‘That’s right! I thought you would not desert your old friends. I told Elly to look out for you, and, if you were not coming, to bring you. Now tell me, my dear boy, do you go or stay?’ ‘We are going to-morrow, Mrs. Egerton.’ ‘To-morrow? So soon as that? And you say we----’ ‘With my mother, Mrs. Egerton.’ He grew a little pale, and so, it seemed, did she. ‘Is that--that lady your mother, John?’ ‘Yes,’ he said, and no more. ‘And you knew all along that your mother was living? How strange that you never spoke of her--that we never heard--I hope, dear John, I--I trust----’ She had meant to say, ‘that she is kind to you.’ But her courage failed her in sight of his pale, set face. ‘We heard from her always regularly, but there seemed nothing to write about. She had given me up to my grandparents.’ John had to pause to get rid of the sob in his throat; but he was determined to tell all he knew, to leave nothing to be found out. ‘She has been living in London, with little time to herself.’ It was a curiously lame story. He felt it was so, as he told it; hitherto it had all seemed simple enough. He met Mrs. Egerton’s look of interest and her interrogative ‘Yes?’ with sudden confusion, as if it was all a made-up tale. ‘Yes?’ she said, and paused with her eyes full of a hundred questions expecting him to resume. But John had told everything he had to tell, and stopped short with no more to say. She sat looking at him for a minute longer expecting when he should resume. Then, as he said nothing, she asked, as if to make a beginning again and draw him on, ‘Are there any more of the family?’ ‘I have a sister,’ John said. ‘Oh! a sister. I am very glad to hear it. I am extremely glad for your sake. A sister is so near--a sister will sympathise. I have seen--Mrs. Sandford, once: it seems so strange to say that name and not to mean your dear old grandmamma, my kind, true old friend.’ Mrs. Egerton’s bright eyes were moistened with tears, but John sat stolid in the stupidity of his grief, and made no sign. ‘Did you know I had seen her once?’ she said. ‘She is Mrs. Sandford, isn’t she? and that is your name? She must have married--a cousin, I suppose?’