The Evil Genius is the story of divorce and remarriage, unfaithfulness, but above all, children battered helplessly on the storms of their parents' passions. Kitty is the child of Herbert and Catherine Linley, a spoiled, coddled little girl who is at the same time, in the tradition of all Victorian children, adorable. The Evil Genius begins with the story of the Kitty's ill-fated governess Sydney Westerfield, a girl thrown aside in the grand tradition of Jane Eyre and David Copperfield.