BOOK IV--GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE.


CHAPTER XXVIII.

"Il est plus aise de connoitre l'homme en general que de connoitre un
homme en particulier.--LA ROCHEFOUCAULD."


An hour after Grandcourt had left, the important news of Gwendolen's
engagement was known at the rectory, and Mr. and Mrs. Gascoigne, with
Anna, spent the evening at Offendene.

"My dear, let me congratulate you on having created a strong attachment,"
said the rector. "You look serious, and I don't wonder at it: a lifelong
union is a solemn thing. But from the way Mr. Grandcourt has acted and
spoken I think we may already see some good arising out of our adversity.
It has given you an opportunity of observing your future husband's
delicate liberality."

Mr. Gascoigne referred to Grandcourt's mode of implying that he would
provide for Mrs. Davilow--a part of the love-making which Gwendolen had
remembered to cite to her mother with perfect accuracy.

"But I have no doubt that Mr. Grandcourt would have behaved quite as
handsomely if you had not gone away to Germany, Gwendolen, and had been
engaged to him, as you no doubt might have been, more than a month ago,"
said Mrs. Gascoigne, feeling that she had to discharge a duty on this
occasion. "But now there is no more room for caprice; indeed, I trust you
have no inclination to any. A woman has a great debt of gratitude to a man
who perseveres in making her such an offer. But no doubt you feel
properly."

"I am not at all sure that I do, aunt," said Gwendolen, with saucy
gravity. "I don't know everything it is proper to feel on being engaged."

The rector patted her shoulder and smiled as at a bit of innocent
naughtiness, and his wife took his behavior as an indication that she was
not to be displeased. As for Anna, she kissed Gwendolen and said, "I do
hope you will be happy," but then sank into the background and tried to
keep the tears back too. In the late days she had been imagining a little
romance about Rex--how if he still longed for Gwendolen her heart might be
softened by trouble into love, so that they could by-and-by be married.
And the romance had turned to a prayer that she, Anna, might be able to
rejoice like a good sister, and only think of being useful in working for
Gwendolen, as long as Rex was not rich. But now she wanted grace to
rejoice in something else. Miss Merry and the four girls, Alice with the
high shoulders, Bertha and Fanny the whisperers, and Isabel the listener,
were all present on this family occasion, when everything seemed
appropriately turning to the honor and glory of Gwendolen, and real life
was as interesting as "Sir Charles Grandison." The evening passed chiefly
in decisive remarks from the rector, in answer to conjectures from the two
elder ladies. According to him, the case was not one in which he could
think it his duty to mention settlements: everything must, and doubtless
would safely be left to Mr. Grandcourt.

"I should like to know exactly what sort of places Ryelands and Gadsmere
are," said Mrs. Davilow.

"Gadsmere, I believe, is a secondary place," said Mr. Gascoigne; "But
Ryelands I know to be one of our finest seats. The park is extensive and
the woods of a very valuable order. The house was built by Inigo Jones,
and the ceilings are painted in the Italian style. The estate is said to
be worth twelve thousand a year, and there are two livings, one a rectory,
in the gift of the Grandcourts. There may be some burdens on the land.
Still, Mr. Grandcourt was an only child."

"It would be most remarkable," said Mrs. Gascoigne, "if he were to become
Lord Stannery in addition to everything else. Only think: there is the
Grandcourt estate, the Mallinger estate, _and_ the baronetcy, _and_ the
peerage,"--she was marking off the items on her fingers, and paused on the
fourth while she added, "but they say there will be no land coming to him
with the peerage." It seemed a pity there was nothing for the fifth
finger.

"The peerage," said the rector, judiciously, "must be regarded as a remote
chance. There are two cousins between the present peer and Mr. Grandcourt.
It is certainly a serious reflection how death and other causes do
sometimes concentrate inheritances on one man. But an excess of that kind
is to be deprecated. To be Sir Mallinger Grandcourt Mallinger--I suppose
that will be his style--with corresponding properties, is a valuable
talent enough for any man to have committed to him. Let us hope it will be
well used."

