"A remarkably handsome, aristocratic man," said the Duke. "Make some haste, Ada, or we may miss the sunshine." And as Lady Cramer ascended to her dressing-room she sighed sorrowfully, "I have missed it." During this scene the Minister had preserved a noble and rather indifferent manner, and he left the room while she was hesitating about her ride. But oh, what a storm of slighted and disappointed love raged within him! Through the busy streets, forlorn and utterly miserable, he wandered slowly, careless of the crowd and the cold, and only thinking of the pitiless strait he had been compelled to face. He knew no one in London but Lady Cramer, and he felt as deserted and abandoned as a wandering bird cast out of a nest. There is no waste land of the heart so dreary as that left by love which has deserted us. This is the vacant place we water with the bitterest tears, and, even in the cold, crowded London streets, his melancholy eyes and miserable face attracted attention. Men who had trod the same sorrowful road knew instinctively that some troubler of the other sex had been the maker of it. He went back to his hotel and wondered what he should do with himself. He had intended to spend the hours not spent with Lady Cramer in the British Museum. He could not now do so. He preferred to sit still in his room and try to discover the truth concerning the position in which he so unexpectedly found himself. He had firmly believed in the love of Lady Cramer, he had regarded her only one hour previously as his own, and talked with her of their marriage. And she had apparently been as happy as himself in that prospect. Yet the mere advent of Rotherham had changed her attitude, and he had felt at once that his presence was an inconvenience. More than this, in some way too subtle to analyze he had been intensely mortified by her changed manner, and by her reference to Richard and Marion, as if their love affair accounted for his presence in her household--the more so as they had not spoken of the young people at all that morning. He did not feel that it was at all necessary to invent an excuse for asking him to dine with her.