“No!” he answered. “For what you are, for the ignoble creature that you have become, I accept a certain amount of responsibility. For that reason, I bid you go. Go where you will, so long as your name or your presence never trouble us again. Let this be the last time that any one of us hears the name of Bertrand Saton. I give you that chance. Find for yourself an honest place in the world, if you can, wherever you will, so that it be not in this country. Go!”
Saton turned toward the door with a little shrug of the shoulders.
“You need have no fear,” he said. “The country into which I go is one in which you will never be over-anxious to travel.”
He passed out, amidst a silence which seemed a little curious when one considered the emotions which he left behind. Lois’ pale face seemed all aglow with a sort of desperate thankfulness. Already she was in Vandermere’s arms. And then the silence was broken by a woman’s sobbing. They all turned towards her. It was Pauline who had suddenly broken down, her face buried in her hands, her whole frame shaking with passion.
Rochester moved towards her, but she thrust him aside.
“You are a brute!” she declared—“a brute!”
She staggered across the room towards the door by which Saton had departed. Before she could reach it, however, they heard the crunching of wheels as his car swept by the front on its way down the avenue.
Rochester pushed open the black gate which led from the road into the plantation at the back of the hill, and they passed through and commenced the last short climb. No word passed between them. The silence of the evening was broken only by the faint sobbing of the wind in the treetops, and the breaking of dried twigs under their feet. They were both listening intently—they scarcely knew for what. The far-away rumble of a train, the barking of a dog, the scurrying of a rabbit across the path—these sounds came and passed—nothing else.