had dreamed dreams for her girls, and
these dreams must come to nothing. She had hoped many things for them
both, she had thought that all her care and trouble would receive its
fruition some day in Catherine's establishment, and that Mabel would
also marry worthily. In playing with her grandchildren by-and-bye, Mrs.
Bertram thought that she might relax her anxieties and feel that her
labors had not been in vain. She must put these hopes aside now, for her
girls would probably never marry. They would live on at this dull old
Manor until their youth had left them, and their sweet, fresh bloom
departed.

Mrs. Bertram thought of the girls, but no compunctions with regard to
them caused her to hesitate even for a moment. She loved some one else
much better than these bright-eyed lasses. Loftus was the darling of his
mother's heart. It was bad to sacrifice girls, but it was impossible to
sacrifice the beloved and only son.

Mrs. Bertram saw her solicitors, confided to them her difficulties, and
accepted the terms proposed to her by the enemy, who, treacherous and
awful, had suddenly risen out of the ashes of the past to confront her.

With four hundred a year she bought silence, and silence meant
everything for her. Thus she saved herself, and one at least belonging
to her, from open shame.

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, absolutel