"My child, my child, are you going to leave
me?"
"It's quite time," Dolly answered, in a sullen, stolid voice. "I
can't stop here, of course, now I'm almost grown up and engaged to
be married, associating any longer with such a woman as you have
been. No right-minded girl who respected herself could do it."
Herminia rose and faced her. Her white lips grew livid. She had
counted on every element of her martyrdom,--save one; and this, the
blackest and fiercest of all, had never even occurred to her.
"Dolly," she cried, "oh, my daughter, you don't know what you do!
You don't know how I've loved you! I've given up my life for you.
I thought when you came to woman's estate, and learned what was
right and what wrong, you would indeed rise up and call me blessed.
And now,--oh, Dolly, this last blow is too terrible. It will kill
me, my darling. I can't go on out-living it."
"You will," Dolly answered. "You're strong enough and wiry enough
to outlive anything. . . . But I wrote to Walter from Sir
Anthony's this morning, and told him I would wait for him if I
waited forever.
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