he
hotel. More than one had spoken to her, attracted by this handsome,
striking, and probably wealthy woman--through Ellen's influence her
appearance had been purged of what was merely startling--but they either
took fright at her broad marsh accent ... "she must be somebody's cook
come into a fortune" ... or the more fundamental incompatibility of
outlook kept them at a distance. Joanna was not the person for the
niceties of hotel acquaintanceship--she was too garrulous, too
overwhelming. Also she failed to realize that all states of society are
not equally interested in the price of wheat, that certain details of
sheep-breeding seem indelicate to the uninitiated, and that strangers do
not really care how many acres one possesses, how many servants one
keeps, or the exact price one paid for one's latest churn.

Sec.12

The last few days of her stay brought her a rather ignominious sense of
relief. In her secret heart she was eagerly waiting till she should be
back at Ansdore, eating her dinner with Ellen, sleeping in her own bed,
ordering about her own servants. She would enjoy, too, telling everyone
about her exploits, all the excursions she had made, the food she had
eaten, the fine folk she had spoken to in the lounge, the handsome
amount she had spent in tips.... They would all ask her whether she felt
much the better for her holiday, and she was uncertain what to answer
them. A complete recovery might make her less interesting; on the other
hand she did not want anyone to think she had come back half-cured
because of the expense ... that was just the sort of thing Mrs.
Southland would imagine, and Southland would take it straight to the
Woolpack.

Her own feelings gave her no clue. Her appetite had much improved, but,
against that, she was sleeping badly--which she partly attributed to the
"noise"--and was growing, probably on account of her idle days,
increasingly restless. She found it difficult to settle down to
anything--the hours in the hotel lounge after dinner, which used to be
comfortably drowsy after the day of sea-air, were now a long stretch of
boredom, from which she went up early to bed, knowing that she would not
sleep. The band played on the parade every evening, but Joanna
considered that it would be unseemly for her to go out alone in
Marlingate after dark. Though she would have walked out on the Brodnyx
road at midnight without putting the slightest strain on either her
courage or her d