and left the house. Lord Robert followed him
presently. Then the drawing-room was empty, and the hollow sound of
sobbing came down to it from the bedroom above.

* * * * *

Father Storm read prayers in church that night with a hard and absent
heart. A terrible impulse of hate had taken hold of him. He hated Drake,
he hated Glory, he hated himself most of all, and felt as if seven devils
had taken possession of him, and he was a hypocrite, and might fall dead
at the altar.

"But what a fate the Almighty has saved me from!" he thought. Glory would
have been a drag on his work for life. He must forget her. She was only
worthy of his contempt. Yet he could not help but remember how beautiful
she had looked in her mourning dress, with that pure pale face and its
signs of suffering! Or how charming she had seemed to him even in the
midst of all that deception! Or how she had held him as by a spell!

Going home he came upon a group of men in the Court. One of them planted
himself full in front and said with an insolent swagger: "Me and my mytes
thinks there's too many parsons abart 'ere. What do you think, sir?"

"I think there are more gamblers and thieves, my lad," he answered, and
at the next instant the man had struck him in the face. He closed with
the ruffian, grappled him by the throat, and flung him on his back. One
moment he held him there, writhing and gasping, then he said, "Get up,
and get off, and let me see no more of you!"

"No, sir, not this time," said a voice above his back. The crowd had
melted away and a policeman stood beside them. "I've been waiting for
this one for weeks, Father," he said, and he marched the man to jail.

It was Charlie Wilkes. At the trial of Mrs. Jupe that morning, Aggie,
being a witness, had been required to mention his name. It was all in the
evening papers, and he had been dismissed from his time-keeping at the
foundry.

XIII.

A week passed. Breakfast was over at Victoria Square, and John Storm was
glancing at the pages of a weekly paper. "Listen!" he cried, and then
read aloud in a light tone of mock bravery which broke down at length
into a husky gurgle:

"'The sympathy which has lately been evoked by the announcement that a
proprietary church in Soho has been sold for secular uses, is creditable
to public sentiment----'"

"Think of that, now!" interrupted Mrs. Callender.

"'----and no doubt the whole community will agree to hope