"Her soul was trembling in the balance," said Mrs. Ardagh, striking her thin hand excitedly on the table. "That book turned the scale. She went down. Tell him of her, Mr. Berrand, tell him of the ruin of that poor child. It may influence him."
"I'm afraid not," said Berrand, with a glance at Mark. "William Foster is an artist."
"It is terrible that he should be permitted to work such evil," said Mrs. Ardagh.
During that summer a vague and hollow darkness seemed to brood round the life of Catherine. It stood behind the glory of the golden days. She felt night even at noontide, and a damp mist floated mysteriously to her out of the very heart of the sun. Yet she had some happy, or at least some feverishly excited, moments, for Berrand was generally staying with them, and Catherine—abnormally sensitive as she always was to her undoing,—came under his curious influence and caught some of his enthusiasm for the talent of "William Foster."
Once again Mark began to speak to her of his work, to read parts of it aloud to both his companions. And there were evenings when Catherine, carried away by the intellectual joy of the two men, exulted with them in the horrible fascination of the book and in the intensity of its dramatic force. But, when these moments were over, and she was gone, she brooded darkly over her mother's words. For she knew that the book was evil. Like a snake it carried poison with it, and, presently, it was going to carry that poison out from this house in the woods, out into the world. Ah! the poor world, on which a thousand things preyed, in which a thousand snakes set their poisoned fangs!
And then she wept. Mark and Berrand were eagerly talking of the snake, praising its lustrous skin, marvelling at its jewelled eyes, foretelling its lithe progress through Society. She heard the murmur of their voices until far into the night. And sometimes she thought that distant murmur sounded like the hum of evil, or like the furtive whisper of conspirators.
Berrand did not leave them until the new book was nearly finished. As he pressed Catherine's hand in farewell he said,
"You will have a sensational autumn, Mrs. Sirrett."
"Sensational. Why?" she asked.
"London will ring with William Foster's name. My word how the Journalists will curse! They protect the morality of the nation you know—on paper."