Page:Marie Corelli - the writer and the woman (IA mariecorelliwrit00coat).pdf/187

 the wager, for the mad young Viscount blows out his brains that night. Such is the history—less only the last specific bet—of many a young aristocrat's suicide.

In the furtherance of his marriage scheme, Tempest purchases Willowsmere Court, in Warwickshire, a place which, in his palmy days, the Earl of Elton had owned, but which had subsequently got into the hands of the Jews. Near to Willowsmere lives Mavis Clare, the good angel of the story. It has been said "in print," and it is popularly believed even now, notwithstanding positive denial, that Mavis Clare was intended to portray Miss Marie Corelli. It was an unwarrantable and unfair suggestion, because it implied to Miss Corelli that gross libel, often falsely attributed to her, of vanity and self-advertisement. In very truth, if she were vain it would be a sin easy to condone in one who has achieved so much. Yet, happily, she is so true a woman that vanity has no part in her character, and she is incapable of deliberately applying to herself the Mavis Clare description.

In the Review of Reviews it was stated: "A leading figure in 'The Sorrows of Satan' is none other than the authoress herself, Marie Corelli, who, like Lucifer, the Son of Morning, also appears under a disguise. But it is a disguise so transparent