Part 40

"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.

"Mother," she said, "William Foster is coming. Do you feel that you can see him?"

Mrs. Ardagh was perfectly conscious, although so near death.

"Yes," she said. "God means me to give him a message--God means me."

She lay silent; Catherine sat by her. Presently she spoke again.

"I shall convince him," she said quietly. "That is meant. If I did not God would strike him down. He would be cut off. But I shall make him know himself."

And then she repeated, with a sort of feeble but intense conviction,

"If I did not God would strike him down--yes--yes."

Something--perhaps the fact that her mother was so near death, so close to that great secret,--made her words, faltering though they were, go home to Catherine with the most extraordinary poignancy, as words had never gone before. She felt that it was true, that there was no alternative. Either Mark must be convinced now, by this bedside, in this hot, dark room from which a soul was passing, or he would, by some accident, by some sudden means, be swept away from the world that he was injuring, that he was poisoning.

Mrs. Ardagh seemed to grow more feeble with every moment that passed. And suddenly a great fear overtook Catherine, the dread that Mark would come too late, and then--God's other means! She trembled, and strained her ears to catch the sound of wheels. Mrs. Ardagh now seemed to be sinking into sleep--Catherine strove to rouse her. She stirred and said, "What is it?" in a voice that sounded peevish.

Just then there was a gentle tap on the door. Catherine sprang up, and hastened to it with a fast beating heart. Mr. Ardagh stood there.

"How is she?" he whispered.

"I think she is not in pain. She is just resting. Has Mark come?"