id="pgepubid00008">SAINT-MICHAEL AND THE WONDER-CHILD

Day by day her husband's complete estrangement from her was rendered additionally bitter to Diane by Catherine's complacent air of triumph. The latter knew that she had won, severed the tie which bound her brother to "the foreign dancing-woman," and she did not scruple to let Diane see that she openly rejoiced in the fact.

At first Diane imagined that Catherine might rest content with what she had accomplished, but the grim, hard-featured woman still continued to exhibit the same self-righteous disapproval towards her brother's wife as hitherto.

Diane endured it in resentful silence for a time, but one day, stung by some more than usually acid speech of Catherine's, she turned on her, demanding passionately why she seemed to hate her even more since the birth of the child.

"I nearly gave my life for her," she protested with fierce simplicity. "I could do no more! Is it because le bon dieu has sent me a little daughter instead of a little son that you hate me so much?"

And Catherine had answered her in a voice of quiet, concentrated animosity:

"If you had died then—died childless—I should have thanked God day and night."

Diane, isolated and unhappy, turned to her baby for consolation. It was all that was left to her out of the wreck of her life, and the very fact that both Hugh and Catherine seemed to regard the little daughter with abhorrence only served to strengthen the passionate worship which she herself lavished upon her.

The child—they had called her Magda—was an odd little creature, as might have been expected from the violently opposing characteristics of her parents.

She was slenderly made—built on the same lithe lines as her mother—and almost as soon as she was able to walk she manifested an amazing balance and suppleness of limb. By the time she was four years old she was trying to imitate, with uncertain little feet and dimpled, aimlessly waving arms, the movements of her mother, when to amuse the child, she would sometimes dance for her.

However big a tragedy had occurred in Magda's small world—whether it were a crack across the insipid china face of a favourite doll or the death of an adored Persian kitten—there was still balm in Gilead if "petite maman" would but dance for her. The tears shining in big drops on her cheeks, her small chest still heaving with the sobs that were a passionate protest against unkind fate, Magda would sit on the floor entranced, watching with adoring eyes every swift, graceful motion of the dancer, and murmuring in the quaint shibboleth of French and English she had imbibed from old Virginie.

On one of these occasions Hugh came upon the two unexpectedly and brought the performance to a summary conclusion.

"That will do, Diane," he said icily. "I should have thought you would have had more self-respect than to dance—in that fashion—in front of a child."

"It is, then, a sin to dance—as it is to be married?" demanded Diane bitterly, abruptly checked in an exquisite spring-flower dance of her own invention.

"I forbid it; that is sufficient," replied Hugh sternly.

His assumption of arrogant superiority was unbearable. Diane's self-control wavered under it and broke. She turned and upbraided him despairingly, alternately pleading and reproaching, battering all her slender forces uselessly against his inflexible determination.

"This is a waste of time, Diane—mine, anyway," he told her. And left her shaken with grief and anger.

Driven by a sense of utter revolt, she stormed her way to Catherine, who was composedly sorting sheets in the linen room.

"I will not bear it!" she burst out at her furiously. "What have I done that I should be treated as an outcast—a pariah?"

Catherine regarded the tense, quivering little figure with chill dislike.

"You married my brother," she replied imperturbably.

"And you have separated us! But for you, we should be happy together—he and baby and I! But you have spoilt it all. I suppose"—a hint of the Latin Quarter element in her asserting itself—"I suppose you think no one good enough to marry into your precious family!"

Catherine paused on her way to the cupboard, a pile of fine linen pillowslips in her hands.

"Yes," she said quietly. "It is I who have separated you—spoilt your happiness, if you like. And I am glad of it. I can't expect anyone like you to understand"—there was the familiar flavour of disparagement in her tones—"but I am thankful that my brother has seen the wickedness of his marriage with you, that he has repented of it, and that he is making the only atonement possible!"

She turned and composedly laid the pile of pillowslips in their appointed place on the shelf. A faint fragrance of dried lavender drifted out from the dark depths of the cupboard. Diane always afterwards associated the smell of lavender with her memories of Catherine Vallincourt, and the sweet, clean scent of it was spoiled for her henceforward.

"I hate you!" she exclaimed in a low voice of helpless rage. "I hate you—and I wish to God Hugh had never had a sister!"

"Well"—composedly—"he will not have one much longer."

Diane stared.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that as far as our life together is concerned, it is very nearly over."

"Do you mean"—Diane bent towards her breathlessly—"do you mean that you are going away—going away from Coverdale?"

"Yes. I am entering a sisterhood—that of the Sisters of Penitence, a community Hugh is endowing with money that is urgently needed."

"Endowing?"

"As part of the penance he has set himself to perform." Catherine's steely glance met and held the younger woman's. "Thanks to you, the remainder of his life will be passed in expiation."

Diane shook her head carelessly. Such side-issues were of relatively small importance compared with the one outstanding, amazing fact: Catherine was going away! Going away from Coverdale—for ever!

"Yes"—Catherine read her thoughts shrewdly—"yes, you will be rid of me. I shall not be here much longer."

Diane struck her hands together. For once, not even the fear of Catherine's gibing tongue could hold her silent.

"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 their child was concerned. He was unnecessarily severe with her, and, since Diane opposed his strict ruling at every opportunity, Magda's early life was passed in an atmosphere of fierce contradictions.

The child inherited her mother's beauty to the full, and,