One day, it was on the 15th of December, things reached a climax.  When Ida came down to breakfast she found her father busy poring over some more letters from the lawyers.

“What is it now, father?” she said.

“What is it now?” he answered irritably.  “What, it’s another claim for two hundred, that’s what it is.  I keep telling them to write to my lawyers, but they won’t, at least they write to me too.  There, I can’t make head or tail of it.  Look here,” and he showed her two sides of a big sheet of paper covered with statements of accounts.  “Anyhow, I have not got two hundred, that’s clear.  I don’t even know where we are going to find the money to pay the three months’ interest.  I’m worn out, Ida, I’m worn out!  There is only one thing left for me to do, and that is to die, and that’s the long and short of it.  I get so confused with these figures.  I’m an old man now, and all these troubles are too much for me.”

“You must not talk like that, father,” she answered, not knowing what to say, for affairs were indeed desperate.

“Yes, yes, it’s all very well to talk so, but facts are stubborn.  Our family is ruined, and we must accept it.”

“Cannot the money be got anyhow?  Is there nothing to be done?” she said in despair.

“What is the good of asking me that?  There is only one thing that can save us, and you know what it is as well as I do.  But you are your own mistress.  I have no right to put pressure on you.  I don’t wish to put pressure on you.  You must please yourself.  Meanwhile I think we had better leave this place at once, and go and live in a cottage somewhere, if we can get enough to support us; if not we must starve, I suppose.  I cannot keep up appearances any longer.”

Ida rose, and with a strange sad light of resolution shining in her eyes, came to where her father was sitting, and putting her hands upon his shoulders, looked him in the face.

“Father,” she said, “do you wish me to marry that man?”

“Wish you to marry him?  What do you mean?” he said, not without irritation, and avoiding her gaze.  “It is no affair of mine.  I don’t like the man, if that’s what you mean.  He is acting like—­well, like the cur that he is, in putting on the screw as he is doing; but, of course, that is the way out of it, and the only way, and there you are.”

“Father,” she said again, “will you give me ten days, that is, until Christmas Day?  If nothing happens between this and then I will marry Mr. Edward Cossey.”

A sudden light of hope shone in his eyes.  She saw it, though he tried to hide it by turning his head away.

“Oh, yes,” he answered, “as you wish; settle it one way or the other on Christmas Day, and then we can go out with the new year.  You see your brother James is dead, I have no one left to advise me now, and I suppose that I am getting old.  At any rate, things seem to be too much for me.  Settle it as you like; settle it as you like,” and he got up, leaving his breakfast half swallowed, and went off to moon aimlessly about the park.