"And what a position for the wife, Gwendolen!" said Mrs. Gascoigne; "a
great responsibility indeed. But you must lose no time in writing to Mrs.
Mompert, Henry. It is a good thing that you have an engagement of marriage
to offer as an excuse, else she might feel offended. She is rather a high
woman."

"I am rid of that horror," thought Gwendolen, to whom the name of Mompert
had become a sort of Mumbo-jumbo. She was very silent through the evening,
and that night could hardly sleep at all in her little white bed. It was a
rarity in her strong youth to be wakeful: and perhaps a still greater
rarity for her to be careful that her mother should not know of her
restlessness. But her state of mind was altogether new: she who had been
used to feel sure of herself, and ready to manage others, had just taken a
decisive step which she had beforehand thought that she would not take--
nay, perhaps, was bound not to take. She could not go backward now; she
liked a great deal of what lay before her; and there was nothing for her
to like if she went back. But her resolution was dogged by the shadow of
that previous resolve which had at first come as the undoubting movement
of her whole being. While she lay on her pillow with wide-open eyes,
"looking on darkness which the blind do see," she was appalled by the idea
that she was going to do what she had once started away from with
repugnance. It was new to her that a question of right or wrong in her
conduct should rouse her terror; she had known no compunction that atoning
caresses and presents could not lay to rest. But here had come a moment
when something like a new consciousness was awaked. She seemed on the edge
of adopting deliberately, as a notion for all the rest of her life, what
she had rashly said in her bitterness, when her discovery had driven her
away to Leubronn:--that it did not signify what she did; she had only to
amuse herself as best she could. That lawlessness, that casting away of
all care for justification, suddenly frightened her: it came to her with
the shadowy array of possible calamity behind it--calamity which had
ceased to be a mere name for her; and all the infiltrated influences of
disregarded religious teaching, as well as the deeper impressions of
something awful and inexorable enveloping her, seemed to concentrate
themselves in the vague conception of avenging power. The brilliant
position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for
herself in marriage, the deliverance from the dull insignificance of her
girlhood--all immediately before her; and yet they had come to her hunger
like food with the taint of sacrilege upon it, which she must snatch with
terror. In the darkness and loneliness of her little bed, her more
resistant self could not act against the first onslaught of dread after
her irrevocable decision. That unhappy-faced woman and her children--
Grandcourt and his relations with her--kept repeating themselves in her
imagination like the clinging memory of a disgrace, and gradually
obliterated all other thought, leaving only the consciousness that she had
taken those scenes into her life. Her long wakefulness seemed a delirium;
a faint, faint light penetrated beside the window-curtain; the chillness
increased. She could bear it no longer, and cried "Mamma!"

"Yes, dear," said Mrs. Davilow, immediately, in a wakeful voice.

"Let me come to you."

She soon went to sleep on her mother's shoulder, and slept on till late,
when, dreaming of a lit-up ball-room, she opened her eyes on her mother
standing by the bedside with a small packet in her hand.

"I am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought it better to give you this
at once. The groom has brought Criterion; he has come on another horse,
and says he is to stay here."

Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. It was a delicate enameled
casket, and inside was a splendid diamond ring with a letter which
contained a folded bit of colored paper and these words:--

Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in sign of our betrothal. I
enclose a check drawn in the name of Mr. Gascoigne, for immediate
expenses. Of course Mrs. Davilow will remain at Offendene, at least
for some time. I hope, when I come, you will have granted me an early
day, when you may begin to command me at a shorter distance.

Yours devotedly,

H. M. GRANDCOURT.

The checks was for five hundred pounds, and Gwendolen turned it toward her
mother, with the letter.

"How very kind and delicate!" said Mrs. Davilow, with much feeling. "But I
really should like better not to be dependent on a son-in-law. I and the
girls could get along very well."

"Mamma, if you say that again, I will not marry him," said Gwendolen,
angrily.

