The shock had come so suddenly that it had deprived him of the power of reasoning, of following the thing out to its logical conclusion. As he walked on, threading his way along the crowded thoroughfare, and exciting no little attention and remark by his wild, distraught appearance, he realized that he had lost Stella. He realized that he had lost the beautiful girl who had stolen into his heart and absorbed his love. And the manner of his losing her made the loss so bitter! That a man, that such a creature as this Jasper Adelstone, should come between them was terrible. If it had been any other, who was in some fashion his own equal--Charlie Guildford, for instance, a gentleman and a nobleman--it would have been bad enough, but he could have understood it. He would have felt that he had been fairly beaten; but Jasper Adelstone! Then it was so evident that love was not altogether the reason of her treachery and desertion; there was something else; some secret which gave that man a hold over her. He stopped short in the most crowded part of the Strand, and put his hand to his brow and groaned. To think that his Stella, his beautiful child-love, whom he had deemed an angel for innocence, should share a secret with such a man. And what was it? Was there shame connected with it? He shuddered as the suspicion crossed his mind and smote upon his heart. What had she done to place her so utterly in Jasper Adelstone's hands? What was it? The question harassed and worried him to the exclusion of all other sides of the case. Was it something that had occurred before he, Leycester, had met her? She had known this Jasper Adelstone before she knew Leycester; but he remembered her speaking of him as a conceited, self-opinioned young man; he remembered the light scorn with which she had described him. No, it could not have happened thus early. When then? and where was it? He could find no solution to the question; but the terrible result remained, that she had delivered herself, body and soul, into the hands of Jasper Adelstone, and was lost to him, Leycester! Striking along, careless of where he was going, he found himself at last in Pall Mall. He entered one of his clubs, and went to the smoking-room. There he lit a cigar, and took out the marriage license and looked at it long and absently. If all had gone right, Stella would have been his, if not by this time, a very little later, and they would have gone to Italy, they two, together and alone--with happiness. But now it was all changed--the cup had been dashed from his lips at the last moment, and by--Jasper Adelstone!