is my mother."

Then she closed the door behind the two.

People who have secrets, who find themselves hemmed into corners, who
live perpetually over graves of the dead past, are seldom quite free
from fear. Mrs. Bertram had gone through tortures during the last couple
of hours. When she was alone with Beatrice she seized her hands, and
drew her down to sit on the sofa by her side. Her eyes asked a thousand
questions, while her lips made use of some conventional commonplace.

Beatrice was after all an unsophisticated country girl. She had never
been trained in _finesse_; painful things had not come to her in
the past of her life, either to conceal or avoid. Now a terrible task
was laid upon her, and she went straight to the point.

Mrs. Bertram said: "You look tired, my dear future daughter."

Beatrice made no reply to this. She did not answer Mrs. Bertram's lips,
but responding to the hunger in her eyes, said:

"I have got something to tell you."

Then Mrs. Bertram dropped her mask.

"I feared something was wrong. I guessed it from Loftie's manner. Go on,
speak. Tell me the worst."

"I'm afraid I must give you pain."

"What does a chit like you know of pain? Go on, break your evil tidings.
Nay, I will break them for you. There is to be no wedding tomorrow."

"You are wrong. There is."

"Thank God. Then I don't care for anything else. You are a true girl,
Beatrice, you have truth in your eyes. Thank God, you are faithful. My
son will have won a faithful wife."

"I trust he will--I think he will. But--"

"You need not be over modest, child. I know you. I see into your soul.
We women of the world, we deep schemers, we who have dallied with the
blackness of lies, can see farther than another into the deep, pure well
of truth. I don't flatter you, Beatrice, but I know you are true."

"I am true, true to your son, and to you. But Mrs. Bertram, don't
interrupt me. In being true, I must give you pain."

Again Mrs. Bertram's dark brows drew together until they almost met. Her
heart beat fast.

"I am not very strong," she said, in a sort of suffocating voice. "You
are concealing something; tell it to me at once."

"I will. Can you manage not to speak for a moment or two?"

"Go on, child. Can I manage? What have I not managed in the course of my
dark life? Go on. Whatever you tell me will be a pin-prick, and I have
had swords in my heart."

"I am sorry," began Beatrice.

"Don't--do you suppose I care for