"My dear child, I trust you are not going to marry only for my sake," said
Mrs. Davilow, depreciatingly.

Gwendolen tossed her head on the pillow away from her mother, and let the
ring lie. She was irritated at this attempt to take away a motive. Perhaps
the deeper cause of her irritation was the consciousness that she was not
going to marry solely for her mamma's sake--that she was drawn toward the
marriage in ways against which stronger reasons than her mother's
renunciation were yet not strong enough to hinder her. She had waked up to
the signs that she was irrevocably engaged, and all the ugly visions, the
alarms, the arguments of the night, must be met by daylight, in which
probably they would show themselves weak. "What I long for is your
happiness, dear," continued Mrs. Davilow, pleadingly. "I will not say
anything to vex you. Will you not put on the ring?"

For a few moments Gwendolen did not answer, but her thoughts were active.
At last she raised herself with a determination to do as she would do if
she had started on horseback, and go on with spirit, whatever ideas might
be running in her head.

"I thought the lover always put on the betrothal ring himself," she said
laughingly, slipping the ring on her finger, and looking at it with a
charming movement of her head. "I know why he has sent it," she added,
nodding at her mamma."

"Why?"

"He would rather make me put it on than ask me to let him do it. Aha! he
is very proud. But so am I. We shall match each other. I should hate a man
who went down on his knees, and came fawning on me. He really is not
disgusting."

"That is very moderate praise, Gwen."

"No, it is not, for a man," said Gwendolen gaily. "But now I must get up
and dress. Will you come and do my hair, mamma, dear," she went on,
drawing down her mamma's face to caress it with her own cheeks, "and not
be so naughty any more as to talk of living in poverty? You must bear to
be made comfortable, even if you don't like it. And Mr. Grandcourt behaves
perfectly, now, does he not?"

"Certainly he does," said Mrs. Davilow, encouraged, and persuaded that
after all Gwendolen was fond of her betrothed. She herself thought him a
man whose attentions were likely to tell on a girl's feeling. Suitors must
often be judged as words are, by the standing and the figure they make in
polite society: it is difficult to know much else of them. And all the
mother's anxiety turned not on Grandcourt's character, but on Gwendolen's
mood in accepting him.

The mood was necessarily passing through a new phase this morning. Even in
the hour of making her toilet, she had drawn on all the knowledge she had
for grounds to justify her marriage. And what she most dwelt on was the
determination, that when she was Grandcourt's wife, she would urge him to
the most liberal conduct toward Mrs. Glasher's children.

"Of what use would it be to her that I should not marry him? He could have
married her if he liked; but he did _not_ like. Perhaps she is to blame
for that. There must be a great deal about her that I know nothing of. And
he must have been good to her in many ways, else she would not have wanted
to marry him."

But that last argument at once began to appear doubtful. Mrs. Glasher
naturally wished to exclude other children who would stand between
Grandcourt and her own: and Gwendolen's comprehension of this feeling
prompted another way of reconciling claims.

"Perhaps we shall have no children. I hope we shall not. And he might
leave the estate to the pretty little boy. My uncle said that Mr.
Grandcourt could do as he liked with the estates. Only when Sir Hugo
Mallinger dies there will be enough for two."

This made Mrs. Glasher appear quite unreasonable in demanding that her boy
should be sole heir; and the double property was a security that
Grandcourt's marriage would do her no wrong, when the wife was Gwendolen
Harleth with all her proud resolution not to be fairly accused. This
maiden had been accustomed to think herself blameless; other persons only
were faulty.

It was striking, that in the hold which this argument of her doing no
wrong to Mrs. Glasher had taken on her mind, her repugnance to the idea of
Grandcourt's past had sunk into a subordinate feeling. The terror she had
felt in the night-watches at overstepping the border of wickedness by
doing what she had at first felt to be wrong, had dulled any emotions
about his conduct. She was thinking of him, whatever he might be, as a man
over whom she was going to have indefinite power; and her loving him
having never been a question with her, any agreeableness he had was so
much gain. Poor Gwendolen had no awe of unmanageable forces in the state
of matrimony, but regarded it as altogether a matter of management, in
which she would know how to act. In relation to Grandcourt's past she
encouraged new doubts whether he were likely to have differed much from
other men; and she devised little schemes for learning what was expected
of men in general.

