If all the world be sinning,
Why should we two be pure?"
"I'm afraid she won't take the same view as that," he muttered to himself discontentedly, thinking of Lady Errington. "And yet, if she doesn't love her husband, she may have a kindly feeling for me. As to the child, surely no woman--not even this Madonna--can devote herself exclusively to it. Still, the child is the obstacle between herself and her husband, so perhaps it will be the obstacle between herself and me. Oh! I could love her! I could love her if she would only let me! She will let me! I'm certain of it! Guy has no brains, and she is starving for the want of intellectual food. The child is the excuse, but that is the real reason of the coldness between them."
One of the most extraordinary parts of Gartney's delusion concerning his chance of success with Lady Errington lay in the fact that his present reasoning was diametrically opposed to the views he held when first meeting Lady Errington. He then asserted that she would never care for her husband, but when she became a mother would lavish all her love on the child. This view of Alizon's character was a correct one, as Eustace in his innermost heart well knew, but he wilfully deceived himself in thinking that now she had obtained her heart's desire she would give it up for the sake of a man whom she had hardly seen. Eustace, however, had been so uniformly triumphant with the female sex, that the idea of failing with Alizon never entered his mind, and he thought that if he laid siege to Lady Errington, in a dexterous fashion, she would give up everything--husband, child, name, and home--in order to gratify his selfish desire.
When he came to England after his many months' absence in Arabia, Gartney had determined not to see Lady Errington, feeling that he loved her, or rather her idolized memory, so much, that he would not be able to suppress his passion, and thus behave dishonourably towards his cousin Guy by running away with his wife. Aunt Jelly, however, by telling him of the estrangement between the pair had banished this honourable hesitation from his heart, as he felt himself forced by Fate to see the woman he loved face to face. It was a very convenient excuse with which to quiet his conscience for this wrong-doing, and having settled in his own selfish mind that Fate was too strong for him, he determined to estrange husband and wife still further, so that he would have less trouble in overcoming Lady Errington's scruples to his dishonourable proposals.
This idea which he held had been singularly strengthened by the remark of Aunt Jelly, when she said that Guy in his present state would be the prey of the first clever woman that came along. Eustace therefore determined to introduce Guy to some clever woman who would entangle him in her net, and the woman he had fixed upon in his own mind for this vile purpose was--Mrs. Veilsturm.
It was curious that he should have fixed on this special woman to do this, seeing that he was ignorant of Mrs. Veilsturm's grudge against Lady Errington, and did not know how eagerly she would seize this opportunity of revenging herself on the woman who had slighted her so scathingly. He merely chose Mrs. Veilsturm because she was beautiful, clever, and unscrupulous, so a hint to her would be quite sufficient to induce her to fascinate Guy by all the means in her power.
Eustace Gartney was by no means a thoroughly bad man. Indeed, he had very good qualities, although they were, to a great extent, neutralized by his indomitable selfishness, and therefore he suffered several qualms of conscience over the dishonourable scheme he had in hand.
His intense egotism and love of gratifying self, however, came to his aid, and he argued himself into a satisfactory frame of mind by Heaven only knows what sophistry.
"She doesn't care a bit about her husband," he reflected, pacing the room with measured strides, "she never did care about him, and it's a pity to see a clever woman like that tied to an unsympathetic log. With me, her life will be much happier than with him, and after he gets a divorce I will marry her, and we will live abroad, where there will be no narrow-minded bigots to scoff at what they will call her false step. I'll do it, at whatever cost! My life will be a blank without her, and she will be unhappy with Guy, so it will be far the best for both of us to come together, even at the cost of a public scandal. I'm sorry for Guy, but the one must suffer for the many, and I daresay in after years he will thank me for taking from him a wife from whom, even now, after less than two years of married life, he is estranged."