e declared, "I avoided it. It was really a
little too obvious."

"Come," she said, "you are a type of man I have not met with for
years. You are strong and vigorous and healthy. You have color upon
your cheeks, and strength in your tone and movements. In any show of
your kind, you should certainly be entitled to a prize."

Rochester laughed, at first softly, and then heartily.

"My dear lady," he said, "forgive me. I can assure you that although
my inclinations do not prompt me to sit at your son's feet and accept
his mythical sayings as the words of a god, I am really not a fool. I
will even go so far as this. I will even admit the possibility that a
serious and religious study of occultism might result in benefit to
all of us. The chief point where you and I differ is with regard to
your adopted son. You believe in him, apparently. I don't!"

"Then why are you here?" she asked. "What do you want with him? Do you
come as an enemy?"

Rochester was spared the necessity of making any answer. He heard the
door open, and the woman's eyes glittered as they turned toward it.

"Bertrand is here himself," she said. "You can settle your business
with him."

Rochester rose to his feet. Saton had just entered, closing the door
behind him. Prepared for Rochester's presence by the servants, he
greeted him calmly enough.

"This is an unexpected honor," he said, bowing. "I did not imagine
that we should meet again so soon."

"Nor I," Rochester answered. "Where can we talk?"

"Here as well as anywhere," Saton answered, going up to Rachael, and
lifting her hand for a moment to his lips. "From this lady, whose
acquaintance I presume you have made, I have no secrets."

Rochester glanced from one to the other--the woman, sitting erect and
severe in her chair, the young man bending affectionately over her.
Yes, he was right! There was something about the two hard to explain,
yet apparent to him as he sat there, which seemed in some way to
remove them out of direct kinship with the ordinary people of the
world. Was it, he wondered, with a sudden swift intuition, a touch of
insularity, a sign of narrowness, that he should find himself so
utterly repelled by this foreign note in their temperaments? Was his
disapproval, after all, but a mark of snobbishness, the snobbishness
which, to use a mundane parallel, takes objection to the shape of an
unfashionable collar, or the cut of a country-made coat? There were
other races upon the