Sensitive as he must have been, with that abnormal and abominable sensitiveness from which men of his coarse fiber too often suffer, to the aversion which his caresses could not but excite, to her instinctive shrinking from even the greed of his regard, and conceiving her to entertain a tenderness for the more personable man, the more dashing figure that was clothed as well in the glamour of a wildly romantic history, and the man who most intolerably was his junior by many years, Morphew--the conjecture gained force of verified conviction in the light of this late disclosure--had decided upon Lanyard's death as the one sure means of healing Folly of her infatuation, and had decreed that it should be brought to pass as an act of justice, approved by custom and the law, meted out to Lanyard while he was engaged in the commission of a felony.
Thus at a stroke he would rid himself of one whom he hated and feared as both a rival in love and an irreconcilable menace to his more material fortunes, prove to Folly she had misplaced her admiration, and clear Hugh Morphew of all suspicion of complicity in that old offense of Mallison and the emeralds; he would even rehabilitate Mallison, if he had any further use for that one, if his indignation on account of Mallison's imputed ingratitude had not been all a blind.
And indeed it was not hard to see how well it would be for all concerned, it might be even for Lanyard himself--it might be even for Eve!--if he were to be found dead the next morning of a bullet fired by an honest man in legitimate defense of his home . . .
Well for Eve and well for himself if he should meet his end tonight! That thought hummed in Lanyard's head like the refrain of some old song that, once recalled, sings itself endlessly over and over to memory's ear. It intensified the sobriety with which he listened while Morphew laid bare the cheap articulation of his plot, but it was permitted to work no deeper treason; so that Lanyard might very well have been as he seemed, as Pagan and Morphew believed him to be, impressed to admiration by the finely dove-tailed ingenuity and the imaginative daring of the scheme complete.
"The next property to the west"--Morphew flirted an iridescent paw toward that quarter--"is the summer home of the Vandergrifts. Guess you must know who they are . . ."