“You are the most selfish hostess I ever stayed with,” Lois declared, turning away with a little pout. “Never mind! I’ll make him talk to me after dinner.”
“Is your friend in the diplomatic service?” Lord Penarvon asked Rochester. “He is a most amusing fellow.”
“Not at present, at any rate,” Rochester answered. “I really forget what he used to do when I met him first. As a matter of fact, I have seen very little of him lately.”
A servant announced dinner, and they all trooped across the hall a little informally. It was only a small party, and Lady Mary was a hostess whose ideas were distinctly modern. Conversation at first was nearly altogether general. Saton, without in any way asserting himself, bore at least his part in it. He spoke modestly enough, and yet everything he said seemed to tell. From the first, the dinner was a success.
Rochester found himself listening with a curiosity for which he could not wholly account, to this young man, seated only a few feet away. His presence was so decidedly piquant. It appealed immensely to his sense of humor. Saton’s appearance was in every respect irreproachable. His tie was perfectly tied, his collar of the latest shape. His general appearance was that of an exceedingly smart young man about town. The only sign of eccentricity which he displayed was an unobtrusive eyeglass, suspended from his neck by a narrow black ribbon, and which he had only used to study the menu.
Rochester looked at him across the white tablecloth, with its glittering load of silver and glass, its perfumed banks of pink blossoms, and told himself that one at least of his somewhat eccentric experiments had borne strange fruit. He thought of that night upon the hillside, the boy’s passionate words, his almost wild desire to realize, to turn into actual life, the fantasies which were then only the creation of his fancy. How far had he realized them, he wondered? What did this alteration in his exterior denote? From a few casual and half-forgotten inquiries, Rochester knew that he was the son, or rather the orphan of working-people in the neighboring town. There was nothing in his blood to make him in any way the social equal of these men and women amongst whom he now sat with such perfect self-possession. Rochester found himself watching for some traces of inferior breeding, some lapse of speech, some signs of an innate lack of refinement. The absence of any of these things puzzled him. Saton was assured, without being over-confident. He spoke of himself only seldom. It was marvelous how often he seemed to avoid the use of the first person. He seemed, too, modestly unconscious of the fact that his conversation was in any way more interesting than the speech of those by whom he was surrounded.
“You seem to have lived,” his hostess said to him once, “in so many countries, Mr. Saton. Are you really only as old as you look?”
“How can I answer that,” he asked, smiling, “except by telling you that I am twenty-five.”
“You must have commenced to live in your perambulator,” she declared.
“I have lived nowhere,” he answered. “I have visited many places, and travelled through many lands, but life with me has been a search.”