So Eustace, sophist as he was, argued in favour of his dishonourable passion, and would have even succeeded in persuading himself that he was a much-injured person by having to undergo such trouble, but for a certain uneasy feeling that he ruthlessly crushed down.
Having settled his plans to his own satisfaction, Eustace had another smoke, then going to the window, drew aside the curtains and looked forth into the black night.
The wind was rising and whistled shrilly round the house, lashing the dark waves into lines of seething white foam which glimmered ghost-like through the gloom, while overhead the thin filmy clouds raced across the sky over the face of the haggard-looking moon. He could hear the thunder of the surge on the distant beach, the wind muttering drearily among the trees, and casting his eyes overhead he saw the pallid moonlight streaming in ghastly radiance through the ragged clouds.
Dropping the curtain with a sigh, he sauntered across to the piano, and began to improvise a weird fantasy in keeping with the feelings aroused by the wild scene without. The roll of the sea, the wuthering of the wind, and the rustle of the reeds were all transmuted into strange harmonies under the touch of his skilful fingers, and stealing out at intervals from amid the tempest of sound, stole a strange, sobbing strain, fitful and wayward as the breeze, as if some malicious demon were piping heart-stealing love-songs to the sky, and the night, and the lonely marsh.
He remained some time at the piano, following his changeful fancies, but when the clock struck nine he closed the instrument, and had one final pipe before going to bed. As he sat in front of the fire, looking into the heart of the burning coals, he went over again in his own mind the details of the scheme by which he hoped to secure his cousin's wife to himself.
"Yes," he said aloud in the silence of the room, "it is all right! There is no flaw!"
There was a flaw, however, and one which, in his blind egotism and complacent selfishness, he entirely overlooked, and that was the love of the mother for her child.
[CHAPTER XXI.]
FROM THE HUSBAND'S POINT OF VIEW.
"A statue cut in marble white
To me gives but a cold delight,