As soon as she was at liberty she went in search of Polly Love, expecting to find her in her cubicle, but the cubicle was empty. Coming out of the little room she saw a piece of paper lying on the floor. It was a letter, carefully folded. She picked it up, unfolded it, and read it, hardly knowing what she was doing, for her head was dizzy and her eyes were swimming in unshed tears. It ran: “You ask, Do I mean to adopt entirely? Yes; to bring up just the same as if it were born to me. I hope yours will be a strong and healthy boy; but if it is a girl----” Glory could not understand what she was reading. Whose letter could it be? It was addressed “X. Y. Z., Office of _Morning Post_.” There was a hurried footstep approaching, and Polly came in, with her eyes on the ground as if looking for something she had dropped. At the next moment she had snatched the letter out of Glory's hand, and was saying: “What are you doing in my room? Has your friend the chaplain told you to spy upon me?” The expression on her face was appalling, and Glory, who had flushed up with shame, turned away without a word. When John Storm got back to his room he found the following letter from the canon on his table: “Since our interview of this morning (so strangely abridged) I have had the honour to visit your dear uncle, the Prime Minister, and he agrees with me that the strain of your recent examinations and the anxieties of a new occupation have probably disturbed your health, and that it will be prudent of you to take a short vacation. I have therefore the greatest pleasure in assuring you that you are free from duty for a week, a fortnight, or a month, as your convenience may determine; and during your much-regretted absence I will do my best to sustain the great loss of your invaluable help.” On reading the message, John Storm flung himself into a chair and burst into a long peal of bitter laughter. But when the laughter was spent there came a sense of great loneliness. Then he remembered Mrs. Callender, and went across to her little house in Victoria Square, and showed her the canon's letter and told her everything. “Lies, lies, lies!” she said. “Ah, laddie, laddie! to lie, to know you lie, to be known to lie, and yet to go on lying--that is the whole art of life with these fashionable shepherds and their fashionable flock. As for that woman--ugh! She was separated from her husband for two years before his death; and he died in a hotel abroad without kith or kin to comfort him: and now she wears his hair in a gold locket on her bosom--that's what she is! But all's well that ends well, laddie. The _holly_ will do ye good, for you were killing yerself with work. You'll no be spending it in your little island, now, eh?” John Storm was sitting with one leg across the other, and his head on his hand and his elbow on his knee. “I shall spend it,” he said, “in Retreat at the Brotherhood in Bishopsgate.”