She sat opposite Cecil, who seemed more talkative than usual. No one remarked her silence—she seldom spoke at dinner, except to her neighbour. No one asked her if she were ill, though she sent away her plate each time untouched. Cecil and Captain Heath observed it; both with pain.
Keen were the pangs she suffered at this fulfilment of the captain's cruel prophecy, and bitterly did she at that moment hate him for having undeceived her. That Cecil avoided her was but too evident. That his neglect could have but the one motive Captain Heath had ascribed was never doubted; but she threw all the blame on the captain's officiousness in speaking about their want of fortune, and in fact, with all the unreasonableness of suffering, hated him as the proximate cause of her pain.
Captain Heath applauded his own sagacity as a reader of character, and rejoiced as a lover in the success of his calculation. But he rejoiced too soon. Like most men he had erred in his calculation, because he dealt with human nature as if it were simple, instead of being, as it really is, strangely complex; and as if one motive was not counteracted by another. This is the grand source of the errors committed by cunning people: they are said to be "too cunning" when they overreach themselves by what seems an artful and logically-reasoned calculation; but the truth is, they have not been cunning enough. They have planned their plans as if the mind of man were to be treated like a mathematical problem, not as a bundle of motives, of prejudices, and of passions. The plan may look admirable on paper; but then it is constructed on the assumption that the victim must needs be impelled by certain motives; whereas, when it comes into execution, we find that some other motives are brought into play, the existence of which was not allowed for in the calculation; and these entirely subvert the plan.
Captain Heath's plan erred in precisely this way. Judging Cecil's character in the main aright, he justly argued that such a man would shun poverty as a pestilence, because he was weak, and money is power; and that he would shrink from affronting the world with no other aid than his own right hand. He therefore concluded that an intimation of Vyner's affairs would be an effectual method of putting an end to Cecil's attentions.
Now this argument would have no flaw in it, if we assume that a man is led solely by prudential considerations: it would be perfect, were men swayed solely by their reason.
Cecil's views were precisely such as Captain Heath had suspected. But then Cecil had emotions, passions, senses—and these the captain had left out of the calculation. Yet these, which are the stronger powers in every breast, were to overthrow the captain's plan.
Cecil in his own room, surveying his situation, was a very different man from Cecil in the presence of his beloved, pained at the aspect of her pain, and conscience-stricken as he gazed upon her lovely, sorrowing face. His heart smote him for his selfishness, and he was asking himself whether he could give her up—whether poverty with her were not preferable to splendour with another, when he thought he saw something in the captain's look which betokened scornful triumph.
"Can he have deceived me? Does he wish to get me out of the way?" he said to himself. "Egad! I think so. The game at billiards this morning—that was mysterious. What could induce him to propose such a thing to me—he who never took the slightest notice of me before? He had some motive. And then his story about Vyner's affairs—fudge! I won't believe it, until I have it on better authority."
The ladies rose from the table.
"I sha'n't sit long over the wine," Cecil whispered to Blanche, as she passed him.