lay a letter which she had
crumpled in her pale hands and then tried, vainly, to fling away from
her. Catherine leaned over the bed.

"What is it, mother?" she said. "You are not in pain?"

Mrs. Ardagh shifted in the bed. There was a suggestion of almost
intolerable uneasiness in the movement.

"I am in pain, horrible pain," she answered. "No--no," as Catherine was
about to ring for the nurse, "not in the body--not that."

Catherine sat down by the bed and clasped her mother's hot hand.

"What is it?" she whispered.

Mrs. Ardagh was silent for a moment. She blinked her heavy eyelids to
stop the tears from falling on her wasted cheeks. At length she said,

"William Foster has done more evil."

Catherine did not speak. Her heart beat irregularly, and then seemed to
stop, and then beat with unnatural force again.

"Catherine," her mother continued, "Jenny is utterly lost."

"No, mother, no!" Catherine said. "I will go to her. Let me go. I will
rescue her. I will make her see----"

"Hush--you can't. She is dead and she died in shame."

She paused. Catherine did not speak.

"And now," Mrs. Ardagh continued feebly, "that man is spreading the net
for others. Do you know, Catherine, I often pray for him?"

"Do you, mother?"

"Yes. He has great powers. I never let your father know it, but that
first book of his made an impression upon me that has never faded.
That's why I think of him even now--that and the fate of poor Jenny."

She lifted herself up a little in the bed.

"His last book, I am told, is much more terrible, much more deadly than
the first."

"Is it?"

"You haven't read it?"

Catherine hesitated a moment, then she said,

"I know something about it."

Mrs. Ardagh lay still for a while, as if thinking. Presently she said,

"Catherine, such an odd, foolish idea keeps coming to me."

"What is it, mother?"

"That I should like to see 'William Foster' and--and try to make him
understand what he is doing. Perhaps he doesn't know, doesn't realise.
God often lets the devil blind us, you know. If I told him about Jenny,
told him all about her, he might see--he might understand. Don't you
think so?"

Catherine was holding her mother's hand. She pressed it vehemently.

"Oh, mother, perhaps he might!"

Mrs. Ardagh sat up still more among her pillows.

"You don't think it's a silly fancy?"

"I don't know. I wonder."

Catherine was crying quietly.

"It keeps coming," said Mrs. Ardagh, "as