She received Catherine’s telegram, and was made aware that Josephine Hart had come down to spy out the nakedness of the land.  She felt herself, however, in a position to defy Josephine, and she returned to the Manor fairly well pleased.

It was Loftus, for whom she had really sacrificed so much, who dealt her the final blow.  This idle scapegrace had got into fresh debt and difficulty.  Mrs. Bertram expostulated, she wrung her hands, she could almost have torn her hair.  The young man stood before her half-abashed, half sulky.

“Can you help me, mother?  That’s the main point,” was his reiterated cry.

Mrs. Bertram managed at last to convince him that she had not a farthing of ready money left.

“In that case,” he replied, “nothing but ruin awaits me.”

His mother wept when he told her this.  She was shaken with all she had undergone in London, poor woman, and this man, who could cringe to her for a large dole out of her pittance, was the beloved of her heart.

He begged of her to put her hand to a bill; a bill which should not become due for six months.  She consented; she was weak enough to set him, as he expressed it, absolutely on his feet.  All debts would be paid at once, and he would never exceed his allowance again; and as to his mother’s difficulty, in meeting a bill for six hundred pounds, it was not in Loftus Bertram’s nature to trouble himself on this score six months ahead.

That bill, however was the proverbial last straw to Mrs. Bertram.  It haunted her by day and night; she dreamt of it, sleeping, she pondered over it, waking.  Six short months would speedily disappear, and then she would be ruined; she could not meet the bill, exposure and disaster must follow.

Even very honorable people when they get themselves into corners often seek for means of escape which certainly would not occur to them as the most dignified exits if they were, for instance, not in the corner, but in the middle of the room.

Mrs. Bertram was a woman of resources, and she made up her mind what to do.  She made it up absolutely, and no doubts or difficulties daunted her for an instant.  Loftus should marry Beatrice Meadowsweet long before the six months were out.

Having ascertained positively not only from her mother’s lips, but also from those of Mr. Ingram, that the young girl could claim as her portion twenty thousand pounds on her wedding day, Mrs. Bertram felt there was no longer need to hesitate.  Beatrice was quite presentable in herself; she was handsome, she was well-bred, she had a gracious and even careless repose of manner which would pass muster anywhere for the highest breeding.  It would be quite possible to crush that fat and hopelessly vulgar mother, and it would be easy, more than easy, to talk of the wealthy merchant’s office instead of the obnoxious draper’s shop.

Bertram, who had just moved with the depot of his regiment to Chatham, on returning to his quarters one evening from mess saw lying on his table a thick letter in his mother’s handwriting.  He took it up carelessly, and, as he opened it, he yawned.  Mother’s letters are not particularly sacred things to idolized sons of Bertram’s type.