Why do
you ask me?"
"Because," Dolly answered abashed, "I just wanted to know why your
name should be Barton, the same as poor grandpapa's."
Herminia didn't dare to say too much just then. "Your dear
father," she answered low, "was not related to me in any way."
Dolly accepted the tone as closing the discussion for the present;
but the episode only strengthened her underlying sense of a mystery
somewhere in the matter to unravel.
In time, Herminia sent her child to a day-school. Though she had
always taught Dolly herself as well as she was able, she felt it a
matter of duty, as her daughter grew up, to give her something more
than the stray ends of time in a busy journalist's moments of
leisure. At the school, where Dolly was received without question,
on Miss Smith-Water's recommendation, she found herself thrown much
into the society of other girls, drawn for the most part from the
narrowly Mammon-worshipping ranks of London professional society.
Here, her native tendencies towards the real religion of England,
the united worship of Success and Respectability, were encouraged
to the utmost.
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