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.”
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.