ROCHESTER IS INDIGNANT
Rochester accepted his wife’s offer of a lift in her victoria after the luncheon party in Cadogan Street.
“Mary,” he said, as soon as the horses had started, “I cannot imagine why you were so civil to that insufferable bounder Saton.”
She looked at him thoughtfully.
“Is he an insufferable bounder?” she asked.
“I find him so,” Rochester answered, deliberately. “He dresses like other men, he walks and moves like other men, he speaks like other men, and all the time I know that he is acting. He plays the game well, but it is a game. The man is a bounder, and you will all of you find it out some day.”
“Don’t you think, perhaps,” his wife remarked, “that you are prejudiced because you have some knowledge of his antecedents?”
“Not in the least,” Rochester answered. “The fetish of birth has never appealed to me. I find as many gentlefolk amongst my tenants and servants, as at the parties to which I have the honor of escorting you. It isn’t that at all. It’s a matter of insight. Some day you will all of you find it out.”
“All of us, I presume,” Lady Mary said, “includes Pauline.”