He pressed closer, as if determined to kiss me. Then my passion grew beyond my control. I seized the cane he was holding in his hand, and struck him smartly across the face with it. Then I flung the hateful thing from me amidst the trees. “There!” I cried. “That is to show you how I loathe and detest you now. Go and pick up your cane, the cane you used to help you in your plotting. You have wrecked my life. You have ruined Felix’s. You have persuaded me to deceive, and dragged me down to misery. Go, and never let me see your wicked face again.” D’Arcy made for an instant as if he were going to strike me in return, but he restrained himself. “All right,” he said, in a voice trembling with suppressed rage. “All right, young lady. You have given me my _congé_, and I’ll take it. I don’t feel so anxious to make you my wife as I did a moment ago. I’d best not saddle myself with a vixen. I’ll leave you, to find your way back to the castle. I hope you will enjoy yourself when you get there.” Then, without another word, he strode away and left me alone in that strange place in the rain. I waited until he had disappeared in the darkness, then turned and walked in exactly the opposite direction, neither thinking nor caring where I was going, so dulled was I with misery. But the road went on, and seemed as if it would never end, and at length I stopped, chilled, wet, and weary. Then suddenly it occurred to me that I ought to try and get home; there was just a faint chance that Felix might go down to ask what it all meant. At the thought that he might arrive at the castle, find me still absent, and imagine me still with D’Arcy, I began to burn with fever. I turned, and ne’er through an arch so hurried the blown tide, as I through the rain and the dark did hurry then. Thinking it would now be best, I followed the direction D’Arcy had taken, and after a time came to some big iron gates. Just as I passed through them a hansom came driving towards me. My first impulse was to accost the driver, but I pulled myself up just when about to speak, for by the flickering light of the gas-lamp on the gate I saw it was the man who had driven me away from Felix. With my head down I hurried past him.