as good. The sunshine was coming into the room, a spill of misty gold
on the floor and furniture, and from where she lay she could see the
green boundaries of the Marsh. Oh, it would be terrible when she saw
that Marsh no more ... the tears rose, and she turned her face to the
pillow. It was all over now--all her ambition, all her success, all the
greatness of Joanna Godden. She had made Ansdore great and prosperous
though she was a woman, and then she had lost it because she was a
woman.... Words that she had uttered long ago came back into her mind.
She saw herself standing in the dairy, in front of Martha Tilden, whose
face she had forgotten. She was saying: "It's sad to think you've kept
yourself straight for years and then gone wrong at last...."

Yes, it was sad ... and now she was being punished for it; but wrapped
up in her punishment, sweetening its very heart, was a comfort she did
not deserve. Ansdore was slowly fading in her thoughts, as it had
always faded in the presence of any vital instinct, whether of love or
death. Ansdore could never be to her what her child would be--none of
her men, except perhaps Martin, could have been to her what her child
would be.... "If it's a boy I'll call it Martin--if it's a girl I'll
call it Ellen," he said to herself. Then she doubted whether Ellen
would appreciate the compliment ... but she would not let herself
think of Ellen to-night. That was to-morrow's evil.

"I'll have to make some sort of a plan, though--I'll have to sell this
place and give Ellen a share of it. And me--where ull I go?"

She must go pretty far, so that when the child came Brodnyx and Pedlinge
would not get to know about it. She would have to go at least as far as
Brighton ... then she remembered Martha Relf and her lodgings at
Chichester--"that wouldn't be bad, to go to Martha just for a start. Me
leaving Ansdore for the same reason as she left it thirteen year ago ...
that's queer. The mistress who got shut of her, coming to her and
saying--'Look here, Martha, take me in, so's I can have my child in
peace same as you had yours' ... I should ought to get some stout money
for this farm--eight thousand pounds if it's eightpence--though reckon
the Government ull want about half of it and we'll have all that
terrification started again ... howsumever, I guess I'll get enough of
it to live on, even when Ellen has her bit ... and maybe the folk around
here ull think I'm sold up because my case has bust