"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?"