“That codicil tortured your mother’s proud spirit.  She felt that her husband had never really forgiven her for allowing his child to be stolen while under her care.  Still she believed that the child now was dead.

“Her hour of terrible awakening came.  Hart had returned to England.  A couple of months ago he wrote to her here.  Knowing that Nina’s father was dead he had gone to Somerset House, paid a shilling and read a copy of the will.  From that moment your mother knew no peace.  Hart had all the necessary letters to prove Nina’s identity.  He had a copy of her baptismal certificate, and of the registration of her birth.  Mrs. Bertram had now to bribe the old man heavily.  She did so.  She gave him and Nina a third of her income.  Wretched, miserable, defiant, she yet hoped against hope.  To-night, for the first time, she tasted despair.”

The Rector ceased to speak.  Bertram began to pace the floor.

“I can’t forgive my mother,” he said, at last.  “I shall marry Josephine to-morrow morning and take her away, but I never want to see my mother again.”

“Then she will die.  She is weak now, weak and crushed.  If you refuse your forgiveness you will have her death to answer for.  I don’t exonerate your mother’s sin, but I do plead for your mercy.  She sinned to shield and save you.  You must not turn from her.  Are you immaculate yourself?”

“I am not, Mr. Ingram.  I am in no sense of the word good.  I have been extravagant, reckless, I have been untruthful.  I have caused my mother many a pang, and she has invariably been an angel of goodness and kindness to me.  But her cruelty to Nina cuts me like a sword, and I cannot forgive her.”

The Rector went over to the window, drew up the blinds, and looked out.

“Come here,” he said to the young man.  “Do you see that faint light in the east?”

“Yes, sir, the day is breaking.”

“The day of your wedding, and of your new life.  To-day you realize what true love means.  You take the hand of the girl who is all the world to you, and you promise to love and reverence and defend her.  To-day you put away the past life.  You rise out of the ashes of the past, and put on manliness, and honor, and those virtues which good men prize, like an armor, Beatrice tells me you have promised her all this.”

“Beatrice—­God bless Beatrice:”  Bertram’s eyes were misty.  “I will be a good husband, and a true man,” he said with fervor.  “I have been a wretch in the past, and with God’s help I’ll show Nina, and Beatrice too, what stuff they have made of me.  I’ll be a true man for their sakes.  But my mother—­Mr. Ingram, you have given me a cruel shock on my wedding morning.”

“Bertram, all that you have said to me now will end in failure, will wither up like the early dew if you cherish hard feelings towards your mother.  Did she ever cherish them to you?  What about that bill she had to meet?  That bill would have ruined her.”