“What have you found out, Beatrice?”

Mrs. Bertram’s face was perfectly white; her words came out in a low whisper.

“Beatrice, what have you discovered?”

“That Captain Bertram loves another, that another girl loves him, has almost been brought to death’s door because she loves him so well.”

“Pooh, child, is that all?  How you frightened me.”

“Why do you speak in that contemptuous tone.  The ‘all’ means a great deal to Captain Bertram, and to me, and to the other girl.”

“Beatrice, you are a baby.  What young man of my son’s age has not had his likings, his flirtations, his heart affairs?  If that is all—­”

“It is all, it is enough.  Your son has not got over his heart affair.”

“Has he not?  I’ll speak to him.  I’ll soon settle that”

“Nor have I got over it.”

“Beatrice, my dear girl, you really are something of a little goose.  Jealous, are you?  Beatrice, you ask an impossibility when you expect a young man never to have looked with eyes of affection on any one but yourself.”

“I will not marry the man who looks with eyes of affection at another.”

“How you bewilder me, and yet, how childish you are.  Must I argue this question with you?  Must I show you from my own larger experience how attached Loftus is to you?  Dear fellow, his very face shows it.”

“I don’t want you to teach me anything from your experience, Mrs. Bertram.  Captain Bertram does not love me.  I do not love him; he loves another.  She has given him all her heart, all that she can give.  He shall marry her;—­he shall marry her to-morrow.”

Mrs. Bertram rose very slowly.

“Beatrice,” she said.  “Your meaning is at last plain to me. Noblesse oblige.  Ah, yes, that old saying comes true all the world over.  You have not the advantage of good birth.  I thought—­for a long time I thought that you were the exception that proved the rule.  You were the lady made by nature’s own hand.  Your father could be a tradesman—­a draper—­and yet have a lady for his daughter.  I thought this, Beatrice; I was deceived.  There are no exceptions to that nobility which only birth can bestow.  You belong to the common herd, the canaille.  You cannot help yourself.  A promise to one like you is nothing.  You are tired of Loftus.  This is an excuse to get out of a bargain of which you have repented.”

“It is not.”

Beatrice looked at Mrs. Bertram with eyes that blazed with anger.  She walked across the room, and rang the bell.  Her ring was imperious.  She stood near the bell-pull until Clara, in some trepidation, obeyed the summons.

“Is Captain Bertram downstairs?” asked Beatrice.

“I’ll inquire, Miss Meadowsweet.”

“I think he is.  I think you’ll find him in the study.  Ask him to have the goodness to come to Mrs. Bertram’s room.”

Clara withdrew.  Beatrice began slowly to pace up and down the floor.