palled. It was a natural tragedy. There
was no way out of it. She couldn't help seizing the thing at once,
in a lightning flash of sympathy, from Dolly's point of view, too.
Quick womanly instinct made her heart bleed for her daughter's
manifest shame and horror.

"Dolly, Dolly," the agonized mother cried, flinging herself upon
her child's mercy, as it were; "Don't be hard on me; don't be hard
on me! My darling, how could I ever guess you would look at it
like this? How could I ever guess my daughter and his would see
things for herself in so different a light from the light we saw
them in?"

"You had no right to bring me into the world at all," Dolly cried,
growing fiercer as her mother grew more unhappy. "If you did, you
should have put me on an equality with other people."

"Dolly," Herminia moaned, wringing her hands in her despair, "my
child, my darling, how I have loved you! how I have watched over
you! Your life has been for years the one thing I had to live for.
I dreamed you would be just such another one as myself. EQUAL with
other people! Why, I thought I was giving you the noblest heritage
living woman ever yet gave the child of her bosom. I thought you
would be proud of it, as I myself would have been proud. I thought
you would accept it as a glorious birthright, a supreme privilege.
How could I foresee you would turn aside from your mother's creed?
How could I anticipate you would be ashamed of being the first
free-born woman ever begotten in England? 'Twas a blessing I meant
to give you, and you have made a curse of it."

"YOU have made a curse of it!" Dolores answered, rising and glaring
at her. "You have blighted my life for me. A good man and true
was going to make me his wife. After this, how can I dare to palm
myself off upon him?"

She swept from the room. Though broken with sorrow, her step was
resolute. Herminia followed her to her bed-room. There Dolly sat
long on the edge of the bed, crying silently, silently, and rocking
herself up and down like one mad with agony. At last, in one fierce
burst, she relieved her burdened soul by pouring out to her mother
the whole tale of her meeting with Walter Brydges. Though she hated
her, she must tell her. Herminia listened with deep shame. It
brought the color back into her own pale cheek to think any man
should deem he was performing an act of chivalrous self-devotion in
marrying Herminia Barton's unlawful daughter. Alan Merrick's ch