Definition of "mortgaging"

Her road had again seemed to stretch out endless, she imagined that there might be hundreds and hundreds of such things that Edward was concealing from her – that they might necessitate more mortgagings, more pawnings of bracelets, more and always more horrors.

1915, Ford Madox Hueffer [i.e., Ford Madox Ford], chapter V, in The Good Soldier: A Tale of Passion, London: John Lane, The Bodley Head; New York, N.Y.: John Lane Company; republished Harmondsworth, Middlesex [London]: Penguin Books, 1972 (1982 printing), part I, page 63