But whatever else might be true in the world, her hair was dressed
suitably for riding, and she went down in her riding-habit, to avoid delay
before getting on horseback. She wanted to have her blood stirred once
more with the intoxication of youth, and to recover the daring with which
she had been used to think of her course in life. Already a load was
lifted off her; for in daylight and activity it was less oppressive to
have doubts about her choice, than to feel that she had no choice but to
endure insignificance and servitude.

"Go back and make yourself look like a duchess, mamma," she said, turning
suddenly as she was going down-stairs. "Put your point-lace over your
head. I must have you look like a duchess. You must not take things
humbly."

When Grandcourt raised her left hand gently and looked at the ring, she
said gravely, "It was very good of you to think of everything and send me
that packet."

"You will tell me if there is anything I forget?" he said, keeping the
hand softly within his own. "I will do anything you wish."

"But I am very unreasonable in my wishes," said Gwendolen, smiling.

"Yes, I expect that. Women always are."

"Then I will not be unreasonable," said Gwendolen, taking away her hand
and tossing her head saucily. "I will not be told that I am what women
always are."

"I did not say that," said Grandcourt, looking at her with his usual
gravity. "You are what no other woman is."

"And what is that, pray?" said Gwendolen, moving to a distance with a
little air of menace.

Grandcourt made his pause before he answered. "You are the woman I love."

"Oh, what nice speeches!" said Gwendolen, laughing. The sense of that love
which he must once have given to another woman under strange circumstances
was getting familiar.

"Give me a nice speech in return. Say when we are to be married."

"Not yet. Not till we have had a gallop over the downs. I am so thirsty
for that, I can think of nothing else. I wish the hunting had begun.
Sunday the twentieth, twenty-seventh, Monday, Tuesday." Gwendolen was
counting on her fingers with the prettiest nod while she looked at
Grandcourt, and at last swept one palm over the other while she said
triumphantly, "It will begin in ten days!"

"Let us be married in ten days, then," said Grandcourt, "and we shall not
be bored about the stables."

"What do women always say in answer to that?" said Gwendolen,
mischievously.

"They agree to it," said the lover, rather off his guard.

"Then I will not!" said Gwendolen, taking up her gauntlets and putting
them on, while she kept her eyes on him with gathering fun in them.

The scene was pleasant on both sides. A cruder lover would have lost the
view of her pretty ways and attitudes, and spoiled all by stupid attempts
at caresses, utterly destructive of drama. Grandcourt preferred the drama;
and Gwendolen, left at ease, found her spirits rising continually as she
played at reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had seen more of her in this
unconscious kind of acting, instead of when she was trying to be
theatrical, he might have rated her chance higher.

When they had had a glorious gallop, however, she was in a state of
exhilaration that disposed her to think well of hastening the marriage
which would make her life all of apiece with this splendid kind of
enjoyment. She would not debate any more about an act to which she had
committed herself; and she consented to fix the wedding on that day three
weeks, notwithstanding the difficulty of fulfilling the customary laws of
the _trousseau_.

