THE SEED OF EVIL Diane sat in the twilight, brooding.

Winter had come round again, gripping the world with icy fingers, and she shivered a little as she crouched in front of the fire.
She felt cold--cold in body and soul.

The passage of time had brought no cheery warmth of love or loving-kindness to her starved heart, and the estrangement between herself and Hugh was as definite and absolute as it had been the day Catherine quitted Coverdale for the Sisterhood of Penitence.
But the years which had elapsed since then had taken their inevitable toll.

Hugh had continued along the lines he had laid down for himself, rigidly ascetic and austere, and his mode of life now revealed itself unmistakably in his thin, emaciated face and eyes ablaze with fanatical fervour.
Diane, thrust into a compulsory isolation utterly foreign to her temperament, debarred the fulfilment of her womanhood which her spontaneous, impetuous nature craved, had drooped and pined, gradually losing both her buoyant spirit and her health in the loveless atmosphere to which her husband had condemned her.
She had so counted on the prospect that a better understanding between herself and Hugh would ensue after Catherine's departure that the downfall of her hopes had come upon her as a bitter disappointment.

Once she had stifled her pride and begged him to live no longer as a stranger to her.