id, and then her sad eyes moved about
the room and came back to his face. "It is about Lord Robert Ure, and I
am very wretched."

"Tell me everything, dear lady, and if there is anything I can do----"

She told him all. It was a miserable story. Her mother had engaged her to
Lord Robert Ure (there was no other way of putting it) for the sake of
his title, and he had engaged himself to her for the sake of her wealth.
She had never loved him, and had long known that he was a man of
scandalous reputation; but she had been taught that to attach weight to
such considerations would be girlish and sentimental, and she had fought
for a while and then yielded.

"You will reproach me for my feebleness," she said, and he answered
haltingly:

"No, I do not reproach you--I pity you!"

"Well," she said, "it is all over now, and if I am ruined, and if my
mother----"

"You have told her you can not marry him!"

"Yes."

"Then who am I to reproach you?" he said; and rising to his feet, he
threw down his book.

Her dark eyes wandered about the room, and came back to his face again
and shone with a new lustre.

"I heard your sermon on Sunday, Mr. Storm, and I felt as if there were
nobody else in the church, and you were speaking to me alone. And last
night at the theatre----"

"Well?"

He had been tramping the room, but he stopped.

"I saw him in a box with his friend and two--two ladies."

"Were they nurses from the hospital?"

She made a cry of surprise and said, "Then you know all about it, and the
sermon _was_ meant for me?"

He did not speak for a moment, and then he said with a thick utterance:

"You wish me to help you to break off this marriage, and I will try. But
if I fail--no matter what has happened in the past, or what awaits you in
the future----"

"Oh," she said, "if I had your strength beside me I should be brave--I
should be afraid of nothing."

"Good-bye, dear lady," said John Storm; and before he could prevent her
she had stooped over his hand and kissed it.

John Storm had returned to his book and was clutching it with nervous
fingers, when his fellow-curate came with a message from the canon to
request his presence in the study.

"Tell him I was on the point of going down," said John. And the Reverend
Golightly coughed and bowed himself out.

The canon had also had a visitor that morning. It was Mrs. Macrae
herself. She sat on a chair covered with a tiger skin, sniffed at her
scented hand