"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 if God sent it to me. What can I do? How can I send to William Foster? I don't know where he is. Could that Mr. Berrand----?" "Mother," Catherine said. "Leave it to me, I will bring William Foster to you." She was trembling. But the invalid, exhausted with the excitement of the conversation, was growing drowsy. She sank down again in her pillows. "Yes," she murmured. "I--might--tell--him--William Foster." She slept heavily. "Mark," Catherine said to her husband the next day. "Mother is dying. She can only live a very few days." "Oh, Kitty! How grieved I am!" His face was full of the most tender sympathy. He took her hand gently and kissed her. "My Kitty, how will you bear this great sorrow?" "Mark," Catherine said, and her voice sounded curiously strained. "Mother wants very much to see you, before she dies. She has something to say to you. I think she cares more about seeing you than about anything else in the world." Mark looked surprised. "I will go to her at once," he said. "What can it be? Ah, it must be something about you." "No, I don't think so." "What then?" "She will tell you, Mark. It is better she should tell you herself." "I will go to her then. I will go now." "Wait a moment"--Catherine was very pale--"Promise me, Mark, that you won't--you won't be angry if--if mother--you will----" She stopped. Her emotion was painful. Mark was more and more puzzled. "Angry with your mother? At such a time!" he said. "No--you wouldn't. I am upset. I am foolish. Let me go first to tell her you are coming. Follow me in a few minutes." She went out leaving her husband amazed. When she arrived in Eaton Square Mr. Ardagh met her in the hall. "She is worse," he said. "Much worse. The end cannot be far off." "The beginning," Catherine said, looking him straight in the eyes. He understood then which parental spirit had conquered the spirit of the child, and he smiled--sadly or gladly? He hardly knew. So strangely does death play with us all. Catherine went upstairs into her mother's room, which was dim and very hot. She shut the door, sent away the nurse, and went up to the bedside.