Saved from herself : $b or, On the edge of doom

How it begins

“I don’t see,” said Mrs. Trelane discontentedly, “why the woman could not have kept you.” She spoke to her own reflection in the glass with an angry frown. What was the good of an exquisite toilet, of a face that did not look within ten years of its age, when seated on the sofa opposite was a grown-up daughter whose presence in the house might spoil all her own well-laid plans? Just a week ago her only child, aged seventeen, had been returned from her cheap boarding-school with a scathing note from the principal regarding her unpaid bills. It was unbearable, even though she had forbidden the girl to be about the house or meet any of her visitors.