No, she would do her best.  Possibly she could arrange things so as to protect, at least to a certain extent, the name her baby was to bear.  She would have to give up Ansdore, of course—­leave Walland Marsh ... her spirit quailed, but she braced it fiercely.  She was going through with this—­it was the only thing Lawrence had told her that she could do—­go softly all her days—­to the very end.  That end was farther and bitterer than either he or she had imagined then, but she would not have to go all the way alone.  A child—­that was what she had always wanted; she had tried to fill her heart with other things, with Ansdore, with Ellen, with men ... but what she had always wanted had been a child—­she saw that now.  Her child should have been born in easy, honourable circumstances, with a kind father—­Arthur Alce, perhaps, since it could not be Martin Trevor.  But the circumstances of its birth were her doing, and it was she who would face them.  The circumstances only were her sin and shame, her undying regret—­since she knew she could not keep them entirely to herself—­the rest was joy and thrilling, vital peace.

The little train pulled itself together, and ran on into Brodnyx station.  Joanna climbed down on the wooden platform, and signalled to the porter-stationmaster to take out her box.

“What, you back, Miss Godden!” he said, “we wasn’t expecting you.”

“No, I’ve come back pretty sudden.  Do you know if there’s any traps going over Pedlinge way?”

“There’s Mrs. Furnese come over to fetch a crate of fowls.  Maybe she’d give you a lift.”

“I’ll ask her,” said Joanna.

Mrs. Furnese, too, was much surprised to see her back, but she said nothing about it, partly because she was a woman of few words, and partly because they’d all seen in the paper this morning that Joanna had lost her case—­and reckon she must be properly upset.  Maybe that was why she had come back....

“Would you like to drive?” she asked Joanna, when they had taken their seats in Misleham’s ancient gig, with the crate of fowls behind them.  She felt rather shy of handling the reins under Joanna Godden’s eye, for everyone knew that Joanna drove like a Jehu, something tur’ble.

But the great woman shook her head.  She felt tired, she said, with the heat.  So Mrs. Furnese drove, and Joanna sat silently beside her, watching her thick brown hand on the reins, with the wedding ring embedded deep in the gnarled finger.

“Reckon she’s properly upset with that case,” thought the married woman to herself, “and sarve her right for bringing it.  She could easily have paid them missionaries, with all the money she had.  But it was ever Joanna’s way to make a terrification.”

They jogged on over the winding, white ribbon of road—­through Brodnyx village, past the huge barn-like church which had both inspired and reproached her faith, with its black, caped tower canting over it, on to Walland Marsh, to the cross roads at the Woolpack—­My, how they would talk at the Woolpack!... but she would be far away by then ... where?...  She didn’t know, she would think of that later—­when she had told Ellen.  Oh, there would be trouble—­there would be the worst she’d ever have to swallow—­when she told Ellen....