That night, Herminia Barton went up sadly to her own bed-room. It
was the very last night that Dolores was to sleep under the same
roof with her mother. On the morrow, she meant to remove to Sir
Anthony Merrick's.

As soon as Herminia had closed the door, she sat down to her
writing-table and began to write. Her pen moved of itself. And
this was her letter:--

"MY DARLING DAUGHTER,--By the time you read these words, I shall be
no longer in the way, to interfere with your perfect freedom of
action. I had but one task left in life--to make you happy. Now I
find I only stand in the way of that object, no reason remains why
I should endure any longer the misfortune of living.

"My child, my child, you must see, when you come to think it over
at leisure, that all I ever did was done, up to my lights, to serve
and bless you. I thought, by giving you the father and the birth I
did, I was giving you the best any mother on earth had ever yet
given her dearest daughter. I believe it still; but I see I should
never succeed in making YOU feel it. Accept this reparation. For
all the wrong I may have done, all the mistakes I may have made, I
sincerely and earnestly implore your forgiveness. I could not have
had it while I lived; I beseech and pray you to grant me dead what
you would never have been able to grant me living.