ly blame me for having been civil to him
to-day. Besides, you must admit that he is clever."

"Clever! Oh! I've no doubt that he is clever enough," Rochester
answered, impatiently. "Nowadays, all you women seem as though you can
only be attracted by something freakish--brains, or peculiar gifts of
some sort."

Lady Mary laughed lightly.

"My dear Henry," she said, "you are not exactly a fool yourself, are
you? And then you must remember this. Bertrand Saton's cleverness is
the sort of cleverness which appeals to women. We can't help our
natures, I suppose, and we are always attracted by the mysterious. We
are always wanting to know something which other people don't know,
something of what lies behind the curtain."

"It is a very dangerous curiosity," Rochester said. "You are liable to
become the prey of any adventurer with a plausible manner, who has
learned to talk glibly about the things which he doesn't understand.
I'll get out here, if I may," he added, "and take a short cut across
the Park to my club. Mary, if you want to oblige me, for Heaven's sake
don't run this fellow! He gets on my nerves. I hate the sight of him."

Lady Mary turned towards her husband with a faint, curious smile as
the carriage drew up.

"You had better talk to Pauline," she said. "He is more in her line
than mine."

Rochester walked across the Park a little gloomily. His wife's last
words were ringing in his ears. For the first time since he could
remember, a little cloud had loomed over his few short hours with
Pauline. She had resented some contemptuous speech of his, and
as though to mark her sense of his lack of generosity, she had
encouraged Saton to talk, encouraged him to talk until the other
conversation had died away, and the whole room had listened to this
exponent of what he declared to be a new science. The fellow was a
_poseur_ and an impostor, Rochester told himself vigorously. He knew,
he was absolutely convinced that he was not honest.

He sat down on a seat for a few minutes, and his thoughts somehow
wandered back to that night when he had strolled over the hills and
found a lonely boy gazing downward through the tree tops to the fading
landscape. He remembered his own whimsical generosity, the feelings
with which he had made his offer. He remembered, too, the conditions
which he had made. With a sudden swift anger, he realized that those
conditions had not been kept. Saton had told him little or nothing of
his d