The next days passed slowly and yet swiftly, every moment with leaden feet, yet, when they were gone, looking like a dream. And everything was done without trouble, it seemed; in perfect order and quiet, the whole house pervaded by the strong, still presence of this stranger. If there had been a confusion before between his mother and the daughter of the old people, the Emily whom he knew so well, there was no confusion now. John’s mother had disappeared into the mists from amid which her idea had never clearly developed itself. She had been swept out of his horizon altogether. He saw still very clearly in that far distant background, the father who was dead--but not her any more. And this was Emily, who had come to set everything right. It was almost a difficulty for him not to call her by that name. She was a very useful and very powerful personality in the house; but, as a matter of fact, no one knew what to call her. Her name was Sandford, like her father’s. It was on her travelling-bag and her linen, and the book or two she carried with her. E. Sandford; no more. To the servants it was a great problem how to address her. Mrs. Sandford it did not seem possible she should be; and Miss Sandford--there was something in her which seemed to contradict that title. Something of youth is associated with it, a possibility of dependence, and a secondary place. But no such ideas were compatible with the presence of this new-comer, of whom no one out of the house had ever heard before. The curate even, who was the only visitor, looked at her with a sort of diffident curiosity, and said ‘your daughter,’ when he spoke of her to the old man. She went to the funeral, supporting her father on her arm, while John walked with Mr. Cattley behind. A great many people, indeed, it might be said the whole parish, attended the funeral; and there were many tears among the crowd. But Emily shed no tear. She kept her father’s arm in hers, and encouraged and supported him. The old gentleman, who had been so strong and hale, had sunk all at once into helplessness; his heavy foot, that had been so steady, became shuffling and uncertain; sometimes he would sob feebly, like the voluntary crying of a child, without tears.