t Rye and Lydd and Romney the farmers had given up expecting Arthur
Alce to come round the corner on his grey horse, with samples of wheat
or prices of tegs. At Ansdore, too, the breach was healed. Joanna and
Ellen lived quietly together, sharing their common life without
explosions. Joanna had given up all idea of "having things out" with
Ellen. There was always a bit of pathos about Joanna's surrenders, and
in this case Ellen had certainly beaten her. It was rather difficult to
say exactly to what the younger sister owed her victory, but undoubtedly
she had won it, and their life was in a measure based upon it. Joanna
accepted her sister--past and all; she accepted her little calm
assumptions of respectability together with those more expected
tendencies towards the "French." When Ellen had first come back, she had
been surprised and resentful to see how much she took for granted in the
way of acceptance, not only from Joanna but from the neighbours.
According to her ideas, Ellen should have kept in shamed seclusion till
public opinion called her out of it, and she had been alarmed at her
assumptions, fearing rebuff, just as she had almost feared heaven's
lightning stroke for that demure little figure in her pew on Sunday,
murmuring "Lord have mercy" without tremor or blush.

But heaven had not smitten and the neighbours had not snubbed. In some
mysterious way Ellen had won acceptance from the latter, whatever her
secret relations with the former may have been. The stories about her
grew ever more and more charitable. The Woolpack pronounced that Arthur
Alce would not have gone away "if it had been all on her side," and it
was now certainly known that Mrs. Williams had been at San Remo....
Ellen's manner was found pleasing--"quiet but affable." Indeed, in this
respect she had much improved. The Southlands took her up, forgiving her
treatment of their boy, now comfortably married to the daughter of a big
Folkestone shopkeeper. They found her neither brazen nor shamefaced--and
she'd been as shocked as any honest woman at Lady Mountain's trial in
the Sunday papers ... if folk only knew her real story, they'd probably
find....

In fact, Ellen was determined to get her character back.

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