companied her on her charitable missions, and took--so far as
a stranger might,--the place of Catherine in her life. Catherine met
Jenny upon the doorstep of her parents' house on the evening of her
arrival, and hastened to ask her mother who the slim girl, with the tall
figure, narrow shoulders, fluffy brown hair, and large oriental eyes
was.

"My paid daughter," said Mrs. Ardagh, almost bitterly. "But she can't
fill the place of my lost Catherine."

Nevertheless, Catherine discovered that her mother was truly attached to
Jenny.

"I took her partly because she is easily led," she said, "easily
influenced and so very pretty and poor. I want to save her for God, and
when I met her there was one who wished to lead her to the devil. She
won't see him now. She won't hear his name."

Then she dropped the subject.

Catherine was alternately questioned by her father and by her mother as
to the influence of Mark. But something within her prevented her from
telling them of the conversation in the Pavilion, when the cries of the
toy city died down into the night. Mrs. Ardagh, now sinking in the
confusion of a rather dreary middle age, complicated by a natural
melancholy, and by incessant confession to a ritualistic clergyman
seductive in receptivity, was relieved to think that Mark was harmless.

Art for Art's sake--the motto of her husband--had apparently little
meaning for Mark. As Mrs. Ardagh thought it the devil's motto she was
glad of this and said so to Catherine. Mr. Ardagh, on the other hand,
was vexed to find Mark apparently so frivolous; and he also expressed
his feelings to Catherine, who became slightly confused.

"I should like to see your husband doing something," he said. "You have
much of me in you, Kit, despite your poor dear mother's extravagant
attempts to limit your reading to Frances Ridley Havergal. Why didn't
you marry an artist, eh? A painter or an author, somebody who can give
us more beauty than we have already, or more truth? You're too good for
Frances Ridley Havergal. Leave her to your mother and that girl, Jenny,
who is like wax in your mother's hands and the hands of the Rev. Father
Grimshaw. Piff!"

Catherine said nothing, but she sought an opportunity of seeing
something of Jenny. She found it, just before the day on which she and
Mark were to leave London for their country house. Jenny had come as
usual one morning, to read aloud to Mrs. Ardagh. They were just then
deep in the "Memoirs"