After some ten days of anxiety, self-consciousness, shame and exasperation, these suspicions were confirmed by a letter from the Squire himself. He wrote from Oepedaletti, a small place near San Remo, and he wrote charmingly. No other adverb could qualify the peculiarly suave, tactful, humorous and gracious style in which not only he flung a mantle of romance over his and Ellen's behaviour (which till then, judged by the standards of Ansdore, had been just drably "wicked"), but by some mysterious means brought in Joanna as a third conspirator, linked by a broad and kindly intuition with himself and Ellen against a censorious world.
"You, who know Ellen so well, will realize that she has never till now had her birthright. You did your best for her, but both of you were bounded north, south, east and west by Walland Marsh. I wish you could see her now, beside me on the terrace—she is like a little finch in the sunshine of its first spring day. Her only trouble is her fear of you, her fear that you will not understand. But I tell her I would trust you first of all the world to do that. As a woman of the world, you must realize exactly what public opinion is worth—if you yourself had bowed down to it, where would you be now? Ellen is only doing now what you did for yourself eleven years ago."
Joanna's feelings were divided between gratification at the flattery she never could resist, and a fierce resentment at the insult offered her in supposing she could ever wink at such "goings on." The more indignant emotions predominated in the letter she wrote Sir Harry, for she knew well enough that the flattery was not sincere—he was merely out to propitiate.
Her feelings towards Ellen were exceedingly bitter, and the letter she wrote her was a rough one:—
"You're nothing but a baggage. It makes no difference that you wear fine clothes and shoes that he's bought you to your shame. You're just every bit as low as Martha Tilden whom I got shut of ten year ago for no worse than you've done."
Nevertheless, she insisted that Ellen should come home. She guaranteed Arthur's forgiveness, and—somewhat rashly—the neighbours' discretion. "I've told them you're in London with Mrs. Williams. But that won't hold good much more than another week. So be quick and come home, before it's too late."
Unfortunately the facts of Ellen's absence were already beginning to leak out. People did not believe in the London story. Had not the Old Squire's visits to Donkey Street been the tattle of the Marsh for six months? She was condemned not only at the Woolpack, but at the three markets of Rye, Lydd and Romney. Joanna was furious.
"It's that Post Office," she exclaimed, and the remark was not quite unjust. The contents of telegrams had always had an alarming way of spreading themselves over the district, and Joanna felt sure that Miss Godfrey would have both made and published her own conclusions on the large amount of foreign correspondence now received at Ansdore.
Ellen herself was the next to write. She wrote impenitently and decidedly. She would never come back, so there was no good either Joanna or Arthur expecting it. She had left Donkey Street because she could not endure its cramped ways any longer, and it was unreasonable to expect her to return.
"If Arthur has any feeling for me left, he will divorce me. He can easily do it, and then we shall both be free to re-marry."