She had chosen to trust herself to this other man, and he, Will Belton, would not interfere further in her affairs.

Then he drew upon his imagination for a picture of the future, in which he portrayed Captain Aylmer as a ruined man, who would probably desert his wife, and make himself generally odious to all his acquaintance--a picture as to the realisation of which I am bound to say that Captain Aylmer's antecedents gave no probability.

But it was the looking at this self-drawn picture which first softened the artist's heart towards the victim whom he had immolated on his imaginary canvas.
When Clara should be ruined by the baseness and villany and general scampishness of this man whom she was going to marry,--to whom she was about to be weak enough and fool enough to trust herself,--then he would interpose and be her brother once again,--a broken-hearted brother no doubt, but a brother efficacious to keep the wolf from the door of this poor woman and her--children.

Then, as he thus created Captain Aylmer's embryo family of unprovided orphans,--for after a while he killed the captain, making him to die some death that was very disgraceful, but not very distinct even to his own imagination,--as he thought of those coming pledges of a love which was to him so bitter, he stormed about the streets, performing antics of which no one would have believed him capable, who had known him as the thriving Mr.William Belton, of Plaistow Hall, among the fens of Norfolk.
But the character of a man is not to be judged from the pictures which he may draw or from the antics which he may play in his solitary hours.

Those who act generally with the most consummate wisdom in the affairs of the world, often meditate very silly doings before their wiser resolutions form themselves.