To torture human beings into fits;
A mixture of plebeians and patricians,
On whom in judgment Mrs. Grundy sits;
Sonatas played by second-rate musicians,
And milk-and-water jokes by would-be wits;
Such squallings, scandals, crush of men and ladies--
It's like a family party down in Hades."
As this was the first victory he had ever obtained over his egotistical nature, Eustace felt most unjustifiably proud, and viewed his actions with great self-complacency, therefore the good results of such victory merely became egotism in another form. His attitude towards Lady Errington had certainly altered, but not for the better, as the fantastic adoration he had formerly felt towards a vision of his own creation had changed to an earthly love for the real woman, in which there was mingled more of sensuality than platonism. Eustace was certainly not a coarse man in any sense of the word, but he had regarded the visionary Lady Errington so long as his own special property, withheld from him by the accident of her marriage with Guy, that when he saw the flesh-and-blood woman riant in all her newly-found vitality, he viewed her as a Sultan might view a fresh odalisque added to his serail. The pale lily had changed into the rich red rose, and the spiritual being of his fevered imagination had taken the form of a beautiful woman, full of temptation to an ardent lover.
Any sensible man would have seen from the short conversation he had had with Lady Errington that love for the child filled her heart to the exclusion of all else, but Eustace, with supreme egotism, deemed that she loved the child simply because her husband was not worthy of her affection and when he deigned to worship her she would certainly forget the pale passion of maternal love under the fierce ardour of his devotion.
With this idea in his mind it was no wonder he felt that he was exercising great self-denial in trying to bring husband and wife together, and in renouncing his desire to gain possession of a woman for whom he felt an unreasoning admiration. However, being determined to carry out this new mood of asceticism to the end, he took Guy up to Town with him, and tried to amuse that moody young man to the best of his power, which was a somewhat unsatisfactory task.
Seeing that he had abandoned his scheme to gain Alizon's love, he did not intend to speak to Mrs. Veilsturm, as he had now no desire to entangle Guy with another woman, but as he was going to an "At Home" given by Cleopatra, he did not hesitate to take his cousin with him in the ordinary course of things.