‘People are as different,’ she said, ‘in their dying as in their living. She has taken everything with her she could take. She wouldn’t leave even a look for me, as if she thought I could have come, and did not. But I’ll not excuse myself here. Mother’--she stooped down, and kissed the waxen forehead--‘good-bye. You would have been a good mother to one more like yourself; she has been a good mother to you----’ John said no word in reply. He had fallen down by the bedside, with a sickening sense of loss which was more than grief. He could not speak, or even think. His young soul seemed to go out in a gasp towards the nothingness that seemed before him. He had thought she would be dear and beautiful still in her death--as people said--more dear, more beautiful than in life. But this was not as people said. His heart sank into depths unspeakable. Only last night what words she had spoken to him from that bed. And now, and now----! ‘Poor boy!’ said his mother, with her hand on his shoulder, ‘you have never seen death before! Come away; she would not like you to stay here; never come again. And forget _that_. For once she has not thought of other people. She has taken all she could away with her; her own look, as well as all the rest. Rise up, and come away.’ John obeyed her, scarcely knowing what he did. And so presently did all the house. She took the command of everything instantly, as if it was her right to do so. There was not much conversation, as may be supposed. She sat down by the fire, after the meal at which she eat moderately without any look of reluctance, and talked a little, in the same grave tone, to her father. But there were no tears, no words of sorrow. The old man gave a broken sort of account of his wife’s illness, subdued into a narrative of facts by the influence of that serious, but quite conventional, figure opposite to him; while John sat at the table behind, with a book before him, which he did not read, listening in a miserable way to every word, feeling a wretchedness which was beyond description, but which could not get vent in the ordinary way, because of the atmosphere about him, which was full of the new presence. He had been hungry, poor boy, but could not eat, feeling that to be able to eat at such a moment was more horrible than words can say. And his brain was giddy for want of sleep. Body and soul were in the same condition of exhaustion and misery. But still the slow exchange of those subdued voices over the fire held him like a spell.