ROCHESTER’S ULTIMATUM
The Park into which they turned was almost deserted. Pauline stopped the carriage and got out.
“Come and walk with me a little way,” she said to Rochester. “We will go and sit amongst that wilderness of empty chairs. I want to talk. I must talk to someone. We shall be quite alone there.”
Rochester walked by her side, puzzled. He had never seen her like this.
“I suppose I am hysterical,” she said, clutching at his arm for a moment as they passed along the walk. “There, even that does me good. It’s good to feel—oh, I don’t know what I’m talking about!” she exclaimed.
“Where have you been this afternoon?” he asked gravely.
“To hear that awful man Naudheim,” she answered. “Henry, I wish I’d never been. I wish to Heaven you’d never asked Bertrand Saton to Beauleys.”
Rochester’s face grew darker.
“I wish I’d wrung the fellow’s neck the first day I saw him,” he declared, bitterly. “But after all, Pauline, you don’t take this sort of person seriously?”