‘I am so glad to have met you before you go,’ she said, putting out her hand, ‘although glad is scarcely a word to use--in the present sad circumstances.’ ‘How do you do?’ Emily said, with a grave movement of her head. It was more disconcerting than if she had reproved the undue warmth of the visitor in so many words. Mrs. Egerton felt herself obliged to be conciliatory, to make herself agreeable if possible to this serious woman with her pale handsome face. ‘I may call myself an old friend,’ she said, with a feeble smile, ‘though I have never seen you before. I have been away, unfortunately, during--all that has happened. I was so grieved to hear--and that you were just too late.’ ‘No one need be grieved to hear that suffering is over,’ said Mr. Sandford’s daughter; ‘for my part I could not but be glad. I would not have had her suffer an hour or a moment longer, for me----’ ‘But you might have been called sooner--before the illness had gone so far. These, however, are vain things to say. No doubt,’ said Mrs. Egerton, ‘everything is for the best.’ To this general statement Emily made no reply. She did not ask the visitor to sit down again. She did not even come into the room herself, but stood in the little passage outside the open door. ‘I am glad to see your father so well,’ Mrs. Egerton said. ‘Yes, he is very well. The health does not suffer from distress of mind so much as people think.’ ‘That is true, though it is very strange to think that it should be so.’ ‘Oh, no, not at all strange,’ said Emily, with the calm of superior knowledge. ‘The more your mind is taken off yourself, the less you suffer physically--except, perhaps, in the case of actual disease, and I am not sure that the rule does not apply there too. It is always good to have the mind carried away from the contemplation of itself.’ ‘You have experience in such cases.’ ‘Yes, I have great experience. I am matron of a hospital, and see it every day.’ ‘Ah, that explains,’ said Mrs. Egerton, who had known this fact from the first glance. ‘Of course, with such a responsible post, you cannot give much time to--your relations.’ ‘I can give none,’ said this calm, inscrutable woman. ‘I am going away to-night.’ ‘To-night!’ ‘Yes. I have been ten days here, and I think I’ve arranged everything comfortably. John, until a place has been found for him, will stay with his grandfather.’ ‘John--oh, I suppose your--nephew. It is, no doubt, a good thing that he should be with his grandfather; but isn’t it a pity he should lose a good opening just for this; he must leave, one time or another.’ ‘We did not feel, on thinking it over, that it was a very good opening,’ said Emily, with the same unalterable gravity. ‘The boy wishes to be a civil engineer; and this was an engine-foundry, mechanical engineering, not what he wants----’ ‘But it was Mr. Cattley’s brother, a man who would have taken an interest----’