Rochester went back to his guests. His brows were knitted. He was unusually thoughtful. His wife, who was watching him, called him across to the bridge table, where she was dummy.
"Well?" she asked. "What is it?"
Rochester looked down at her. The corners of his mouth slowly unbent.
"Have you ever heard," he whispered in her ear, "of the legend of the Frankenstein?"
CHAPTER V
A MORNING WALK
"My dear Henry," Lady Mary said, a few days later, swinging round in her chair from the writing-table, "whatever in this world induced you to encourage that extraordinary person Bertrand Saton to settle down in this part of the world?"
Rochester continued for a moment to gaze out of the window across the Park, with expressionless face.
"My dear Mary," he said, "I did not encourage him to do anything of the sort."
"You let him Blackbird"s Nest," she reminded him.
"I had scarcely a reasonable excuse for refusing to let it," Rochester answered. "I did not suggest that he should take it. I merely referred him to my agents. He went to see old Bland the very next morning, and the thing was arranged."
"I think," Lady Mary said deliberately, "that it is one of those cases where you should have exercised a little more discrimination. This is a small neighborhood, and I find it irritating to be continually running up against people whom I dislike."
"You dislike Saton?" Rochester remarked, nonchalantly.
"Dislike is perhaps a strong word," his wife answered. "I distrust him. I disbelieve in him. And I dislike exceedingly the friendship between him and Lois."
Rochester shrugged his shoulders.
"Does it amount to a friendship?" he asked.
"What else?" his wife answered. "It was obvious that she was interested in him when he was staying here, and twice since I have met them walking together. I hate mysterious people. They tell me that he has made Blackbird"s Nest look like a museum inside, and there is the most awful old woman, with white hair and black eyes, who never leaves his side, they say, when he is at home."
"She is," Rochester remarked, "I presume, of an age to disarm scandal?"
"She looks as old as Methuselah," his wife answered, "but what does the man want with such a creature at all?"
"She may be an elderly relative," Rochester suggested.
"Relative? Why, she calls herself the Comtesse somebody!" Lady Mary declared. "I do wish you would tell me, Henry, exactly what you know and what you do not know about this young man."
"What I do know is simple enough," he answered. "What I do not know would, I begin to believe, fill a volume."
"Then you had better go and see him, and readjust matters," she declared, a little sharply. "I want Lois to marry well, and she mustn"t have her head turned by this young man."
Rochester strolled through the open French-window into the flower-garden. He pulled a low basket chair out into the sun, close to a bed of pink and white hyacinths. A man-servant, seeing him, brought out the morning papers, which had just arrived, but Rochester waved them away.
"Fancy reading the newspapers on a morning like this!" he murmured, half to himself. "The person who would welcome the intrusion of a world of vulgar facts into an aesthetically perfect half-hour, deserves--well, deserves to be the sort of person he must be. Take the papers away, Groves," he added, as the man stood by, a little embarra.s.sed. "Take them to Lord Penarvon or Mr. Hinckley."
The man bowed and withdrew. Rochester half closed his eyes, but opened them again almost immediately. A white clad figure was pa.s.sing down the path on the other side of the lawn. He roused himself to a sitting posture.
"Lois!" he called out. "Lois!"
She waved her hand, but did not stop. He rose to his feet and called again. She paused with a reluctance which was indifferently concealed.
"I am going down to the village," she said.
He crossed the lawn towards her.
"I will be a model host," he said, "and come with you. It is always the function of the model host, is it not, to neglect the whole of the rest of the guests, and attach himself to the one most charming?"
She shook her head at him.
"I dare not risk being so unpopular," she declared. "Really, don"t bother to come. It is such a very short distance."
"That decides me," he answered, falling into step with her. "A short walk is exactly what I want. For the last few days I have been oppressed with a horrible fear. I am afraid of growing fat!"
She looked at his long slim figure, and laughed derisively.
"You will have to find another reason for this sudden desire for exercise," she remarked.
"Do I need to find one?" he answered, laughing down into her pretty face.
She shook her head.
"This is all very well," she said, "but I quite understand that it is my last morning. I know what will happen this afternoon, and I really do not think that I shall allow you to come past that gate."
"Why not?" he asked earnestly.
"You know very well that Pauline is coming," she answered.
The change in his face was too slight for her to notice it, but there was a change. His lips moved as though he were repeating the name to himself.
"And why should Pauline"s coming affect the situation?" he asked.
She shook her head.
"You say nice things to me," she declared, looking at him reproachfully, "but only when Pauline isn"t here. We all know that directly she comes we are no longer any of us human beings. I wish I were intelligent."
"Don"t!" he begged. "Don"t wish anything so foolish. Intelligence is the greatest curse of the day. Few people possess it, it is true, but those few spend most of their time wishing they were fools."
"Am I a fool?" she asked.
"Of course," he answered. "All pretty and charming people are fools."