“I couldn’t bear to live that life again, especially after what’s happened.  It’s not his fault—­it’s simply that I’m different.  If he wants his freedom, I suggest that he should let me divorce him—­it could easily be arranged.  He should go and see a really good lawyer in London.”

Yes—­Ellen spoke truly when she said that she was “different.”  Her cavalier dealings with the situation, the glib way she spoke of divorce, the insult she flung at the respectable form of Huxtable, Vidler and Huxtable by suggesting that Arthur should consult “a really good lawyer in London,” all showed how far she had travelled from the ways of Walland Marsh.

“What’s she after now?” asked Joanna.

“Reckon they’re getting tired of each other.”

“She don’t say so.”

“No—­she wants to find out which way the land lays first.”

“I’ll write and tell her she can come back and live along of me, if she won’t go to you.”

“Then I’ll have to be leaving these parts—­I couldn’t be at Donkey Street and her at Ansdore.”

“Reckon you could—­she can go out of the way when you call.”

“It wouldn’t be seemly.”

“Where ud you go?”

“I’ve no notion.  But reckon all this ain’t the question yet.  Ellen won’t come back to you no more than she’ll come back to me.”

“She’ll just about have to come if she gets shut of the Old Squire, seeing as she’s got no more than twelve pounds a year of her own.  Reckon poor father was a wise man when he left Ansdore to me and not to both of us—­you’d almost think he’d guessed what she was coming to.”

Joanna wrote to Ellen and made her offer.  Her sister wrote back at great length, and rather pathetically—­“Harry” was going on to Venice, and she did not think she would go with him—­“when one gets to know a person, Jo, one sometimes finds they are not quite what one thought them.”  She would like to be by herself for a bit, but she did not want to come back to Ansdore, even if Arthur went away—­“it would be very awkward after what has happened.”  She begged Jo to be generous and make her some small allowance—­“Harry would provide for me if he hadn’t had such terrible bad luck—­he never was very well off, you know, and he can’t manage unless we keep together.  I know you wouldn’t like me to be tied to him just by money considerations.”

Joanna was bewildered by the letter.  She could have understood Ellen turning in horror and loathing from the partner of her guilt, but she could not understand this wary and matter-of-fact separation.  What was her sister made of?  “Harry would provide for me” ... would she really have accepted such a provision?  Joanna’s ears grew red.  “I’ll make her come home,” she exclaimed savagely—­“she’ll have to come if she’s got no money.”

“Maybe she’ll stop along of him,” said Arthur.

“Then let her—­I don’t care.  But she shan’t have my money to live on by herself in foreign parts, taking up with any man that comes her way; for I don’t trust her now—­I reckon she’s lost to shame.”