HOOKS OF STEEL IN 3 VOLS. Now ready at all Libraries. [Illustration: Decorative border] CHAPTER IV. (_Reprinted from Hooks of Steel._) HE stopped when he saw us, stopped dead short on the pavement amidst all the hurrying people. And as he looked at me and D’Arcy, his face changed and grew drawn and old with sharp, sudden misery. I had pierced him to the heart; in his face I saw it. Sick and cold with shame, scarce knowing what I did, I shrank back in the hansom. Only for a moment, but it was a fatal moment. “Yes, that’s right, keep back, hide, I’ll protect you!” called out D’Arcy to me loudly, so loudly Felix could not fail to hear. Then placing one hand familiarly on my shoulder, he opened the trap-door again with his cane and shouted—“Off!” Without an instant’s pause the driver whipped up his horse and was off as hard as he could go. I recovered myself when I found I was being borne away from Felix. “Stop!” I cried wildly, swinging back the doors in front of me, “let me get out. I must go back! I must go back to Felix!” D’Arcy leaned forward and hastily swung the doors together again. “You can never go back to Felix,” he said, seizing me and holding me firmly down in my seat. “You will have to stay with me instead. Felix would not have you now. He has caught you here in London alone with me; _he has found you out_.” Appalled by his words and manner, I turned upon him. His face was still full of malignant triumph, his small dark eyes burnt as they gazed into mine, his lips were drawn back from his big white teeth in a wide grin. It was a full revelation this time. I knew him as he was; loathsomely, horribly ugly and wicked. “You are a fiend!” I cried. “I know you now. You arranged it all. You deliberately took me where you knew Felix would see me. It was a vile plot. I see it all, and I hate you, I hate you! Do not dare to touch me. Take your hands off. Let me get out and leave you this instant.” But D’Arcy only held me down more tightly. I dashed my hand upwards through the opening in the roof and called to the driver to stop. “No use,” said D’Arcy. “The man is in my pay. You may as well sit quiet, Rosamund. I shall be very kind, you have nothing to fear.”