She answered him volubly, almost hysterically. Her manner was absolutely foreign. He listened to her protestations almost in bewilderment.
“It is not true, Henry. You cannot mean what you are saying. I have always been the same. I am the same now. What could alter me? You don’t believe that anything could alter me?”
“Or any person?” he asked.
“Or any person,” she repeated, hastily. “Go through the list of our acquaintances, if you will. Have I ever shown any partiality for anyone? You cannot honestly believe that I have not been faithful to our unwritten compact?”
“Sometimes,” he said slowly, “I have had a horrible fear. Pauline, I want you to be kind to me. This has been a blow. I cannot easily get over it. Let me tell you this. One of the reasons—the great reason—why I fear and dread this coming change, is because it may leave you more susceptible to the influence of that person.”
“You mean Mr. Saton?” she said.
“I do,” Rochester answered. “Perhaps I ought not to have mentioned his name. Perhaps I ought not to have said anything about it. But there the whole thing is. If I thought that any part of your interest in the man’s scientific attainments had become diverted to the man himself, I should feel inclined to take him by the neck and throw him into the Serpentine.”
She said nothing. Her face had become very still, almost expressionless. Rochester felt his heart turn cold.
“Pauline,” he said, “before I go you will have to tell me that what I fear could not come to pass. Perhaps you think that I insult you in suggesting it. This young man may be clever, but he is not of our world—yours and mine. He is a poseur with borrowed manners, flamboyant, a quack medicine man of the market place. He isn’t a gentleman, or anything like one. I am not really afraid, Pauline, and yet I need reassurance.”
“You have nothing to fear,” she answered quietly. “I am sorry, Henry, but I cannot discuss Mr. Saton with you. Yet don’t think I am blind. I know that there is truth in all you say. Sometimes little things about him set my very teeth on edge.”