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——”