In 1870, a long and severe illness, which compelled her return to her mother's house at Hastings to be nursed, led to her entry upon another phase in her inner life, and a further stage in the process of her education for her mission. She had early recoiled from the faith in which she had been reared. This was Protestantism in its most unlovely form, cold, harsh, narrow, dogmatic. Her closer acquaintance with it as a clergyman's wife had done nothing to mitigate her judgment of it. Explaining nothing and lacking fervour and poetry, it left head and heart alike unsatisfied. Her residence as an invalid at Hastings brought her into intimacy with some devout Catholics, the effect of which was to intensify the repugnance already set up. She attended the Catholic services, and visited the sisters in the convent, reading their books of devotion and even making an extended study of Catholic doctrine, for she would do nothing by halves. She found what satisfied her heart and artistic tastes. But the chief determining cause of the change upon which she at length resolved, was her reception by night of sundry visitations, purporting to be of angelic nature, and enjoining on her, for the sake of the mission to which she was called--the knowledge of which, she was told, would in due time be revealed to her--that she join the Roman communion. Well aware that the confession of such experiences, whether to her relations or to a minister of her own Church, would elicit only a smile of pity or contempt, with a recommendation to seek medical advice, and involve other contingencies equally distasteful, she resolved to see how the same confession would be treated by a Catholic priest. The result of the essay was that she was listened to with respect and sympathy, and informed that the Church fully recognised such visitations as coming within the divine order, and as being a token of high spiritual favour and grace; and while it refrained from pronouncing positively on them, considered that they ought not to be lightly disregarded. She was soon afterwards received into the Roman Church, being baptised on September 14, 1870. On June 9, 1872, she was confirmed by Archbishop Manning, who admonished her to utilise her attractions in making converts. And on each occasion she received additional names, in virtue of which she now bore the names of all the five women who were by the Cross and at the Sepulchre.