t Beauleys on the day
after Saton's arrival. Saton himself was sitting with Lois Champneyes
in a retired corner.

"I was going to ask you," he remarked, as he handed her some cakes,
"about Mr. Rochester's marriage. He was a bachelor when I--first met
him."

"Were you very intimate in those days?" she asked.

"Not in the least," he answered, with a faint reminiscent smile.

"Then you never heard about the romance of his life?" she asked.

Saton shook his head.

"Never," he declared. "Nor should I ever have associated the word with
Mr. Rochester."

She sighed gently.

"I daresay he was very different in those days," she said. "Before the
Beauleys property came to him, he was quite poor, and he was very much
in love with the dearest woman--Pauline Hambledon. It was impossible
for them to marry--her people wouldn't hear of it--so he went abroad,
and she married Sir Walter Marrabel! Such a pig! Everyone hated him.
Then old Mr. Stephen Rochester died suddenly, without a will, and all
this property came to Henry!"

"And then he married, I suppose?" Saton remarked.

"I was going to tell you about that," Lois continued. "Mary was a
niece of Stephen Rochester, and a daughter of the Marquis of Haselton,
who was absolutely bankrupt when he died. Stephen Rochester adopted
her, and then died without leaving her a farthing! So there she was,
poor dear, penniless, and Henry had everything. Of course, he had to
marry her."

"Why not?" Saton remarked. "She is quite charming."

"Yes! But this is the tantalizing part of it," Lois continued. "They
hadn't been married a year when Sir Walter Marrabel died. Pauline is a
widow now. She is coming here in a few days. I do hope you will meet
her."

"This is quite interesting," Saton murmured. "How do Lady Mary and her
husband get on?"

Lois made a little grimace.

"They go different ways most of the time," she answered. "I suppose
they're only what people call modern. Isn't that a motor horn?" she
cried out, springing to her feet. "I wonder if it's Guerdie!"

"For a man who has been a great lawyer," Lord Penarvon declared,
"Guerdon is the most uncertain and unpunctual of men. One never knows
when to expect him."

"He was to have arrived yesterday," Lady Mary remarked. "We sent to
the station twice."

"I suppose," Rochester said, "that even to gratify the impatience of
an expectant house-party, it is not possible to quicken the slow
process of the law. If you look at the m