Joan rose slowly and went with swimming brain to her room. She still held her picture and her money. She took off her wet clothes, then sat down upon her bed to think; and as her mind grew clear, there crept through the gloomy shadows of the past tragedy a joy. It lightened her heart a moment, then vanished again, like the moon blotted suddenly from the sky by a rack of storm-cloud. Joan was full of the stupendous news. The shock of hearing her most unsuspected condition had indeed stricken her insensible, but it was the surprise of it more than the dismay. Now she viewed the circumstance with uncertainty, not knowing the attitude "Mister Jan" would adopt toward it. She argued with herself long hours, and peace brooded over her at the end; for, as his cherished utterances passed in review before her memory, the sense and sum of them seemed to promise well. He would be very glad to share in the little life that was upon the way to earth. He always spoke kindly of children; he had called them the flower-buds in Nature's lap. Yes, he must be glad; and Nature would smile too. Nature knew what it was to be a mother, Joan told herself. She was in Nature's hand henceforth. But her blue eyes grew cold when she thought of the morning. So much for St. Madron and his holy water; so much for the good angels who her dead parent had told her were forever stretching loving, invisible hands to guard and shield. "Mister Jan's be the awnly God," she thought, "an' He'm tu far aways to mind the likes o' we; so us must trust to the gert Mother o' the flowers." She accepted the position with an open heart, then turned her thoughts to her loved one. Having now firmly convinced herself that her condition would bring him gratification and draw them still nearer each to the other, Joan yearned unutterably for his presence. She puzzled her brains to know how she might communicate with him, how hasten his return. She remembered that he had once told her his surname, but she could not recollect it now. He had always been "Mister Jan" to her. She went down to her supper in the course of the evening, and the great matter in her mind was for a while put aside before a present necessity. Action, she found, would be immediately required of her. Her father, before going from the kitchen after she had fainted, directed Thomasin to bid her never see his face again. She must depart, according to his direction, on the following day; for the thatched cottage upon the cliff could be her home no more. "Theer weern't no time for talkin'; but I lay 'er'll sing differ'nt when next ashore. You bide quiet here till 'er's home agin. 'Tain't nachur to bid's awn flaish an' blood go its ways like that. An', 'pears to me, as 'tedn' the law neither. But you bide till he'm back. I be sorry as I spawk so sharp, but you was that bowldacious that my dander brawk loose. Aw Jimmery! to think as you dedn' knaw you was cheeldin'!" "'Twas hearin' so suddint like as made me come over fainty."