"I'm glad--glad--_glad_ you're going away!" she exclaimed passionately.
"When you are gone I will win back my husband."

"Do you think so?" was all she said.

But to Diane's keyed-up consciousness it was as though the four short
words contained a threat--the germ of future disaster.



In due time Catherine quitted Coverdale for the austere seclusion of
the sisterhood, and a very few weeks sufficed to convince Diane that her
forebodings had been only too well founded.

Catherine had long been anxious to enter a community, restrained from
doing so solely by Hugh's need of her as mistress of his house, and
now that her wish was an accomplished fact, it seemed as though he
were spurred on to increasing effort by the example of his sister's
renunciation of the world. He withdrew himself even more completely from
his wife, sometimes avoiding her company for days at a time, and adopted
a stringently ascetic mode of life, denying himself all pleasure,
fasting frequently, and praying and meditating for hours at a stretch
in the private chapel which was attached to Coverdale. As far as it was
possible, without actually entering a community, his existence resembled
that of a monk, and Diane came to believe that he had voluntarily vowed
himself to a certain form of penance and expiation for the marriage
which the bigotry of his nature had led him to regard as a sin.

His life only impinged upon his wife's in so far as the upbringing of