He was quite prepared to find that in a week’s time she and Raymond would write to his father saying that they were engaged, but not for a moment did he believe that they would ever be married. He had but to keep up his cordial indifference till Violet found it intolerable. To have remonstrated with her, to have allowed that her news hurt him, was to give Violet just what she wanted. A loveless marriage faced her, while all the time she was not heart-whole, and however much she wanted Stanier, she would be daily more conscious that the conditions on which she got it were a diet of starvation.
“She _is_ rather in love with me,” thought Colin, “and very likely my letter will drive her into accepting him. But if only I can keep cool and pleasant, she’ll never marry him. Devilish ingenious! And then there’s Raymond!”
Colin laughed aloud as he thought of Raymond, who really lay at the bottom of all these plans. Even if it had been possible now, before Violet accepted him, to intervene in some way and cause her to refuse instead of to take him, he would not have stirred a finger, for thus he would baulk himself of the completeness of Raymond’s discomfiture, since Raymond would feel the breaking off of his engagement more bitterly than an original refusal. Let Violet accept him first and then throw him over. That would be a real counter-irritant to the sting of Raymond’s primogeniture, an appreciable counterweight to his future possession of Stanier.
It had been a check in that fraternal feud that Raymond’s birth and his own were certainly legitimate, and that nothing now could stand in the way of his brother’s succession, but if the check in that direction had not occurred, there would never have been any chance of Violet’s marrying him, and Raymond would have been spared the wounding humiliation which instinctively, Colin felt sure, was to be dealt him. Raymond was genuinely desirous of her; he would feel her loss very shrewdly. If only, by some diabolical good fortune, Raymond could lose them both! Colin saw himself, Violet by his side, smilingly observing Raymond’s final departure from Stanier, and hoping that he would have a pleasant journey.
Alas! it was time to swim shorewards again, for the morning boat from Naples which was carrying Salvatore Viagi had already gone by on its tourist route to the Blue Grotto, and Salvatore would have disembarked at the Marina. He felt curious to see Uncle Salvatore, and was determined to make himself uncommonly pleasant, for there might be things which Salvatore knew which his father had not told him. The date of the marriage, for instance; though he despaired of any practical use arising from that, Colin would like to know when it took place.