“That is true,” said the Sister. “If you ever pass by the Charity House at Amerton ask for Sister Susan, and I shall be glad to show you over it. I assure you it is something to see.” “I shall come some day or other,” said Edgar, not quite knowing what he said. Who was she then, the girl with the veil who kept herself shrouded from him? She had not seemed _farouche_ or unfriendly. She had waited quietly while he did what he could for them at the railway station. She had even touched his hand lightly as he put her into the cab; but there had seemed to be three or four veils between him and her countenance. During all the long journey he had seen of her nothing but the little white hand stealing from under the cover of her cloak; but somehow his dream came back to him, and wove itself in with the semblance of this veiled stranger. Absurd! but sometimes an absurdity is pleasant and comforting, and so it was in this case. He could not have said what fancies came into his head, or if he had any fancies. No, he was past dreaming, past all that kind of boyish nonsense, he said to himself. But yet the recollection of the veiled maiden was pleasant to him, he could scarcely have told why. Lord Newmarch was at his office, and he was ready after some time to see his visitor, whom he greeted with sufficient friendliness and good feeling. Lord Newmarch had been very democratic in his day; he had taken workmen in their working clothes to dine with him at his club in his hot youth, and had made them very uncomfortable, and acquired a delightful reputation himself for advanced ideas; which was a very great thing for a new lord, whose grandfather had been a small shopkeeper, to do. But somehow he was a great deal more at his ease with the working men than with his former friend and equal, now reduced to a perfectly incredible destitution of those ordinary circumstances which form the very clothing and skin of most men. Edgar was in soul and being, no doubt, exactly the same as ever; he had the same face, the same voice, the same thought and feelings. Had he lost only his money Lord Newmarch would not have felt the difficulty half so great, for indeed a great many people do (whatever the world may say) lose their money, without being dropped or discredited by society. But something a great deal more dreadful had happened in Edgar’s case. He had lost, so to speak, himself; and how to behave towards a man who a little while ago had been his equal, nay his superior, and now was not his equal, nor anybody’s, yet the same man, puzzled the young statesman beyond expression. This is a very different sort of thing from entertaining a couple of working men to the much astonishment (delightful homage to one’s peculiarities) of one’s club. The doctrine that all men are brothers comes in with charming piquancy in the one case, but is very much less easy to deal with in the other. Lord Newmarch got up with some perturbation from his seat when Edgar came in.