“I am sure,” he said to her—she was one of his oldest friends—“that you will be glad to meet the gentleman whose brilliant paper has interested us all so much. This is Lady Marrabel, Saton, whose father was professor at Oxford before your day.”
The great man passed on. Pauline’s first impulse had been to hold out her hand, but she had immediately withdrawn it. Saton contented himself with a grave bow.
“I am afraid, Lady Marrabel,” he said, “that you are prejudiced against me.”
“I think not,” she answered. “Naturally, seeing you so suddenly brought into my mind the terrible occurrence of only a few days ago.”
“An occurrence,” he declared, “which no one could regret so greatly as myself. But apart from that, Lady Marrabel, I am afraid that you are not prepared to do me justice. You look at me through Rochester’s eyes, and I am quite sure that all his days Rochester will believe that I am more or less of a charlatan.”
“Your paper was very wonderful, Mr. Saton,” she said slowly. “I am convinced that Mr. Rochester would have admitted that himself if he had been here.”
“He might,” Saton said. “He might have admitted that much, with a supercilious smile and a little shrug of the shoulders. Rochester is a clever man, I believe, but he is absolutely insular. There is a belt of prejudice around him, to the hardening of which centuries have come and gone. You are not, you cannot be like that,” he continued with conviction. “There is truth in these things. I am not an ignorant mountebank, posing as a Messiah of science. Look at the men and women who are here to-night. They know a little. They understand a little. They are only eager to see a little further through the shadows. I do not ask you to become a convert. I ask you only to believe that I speak of the things in which I have faith.”
“I am quite sure that you do,” she answered, with a marked access of cordiality in her tone. “Believe me, it was not from any distrust of that sort that I perhaps looked strangely at you when you came up. You must remember that it is a very short time since our last meeting. One does not often come face to face with a tragedy like that.”
“You are right,” he answered. “It was awful. Yet you saw how they drove me on. I spoke what I felt and knew. It is not often that those things come to one, but that there was death in the room that night I knew as surely as I am sitting with you here now. They goaded me on to speak of it. I could not help it.”
“It was very terrible and very wonderful,” she said, looking at him with troubled eyes. “They say that Lady Mary is still suffering from the shock.”