She knew within herself that she owed a great deal to Joanna’s protection—­for Joanna was the chief power in the parishes of Brodnyx and Pedlinge, both personally and territorially.  Ellen had been wise beyond the wisdom of despair when she came home.  She was not unhappy in her life at Ansdore, for her escapade had given her a queer advantage over her sister, and she now found that she could to a certain extent, mould the household routine to her comfort.  She was no longer entirely dominated, and only a small amount of independence was enough to satisfy her, a born submitter, to whom contrivance was more than rule.  She wanted only freedom for her tastes and pleasures, and Joanna did not now strive to impose her own upon her.  Occasionally the younger woman complained of her lot, bound to a man whom she no longer cared for, wearing only the fetters of her wifehood—­she still hankered after a divorce, though Arthur must be respondent.  This always woke Joanna to rage, but Ellen’s feelings did not often rise to the surface, and on the whole the sisters were happy in their life together—­more peaceful because they were more detached than in the old days.  Ellen invariably wore black, hoping that strangers and newcomers would take her for a widow.

This she actually became towards the close of the year 1910.  Arthur did a fair amount of hunting with his brother in the shires, and one day his horse came down at a fence, throwing him badly and fracturing his skull.  He died the same night without regaining consciousness—­death had treated him better on the whole than life, for he died without pain or indignity, riding to hounds like any squire.  He left a comfortable little fortune, too—­Donkey Street and its two hundred acres—­and he left it all to Joanna.

Secretly he had made his will anew soon after going to the shires, and in it he had indulged himself, ignoring reality and perhaps duty.  Evidently he had had no expectations of a return to married life with Ellen, and in this new testament he ignored her entirely, as if she had not been.  Joanna was his wife, inheriting all that was his, of land and money and live and dead stock—­“My true, trusty friend, Joanna Godden.”

Ellen was furious, and Joanna herself was a little shocked.  She understood Arthur’s motives—­she guessed that one of his reasons for passing over Ellen had been his anxiety to leave her sister dependent on her, knowing her fear that she would take flight.  But this exaltation of her by his death to the place she had refused to occupy during his life, gave her a queer sense of smart and shame.  For the first time it struck her that she might not have treated Arthur quite well....

However, she did not sympathize with Ellen’s indignation—­

“You shouldn’t ought to have expected a penny, the way you treated him.”

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t have left me at least some furniture, seeing there was about five hundred pounds of my money in that farm.  He’s done rather well out of me on the whole—­making me no allowance whatever when he was alive.”