"Please listen to me just a moment, Arethusa. I...."
"Don't say anything to me!" She stamped one foot with angry emphasis. "I won't listen! I don't want to hear anything you have to say! And Timothy was exactly right about you! Oh...!"
She flung herself face downward on the rose-colored sofa and began to sob violently, her shoulders quivering; burying her head farther and farther back into the corner of the sofa until it seemed more like a piled up heap of party finery huddled there than an actual girl.
This was truly Dreadful!
Mr. Bennet stood, man-fashion, helplessly above her, with an overpowering desire to flee far from those tears; and yet with a strong conviction, at the same time, that he ought to stay and at least attempt a justification of what had been so sadly misconstrued, if there was any earthly way in which it could be justified. He was willing to say, or to do, anything which she might demand of him, to straighten it out. The sobs decreased in intensity and so Mr. Bennet spoke.
"Arethusa...." he began.
Then Arethusa's sobs stopped altogether as abruptly almost as they had begun, and she rose majestically from the sofa, keeping her tear-stained face averted.
"I asked you not to speak to me. And I'm going home," not once did she look, even in his direction. "By myself," she added, positively.
"I can't let you do a thing like that...."
"It has nothing whatever to do with what you can't let, and I shall scream out loud right here, if you start to try to follow me!"