In regard to what was outside
him he was but a mirror, in regard to what was inside him a mere
vessel of imperfectly interacting forces. And now his capacities and
incapacities together had culminated in a hideous plot, in which it
would be hard to say whether the folly, the crime, or the cunning
predominated: he had made up his mind that, if the daughter of his
brother refused to wed her cousin, and so carry out what he asserted
to have been the declared wish of her father, she should go after
her father, and leave her property to the next heir, so that if not
in one way then in another the law of nature might be fulfilled, and
title and property united without the intervention of a marriage. As
to any evil that therein might be imagined to befall his niece, he
quoted the words of Hamlet--"Since no man has ought of what he
leaves, what is't to leave betimes?"--she would be no worse than she
must have been when the few years of her natural pilgrimage were of
necessity over: the difference to her was not worth thinking of
beside the difference to the family! At the same time perhaps a
scare might serve, and she would consent to marry Forgue to escape a
frightful end!
The moment Donal was gone, he sent Forgue to London, and set himself
to overcome the distrust of him which he could not but see had for
some time been growing in her. With the sweet prejudices of a loving
nature to assist him, he soon prevailed so far that, without much
entreaty, she consented to accompany him to London--for a month or
so, he said, while Davie was gone.
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