"The child is as well as you are," retorted Aunt jelly, snappishly, "though that is not saying much, for you look as if you were sickening for some disease, but in plain words Alizon is neglecting her husband in the most silly manner for the child. If this is the case, how will it end?"
"I'm sure I don't know!"
"You never know anything! Then I'll tell you, they'll learn to do without one another, and that's a bad thing. She'll be all right, because she's got the child, but Guy's got nothing, and he's not the man to put-up with such treatment. If she neglects him, he'll find consolation with some other woman."
"Oh, aunt!"
"I've shocked you, have I?" said the old lady grimly. "Get your nerves better under control, then. I call a spade a spade, and am telling you the truth. If Alizon Errington goes on like this, the first woman that comes along will snap up her husband, and the consequence will be of her own making."
"Well, what's to be done?" demanded Eustace, blankly.
"I'm sure I don't know," said Aunt Jelly, with an air of vexation, resuming her knitting. "I don't want to see the affair end in the Divorce Court, and that's the direction it's going in at present. Guy was up the other day, and told me some long rigmarole about his feelings, so the best thing you can do is to go down to the Hall, and see what you can do."
"I!" cried Eustace, jumping to his feet in a state of agitation. "I can do nothing."
"Take a glass of wine, my dear, take a glass of wine," said Aunt Jelly, sharply. "Your nerves are all crooked. That comes of gadding about the world."
Eustace made no reply to this onslaught, but walked to and fro in silence. He was considerably puzzled how to act in this dilemma, as he had made up his mind not to see Lady Errington, thinking his feelings towards her were too strong for him to keep silence. Curiously enough it never seemed to strike him that as Alizon was neglecting her own husband for the child, it was unlikely she would respond to his passion in any way, seeing that she had neither eyes nor ears for anything save her first-born. Gartney's egotism blinded him on this occasion, as it did on many others, but he felt that he was being forced into a situation, towards the woman he loved, from whence there was no escape. Looking at it in his narrow-minded fashion, it seemed a struggle between love and honour, and he was undecided how to act. All his life, however, he had been accustomed to deny himself nothing, and in this case he carried out his ruling principle of selfishly gratifying himself, so there and then made up his mind to accept Aunt Jelly's mission and go down to Errington Hall.