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Sirrett," Jenny said, more hardily, "I don't know why it is. I admire and love goodness, yes, as your mother who's a saint, I think does. But I'll tell you frankly that I think it's often very dull to read about. Don't you think so?" She blushed again, and let the heavy white lids droop over her eyes, which had glittered almost like the eyes of a fever patient while she was speaking.
Those who knew him casually, even many who knew him well, considered that he was easily read, that he was transparently frank, that, though highly intelligent, he was not particularly subtle, and that no still waters ran deep in Mark Sirrett. All these people were utterly wrong.
Sirrett." "Perhaps. But I was asking your opinion." It struck Catherine that Jenny had her opinion and was scarcely as compliant as Mr. Ardagh evidently supposed her to be. At Catherine's last remark Jenny glanced up. The two girls looked into each other's eyes, and, in Jenny's, Catherine thought she saw a flickering defiance. "I was asking your opinion," she repeated. "Well, Mrs.
"My dear Mrs. Sirrett, we want originality and imagination." "Yes, indeed. But can't they be sane and healthy?" "Was Gautier healthy when he wrote of the Priest and of the Vampire? This book Mark is writing will be awful in its intensity. It will make the world turn cold. It is terrible. People will shudder at it." He walked about the room enthusiastically.
Sirrett," he said one evening, when Mark was working he had taken to working at night now as well as in the morning "your husband will do great things. He will found a school. The young men will be captivated by his sombre genius, and we shall have less of the thoughtless rubbish that the journalist loves and calls sane, healthy, and all the rest of it." "But surely sanity and health "
He glanced at her number, consulted his catalogue, and found that this woman was named Catherine Sirrett, and that she had been convicted of the murder of her husband by poison some few years before. Then he looked at her again and, before this criminal, he felt that she might, nay, must, have deceived any man, the most acute and enlightened observer.
Mark Sirrett was light-hearted, gay, and the kindest, most thoughtful husband in the world. When they came back to London, Catherine went at once to see her mother. Mr. 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.
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." He was gone.
"God," she continued, after a moment of silence, "may choose to use a man or woman as an agent instead of a disease." "Oh, well," said Berrand, with his odd, high laugh, "I cannot go with you on that road of thought, Mrs. Sirrett. I am not afflicted with a religion. Oh, here's Mark. How have you been getting on, Mr. William Foster?" "Grandly," he replied.
Both the Puritanism of her mother and the paganism of her father were destined to play their parts in the guidance of her strange and terrible destiny. Mark Sirrett, when he married Catherine, was twenty-five, dark, handsome, warm-hearted and rich. It seemed that he had an exceptionally sweet and attractive nature.
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