had missed so narrowly. Her own life was done; Alan's
death had made her task impossible; but if Dolly could fill her
place for the sake of humanity, she would not regret it. Enough
for her to have martyred herself; she asked no mercenary palm and
crown of martyrdom.

And she was happy in her life; as far as a certain tranquil sense
of duty done could make her, she was passively happy. Her kind of
journalism was so commonplace and so anonymous that she was spared
that worst insult of seeing her hack-work publicly criticised as
though it afforded some adequate reflection of the mind that
produced it, instead of being merely an index of taste in the minds
of those for whose use it was intended. So she lived for years, a
machine for the production of articles and reviews; and a devoted
mother to little developing Dolly.

On Dolly the hopes of half the world now centred.

XV.

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 aw