"Let us start afresh," she said, imploringly, putting up her hands. Indeed this was a most terrible moment for her.
"It may not be," he coldly rejoined. "My resolution has been deliberately taken, and I cannot change it upon impulse."
"I had meant to pray you to forgive me—for this and all the past—I had indeed. I had meant to say that I would be different—would try to love you."
"Too late."
"In a little while, then," she panted, her face working with emotion, tears starting to her eyes. "You will take me back later! In a week or two."
"Neither now nor later. My feelings were long, long outraged, and I bore with you, hoping for better things. But in this last fearful act, and more especially in the circumstances attending it, you have broken all allegiance, you have deliberately thrown off my protection. Lady Adela, I shall never live under the same roof with you again."
She laid her hand upon her palpitating heart. He crossed the room with the last words, and quietly left it. A faint cry of distress seemed to be sounding in his ear: "Mercy! mercy" as he closed the door. Descending the stairs with a deliberate step, he caught up his hat in the hall, and went out. And Adela, the usually indifferent, fell to the ground in a storm of anguished tears.
[CHAPTER XXVIII.]
ON THE WAY FROM BLACKHEATH.
Strolling hither and thither, just as his steps led him, for in truth he had no purpose just then, so intense was his mental distress, Mr. Grubb found himself somehow in Jermyn Street. He was passing the Cavendish Hotel, his eyes nowhere, when a hand was laid upon his arm. A little lady in a close bonnet and black veil, standing at the hotel entrance, had arrested him.