"Cannot be!" she exclaimed. "Then I have betrayed myself."
"No;--Madame Goesler."
"Sir; I say yes! If you will allow me I will leave you. You will, I
know, excuse me if I am abrupt to you." Then she strode out of the
room, and was no more seen of the eyes of Phineas Finn.
He never afterwards knew how he escaped out of that room and found
his way into Park Lane. In after days he had some memory that he
remained there, he knew not how long, standing on the very spot on
which she had left him; and that at last there grew upon him almost a
fear of moving, a dread lest he should be heard, an inordinate desire
to escape without the sound of a footfall, without the clicking of
a lock. Everything in that house had been offered to him. He had
refused it all, and then felt that of all human beings under the
sun none had so little right to be standing there as he. His very
presence in that drawing-room was an insult to the woman whom he had
driven from it.
But at length he was in the street, and had found his way across
Piccadilly into the Green Park. Then, as soon as he could find a spot
apart from the Sunday world, he threw himself upon the turf; and
tried to fix his thoughts upon the thing that he had done. His first
feeling, I think, was one of pure and unmixed disappointment;--of
disappointment so bitter, that even the vision of his own Mary did
not tend to comfort him.
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