But there was perhaps something in his professional habit of finding a remedy for the troubles brought under his eye, the quick impulse of doing something, which becomes a second nature with the physicians of the spirit as well as with those of the body, which helped him now. And then it afforded him the most extraordinary and easy opening out of a difficult conjunction of affairs; that had to be taken into account--as well as the rest. The result was that Mr. Cattley took Susie to London to her mother, and at once, without anything--or at least very little more--said, took his place as a member of the family, threatened with great shame and exposure through the return of the disgraced father, whom some of them had hoped never to see again, and some had no knowledge of. Nobody but a clergyman could have done this so easily, and even Mrs. Sandford, with all her pride and determination to share the secret with no one, could not refuse the aid of a cool head and sympathetic mind in the emergency in which she found herself placed. She was too much pre-occupied by her great distress to have much leisure of mind to consider this sudden new arrival critically as Susie’s suitor. At an easier moment that question would no doubt have been discussed in all its bearings--whether he was not too old for Susie; whether he was not very plain, very quiet; whether they had known each other long enough; whether they suited each other: all these matters would have afforded opportunity of discussion and question. But in the present dreadful emergency there was no time for any such argument. ‘Susie has accepted me for her husband,’ Mr. Cattley said (which, indeed, Susie had scarcely done save tacitly), ‘what can I do to help you?’ There seemed nothing strange in it. It was his profession to have secrets confided to him, to help all sorts of people. Even Mrs. Sandford could not resist his quiet certainty that their affairs were his, and that he could be of use. And he had all the strength and freshness of a new agent, impartial, having full command of his judgment. He had none of John’s stern and angry Quixotism and determination not to lose hold again of the father who was a disgrace to him, that fiercest development of duty--neither did he share the horror and loathing of the wife for the man who had betrayed and disgraced her. He was of Mrs. Sandford’s mind that the culprit should be kept apart, that no attempt should be made to reinstate him in the family; and he was of John’s mind that May could not be abandoned. He agreed and disagreed with both, and he was sorry for all--at once for the family driven to horror and dismay by such a sudden apparition, and for the unfortunate criminal himself, thus cut off from all the ties of nature.