Nor is this all: the excitement not only confused his moral sense, but also, by a physiological law, the subtle power of sympathy, changed what was originally a pretence into a reality. The love we begin by feigning, we end by feeling; at least so far as the mere sensuousness of the feeling goes. Excitement at all times has a singular power of awakening into life the germs of vague desires. It intensifies a thought into a desire, a desire into a passion.
Marmaduke began by feigning a return of his former love for Mrs. Meredith Vyner. Her artful doubts increased his desire to convince her. His increased eagerness gave greater sharpness, and distinctness to that desire. Carried away by his own acting, he began at last to feel some of the passion of his part. Memory recalled the charms he once adored; and Mrs. Vyner was there in all the fascination of her strange beauty, to make his pulses vibrate as of old. The spell of those tiger eyes; the perfume of that golden hair; the witchery of that fantastic manner, began to move the voluptuousness within him, as before. And the very restraints imposed upon him no less by her position, than by her adroit avoidance of him, irritated him the more. She would not permit him to breathe a word of his passion. She would not suffer him to take her hand; to his ardour she opposed her affectation of moral scruples, and what "was due to her husband!" She kept him at a distance, without forbidding him the house.
The result was, that Desire intensified the passion of Revenge. He not only burned to conquer, in order that he might gratify the dark passion which was rankling in his heart, as it only rankles in those "children of the sun," but also because the woman he hated fascinated him.
This fascination will be incomprehensible to those whose colder temperaments, or more limited experience, have not brought home to them the fact that we may at once despise and admire; that we may have indeed, a positive contempt for a person in whose presence we are as if under a spell.
The secret is, that esteem and respect are founded upon moral sympathies and judgments; but the charm of beauty and manner appeals to the more sensuous and emotional parts of our nature, and these, while the charm continues, triumph.
Thus Marmaduke, when alone, despised Mrs. Meredith Vyner, as one who knew her; but in her presence he was often strangely fascinated. Did he then cease to love Violet? Not he. His heart never wavered; never for an instant did she step from off the pedestal on which his love had placed her. True that, owing to the wide signification in which the word Love is used, he may have been said at times to love Mrs. Vyner, because he certainly often felt for her that desire which is all some men know of love. But, call it by what name you please, it had no affinity to the love he felt for Violet.
And Mrs. Vyner? She was proud, excessively proud, of her triumph. She watched Violet's dawning jealousy, and deepening sadness, with a quiet savageness, horrible to think of; and she noted the increasing entanglement of Marmaduke in her net, with the pride of a coquette regaining her prey, and triumphing over a handsomer younger woman.
She never for an instant doubted Marmaduke's sincerity; and although his attentions to Violet sometimes irritated her, she deceived herself by supposing that he only paid them to excite her jealousy.
I have observed a paradoxical fact in human nature, which I here record, without professing to explain it; and it is this—hypocrites are easily duped by the hypocrisy of another, and liars are always credulous. La Rochefoucauld has also noticed that "quelque défiance que nous ayons de la sincérité de ceux qui nous parlent, nous croyons toujours qu'ils nous disent plus vrai qu'aux autres." I suppose it is in both cases our confidence in our own sagacity which misleads us; but there is the fact, let moralists make what they can of it.
Well, this fact explains to us why that consummate actress, Mrs. Meredith Vyner, was completely duped by the acting of Marmaduke, the truth of whose passion she never thought of doubting. And what was said before respecting the effect of acting upon the mind, and its changing pretence into reality, must also be applied to her: with all the greater force arising from her mind not being in any way disposed against him, as his mind was against her. If he, who hated her, was insensibly led to feel something of the passion which he feigned, how much more likely would she be to admit the same influence, her mind being free from all dislike?