Just A Girl by Charles Garvice

Trafford went straight from Eaton Square to his club. He had had the worst quarter of an hour in his life, and felt extremely unhappy, and as if he were a brute and a monster of the cruelest type. And yet he knew that he had done the right thing, and he tried to console himself with the reflection that he had behaved as became a gentleman and a man of honor; but Ada Lancing's face, lined with agony, and her voice broken and wailing, haunted him.

He went into the smoking-room of the Marlborough and lighted a cigar--that solatium of the angry, the wounded, the wearied, and the sore oppressed. He had not been there five minutes before a young friend entered and hailed him with sprightly welcome. He was a wild young Irish viscount, Lord Dunworthy, who was rapidly running through a fortune which he had recently inherited, and enjoying life as only a young Irishman can. He was the gossip of the club, and Trafford usually liked to listen to his light-hearted chatter; but he could have dispensed with it this afternoon.