poor girl could bear it no longer:

"Yes, it's very sweet," she said at last. "When did you say you were
going to London, Mr. Taylor?"

It was about the time that his disappointment became known to everybody,
and the shot told. He gave her a piteous look and slunk off, "just like
the dog when he's had a whipping," to use Edith's own expression. Two or
three lessons of this description produced their due effect; and when he
saw a male Dixon or Gervase approaching him he bit his lip and summoned
up his courage. But when he descried a "ministering angel" he made haste
and hid behind a hedge or took to the woods. In course of time the desire
to escape became an instinct, to be followed as a matter of course; in
the same way he avoided the adders on the mountain. His old ideals were
almost if not quite forgotten; he knew that the female of the _bête
humaine_, like the adder, would in all probability sting, and he
therefore shrank from its trail, but without any feeling of special
resentment. The one had a poisoned tongue as the other had a poisoned
fang, and it was well to leave them both alone. Then had come that sudden
fury of rage against all humanity, as he went out of Caermaen carrying
the book that had been stolen from him by the enterprising Beit. He
shuddered as he though of how nearly he had approached the verge of
madness, when his eyes filled with blood and the earth seemed to burn
with fire. He remembered how he had looked up to the horizon and the sky
was blotched with scarlet; and the earth was deep red, with red woods
and red fields. There was something of horror in the memory, and in the
vision of that wild night walk through dim country, when every shadow
seemed a symbol of some terrible impending doom. The murmur of the brook,
the wind shrilling through the wood, the pale light flowing from the
moldered trunks, and the picture of his own figure fleeing and fleeting