“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.”
Nearly frantic, I called to a passer-by to help me. Then D’Arcy shouted to the driver to let down the glass, and I found myself more straitly imprisoned than ever. By this time we had left the Strand far behind us, and were dashing up quiet side streets, but in what direction I knew not. It was like a horrible nightmare: on and on we went, and each step took me more hopelessly away from Felix. In vain did I struggle, in vain did I cry to be set down. The driver took no notice of my cries, and D’Arcy, still with that horrible grin on his face, said never another word, only held me back tightly in the hansom. I cannot say how long that terrible drive lasted. My mind throughout was a chaos of horror and despair.
At last, after long hours as it seemed to me, the hansom stopped, and D’Arcy called to the man to open the window. We were in the middle of a broad path bordered with trees, and all around us was silent dreary park-land. A drizzle of rain had begun, and beneath the trees it was already dark with the fast gathering shades of a winter evening. Here D’Arcy loosened his hold of me, and instantly I got out. Where to go and what to do next I knew not, so stood helplessly in the rain. D’Arcy sat looking at me for a moment, as if thinking, then got out also.
“There is the sovereign,” he said, handing up some money to the driver. The man took it, glanced at me, and hesitated.
“You can go,” said D’Arcy sharply.
“And leave the young lady in the rain?”
“Did you hear? You can go,” repeated D’Arcy, still more sharply. The man drove away. I felt too stunned to make any appeal to him. Besides, of what use? Was it not he who had driven me on and on, in spite of my cries, until now miles and miles of unknown streets lay between me and Felix. If I had been in the middle of a wilderness, and Felix the other side of the world, he could not have felt more lost to me than he did at that moment.
“Now, Rosamund,” said D’Arcy, turning to me and speaking very determinedly, “listen to reason and be a sensible girl. You have lost Felix. You are not so mad, I suppose, as to imagine he will have anything further to do with you after this. You lead a miserable life at the castle, and it will be still more miserable to go back there now, for Felix will never visit you any more. Neither will I come there after you again. I have had enough of it, I want something better. So if you go back, you go back to be absolutely alone with a madman and his keeper. Mark my words: your uncle is not, and never will be cured. At his best, he’s as mad as a hatter. And he’s liable to these attacks of violent madness which make him absolutely dangerous. Matthew keeps it dark, but it is not the first time your uncle has had to go to the asylum by any means. He’ll break out again as sure as my name is Leigh, perhaps next time without any warning. That happened once, so may well happen again. There’s no method in his madness: a thoroughly unreliable madman, my friend on the common calls him. So that’s the companion you will go home to.
“Now I have it in my power to offer you a very happy life. I love you, and I want you to be my wife. You are just fitted for a London life, and with your beauty and originality might make a perfect furore. Now, will you accept what I offer you and marry me? You have only to say ‘yes,’ and I will take you straight to my sister who will act as chaperon until we can be married: She is a good-natured girl, and will be glad to oblige me, for many reasons. Now say, will you marry me? I’ll be awfully kind to you, Rosamund. After all, you’d have had a slow time of it with that impecunious Felix.”