Ellen’s marriage broke into Joanna’s life quite as devastatingly as Martin’s death.  Though for more than three years her sister had been away at school, with an ever-widening gulf of temperament between herself and the farm, and though since her return she had been little better at times than a rebellious and sulky stranger, nevertheless she was a part of Ansdore, a part of Joanna’s life there, and the elder sister found it difficult to adjust things to her absence.

Of course Ellen had not gone very far—­Donkey Street was not five miles from Ansdore, though in a different parish and a different county.  But the chasm between them was enormous—­it was queer to think that a mere change of roof-tree could make such a difference.  No doubt the reason was that with Ellen it had involved an entire change of habit.  While she lived with Joanna she had been bound both by the peculiarities of her sister’s nature and her own to accept her way of living.  She had submitted, not because she was weak or gentle-minded but because submission was an effective weapon of her welfare; now, having no further use for it, she ruled instead and was another person.  She was, besides, a married woman, and the fact made all the difference to Ellen herself.  She felt herself immeasurably older and wiser than Joanna, her teacher and tyrant.  Her sister’s life seemed to her puerile....  Ellen had at last read the riddle of the universe and the secret of wisdom.

The sisters’ relations were also a little strained over Arthur Alce.  Joanna resented the authority that Ellen assumed—­it took some time to show her that Arthur was no longer hers.  She objected when Ellen made him shave off his moustache and whiskers; he looked ten years younger and a far handsomer man, but he was no longer the traditional Arthur Alce of Joanna’s history, and she resented it.  Ellen on her part resented the way Joanna still made use of him, sending him to run errands and make inquiries for her just as she used in the old days before his marriage.  “Arthur, I hear there’s some good pigs going at Honeychild auction—­I can’t miss market at Lydd, but you might call round and have a look for me.”  Or “Arthur, I’ve a looker’s boy coming from Abbot’s Court—­you might go there for his characters, I haven’t time, with the butter-making to-day and Mene Tekel such an owl.”

Ellen rebelled at seeing her husband ordered about, and more than once “told off” her sister, but Joanna had no intention of abandoning her just claims in Arthur, and the man himself was pig-headed—­“I mun do what I can for her, just as I used.”  Ellen could make him shave off his whiskers, she could even make him on occasion young and fond and frolicsome, but she could not make him stop serving Joanna, or, had she only known it, stop loving her.  Arthur was perfectly happy as Ellen’s husband, and made her, as Joanna had foretold, an exemplary one, but his love for Joanna seemed to grow rather than diminish as he cared for and worked for and protected her sister.  It seemed to feed and thrive on his love for Ellen—­it gave him a wonderful sense of action and effectiveness, and people said what a lot of good marriage had done for Arthur Alce, and that he was no longer the dull chap he used to be.