. Ardagh had gone to the
Riviera and Catherine found Mrs. Ardagh quite alone in the big house in
Eaton Square.

"Why, where is Jenny Levita?" she asked.

Mrs. Ardagh made no reply for a moment. Her face, which was rather
straw-colour than white, worked grotesquely as if under the influence
of some strong emotion that she was trying to suppress. At length she
said, in a chill, husky voice,

"Jenny has left me."

"Left you--why?"

"She was taken away from me. She was taken back to the sin from which I
hoped I had rescued her."

"Oh, mother! By whom?"

Mrs. Ardagh put her handkerchief to her eyes.

"William Foster," she answered.

Catherine felt cold and numb.

"William Foster--I don't understand," she said slowly.

Mrs. Ardagh rolled and unrolled her handkerchief with trembling fingers.

"She got hold of that book--that black, wicked book," she said, and
there was a sort of fury in her voice. "It upset her faith. It tarnished
her moral sense. It reminded her of the--the man from whose influence I
had drawn her. All her imagination was set in a flame by that hateful
chapter."

"Which one?" Catherine asked.

Mrs. Ardagh mentioned the chapter which Catherine had most hated, most
admired, and most feared.

"I fought with William Foster for Jenny's soul," she said, passionately.
"But I am not clever. I have no power. I am getting old and tired. She
cried. She said she loved me, but that goodness was not for her, that
she must go, that life was calling her, that she must live--live!
William Foster had shown her death and she thought it life. I always
knew that in Jenny good and evil were fighting, that her fate was
trembling in the balance. That book turned the scale."

She sobbed heavily, then with a catch of her breath, she added,

"William Foster is a very wicked man."

Catherine flushed all over her face. But she said nothing. That night
she told Mark of Jenny's fate. She expected him to be grieved. But he
was not.

"An author who respects his art cannot consider every hysterical girl
while he is writing," he said. "And, besides, it is only your mother's
idea that she was influenced by my book. Long ago she showed you the
bent of her mind."

"But, Mark, don't you remember how that chapter struck me when you first
read it to me?"

"I remember that you thought it the finest chapter in the book, and you
were right, Kitty. You've got artistic discernment, like your father.
Berrand and you would get