For nearly an hour he walked up and down before the house, letting the poor ape, jealousy, mingle with all his nobler love thoughts; then he noticed that the lights had been much lowered, and he rang the bell and asked for Lady Cramer.
"My Lady has gone to the play," was the answer.
"At what hour will she return?"
"It will be very late, sir. There is a supper and dance at Lady Saville's after the play, sir."
Then Dr. Macrae put a crown into the man's hand and asked to what theater Lady Cramer had gone, and, having received this information, he followed her there.
"Her Majesty's Theatre."
Was it conceivable that Dr. Ian Macrae had given such an order? A few months previously he had said to a large congregation in relation to the theater, "My feet have never crossed the unhallowed threshold." And he had made this declaration with what he considered a justifiable spiritual satisfaction. Would he now transgress a law of his whole life? Alas! at this hour life meant Lady Adalaide Cramer and to follow her, see her face, and consider her companion was an urgency he could not control—had indeed no desire to control.
He bought a ticket in the pit and looked around. Lady Cramer was not present, but several boxes were empty, and in a few minutes he saw her enter one of them. She was the center of a gay party and the most beautiful woman in it. His ticket, bought at random, had placed him in an excellent position for seeing the play he had come to see, and it was hardly likely Lady Cramer would let her eyes fall on anyone beneath the seats where the nobility sat.
Dr. Macrae looked at the lady of his hopes first. She had improved marvelously, she was radiantly beautiful and dressed in some magnificent manner beyond his power to itemize; yet he felt with a thrill of idolatrous passion the total effect of the combination. And he kept telling himself: "She is mine! And I will not suffer any other man to parade himself in her beauty! I will remain in London until we are married."
Then he looked at the man who was parading himself in her beauty, and had a swift, sharp pang of jealousy. He was about fifty years of age, one of those large, blond, well-groomed Englishmen who represent the imperial race at its best. There were two other ladies, a young naval officer and a well-known diplomat in the box, but Dr. Macrae took no note of them, though it interested him to see how cleverly Lady Cramer used them in order to exhibit the little airs and graces which diversified her gay or sentimental coquetries.