“You defy me?” Rochester asked calmly.
“If you call that defiance, I do,” Saton answered.
Rochester came a step further into the room.
“Listen, my young friend,” he said. “You belong to the modern condition of things, to the world which has become just a little over-civilized. You may call me a boor, if you like, but I want you to understand this. If I fail to unmask you by any other means, I shall revert to the primeval way of deciding such differences as lie between you and me, the differences which make for hate. I can wield a horse-whip with the strongest man living, and I am in deadly earnest.”
“The lady whose name you have mentioned,” Saton said softly—“is she also your ward? You are related to her, perhaps?”
“She is the woman I love,” Rochester answered. “Our ways through life may lie apart, or fate may bring them together. That is not your business or your concern. When I tell you that she is the woman I love, I mean you to understand that she is the woman whom I will protect against all manner of evil, now and always. Remember that if you disregard my warning, in the spirit or in the letter, so surely as we two live you will repent it.”
Saton crossed the room with noiseless footsteps. He leaned toward the wall and touched an electric bell.
“Very well,” he said. “You have come to deliver an ultimatum, and I have received it. I understand perfectly what you will accept as an act of war. There is nothing more to be said, I think?”
“Nothing,” Rochester answered, turning to follow the servant whom Saton’s summons had brought to the door.