That night Glory dreamed that she was back at Peel. She was sitting up on the Peel hill, watching the big ships as they weighed anchor in the bay beyond the old dead castle walls, and wishing she were going out with them to the sea and the great cities so far away. XV. John Storm was sitting in his room next morning fumbling the leaves of a book and trying to read, when a lady was announced. It was Miss Macrae, and she came in with a flushed face, a quivering lip, and the marks of tears in her eyes. She held his hand with the same long hand-clasp as before, and said in a tremulous voice: “I am ashamed of coming, and mother does not know that I am here; but I am very unhappy, and if you can not help me----” “Please sit down,” said John Storm. “I have come to tell you----” she said, 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.