Lush, of course, was made aware of the engagement by abundant signs,
without being formally told. But he expected some communication as a
consequence of it, and after a few days he became rather impatient under
Grandcourt's silence, feeling sure that the change would affect his
personal prospects, and wishing to know exactly how. His tactics no longer
included any opposition--which he did not love for its own sake. He might
easily cause Grandcourt a great deal of annoyance, but it would be to his
own injury, and to create annoyance was not a motive with him. Miss
Gwendolen he would certainly not have been sorry to frustrate a little,
but--after all there was no knowing what would come. It was nothing new
that Grandcourt should show a perverse wilfulness; yet in his freak about
this girl he struck Lush rather newly as something like a man who was
_fey_--led on by an ominous fatality; and that one born to his fortune
should make a worse business of his life than was necessary, seemed really
pitiable. Having protested against the marriage, Lush had a second-sight
for its evil consequences. Grandcourt had been taking the pains to write
letters and give orders himself instead of employing Lush, and appeared to
be ignoring his usefulness, even choosing, against the habit of years, to
breakfast alone in his dressing-room. But a _tete-a-tete_ was not to be
avoided in a house empty of guests; and Lush hastened to use an
opportunity of saying--it was one day after dinner, for there were
difficulties in Grandcourt's dining at Offendene--

"And when is the marriage to take place?"

Grandcourt, who drank little wine, had left the table and was lounging,
while he smoked, in an easy chair near the hearth, where a fire of oak
boughs was gaping to its glowing depths, and edging them with a delicate
tint of ashes delightful to behold. The chair of red-brown velvet brocade
was a becoming back-ground for his pale-tinted, well-cut features and
exquisite long hands. Omitting the cigar, you might have imagined him a
portrait by Moroni, who would have rendered wonderfully the impenetrable
gaze and air of distinction; and a portrait by that great master would
have been quite as lively a companion as Grandcourt was disposed to be.
But he answered without unusual delay.

"On the tenth."

"I suppose you intend to remain here."

"We shall go to Ryelands for a little while; but we shall return here for
the sake of the hunting."

After this word there was the languid inarticulate sound frequent with
Grandcourt when he meant to continue speaking, and Lush waited for
something more. Nothing came, and he was going to put another question,
when the inarticulate sound began again and introduced the mildly uttered
suggestion--

"You had better make some new arrangement for yourself."

"What! I am to cut and run?" said Lush, prepared to be good-tempered on
the occasion.

"Something of that kind."

"The bride objects to me. I hope she will make up to you for the want of
my services."

"I can't help your being so damnably disagreeable to women," said
Grandcourt, in soothing apology.

"To one woman, if you please."

"It makes no difference since she is the one in question."

"I suppose I am not to be turned adrift after fifteen years without some
provision."

"You must have saved something out of me."

"Deuced little. I have often saved something for you."

"You can have three hundred a year. But you must live in town and be ready
to look after things when I want you. I shall be rather hard up."

"If you are not going to be at Ryelands this winter, I might run down
there and let you know how Swinton goes on."

"If you like. I don't care a toss where you are, so that you keep out of
sight."

"Much obliged," said Lush, able to take the affair more easily than he had
expected. He was supported by the secret belief that he should by-and-by
be wanted as much as ever.

"Perhaps you will not object to packing up as soon as possible," said
Grandcourt. "The Torringtons are coming, and Miss Harleth will be riding
over here."

"With all my heart. Can't I be of use in going to Gadsmere."

"No. I am going myself."

"About your being rather hard up. Have you thought of that plan--"

"Just leave me alone, will you?" said Grandcourt, in his lowest audible
tone, tossing his cigar into the fire, and rising to walk away.

He spent the evening in the solitude of the smaller drawing-room, whose,
with various new publications on the table of the kind a gentleman may
like to have on hand without touching, he employed himself (as a
philosopher might have done) in sitting meditatively on the sofa and
abstaining from literature--political, comic, cynical, or romantic. In
this way hours may pass surprisingly soon, without the arduous invisible
chase of philosophy; not from love of thought, but from hatred of effort--
from a state of the inward world, something like premature age, where the
need for action lapses into a mere image of what has been, is, and may or
might be; where impulse is born and dies in a phantasmal world, pausing in
rejection of even a shadowy fulfillment. That is a condition which often
comes with whitening hair; and sometimes, too, an intense obstinacy and
tenacity of rule, like the main trunk of an exorbitant egoism, conspicuous
in proportion as the varied susceptibilities of younger years are stripped
away.

But Grandcourt's hair, though he had not much of it, was of a fine, sunny
blonde, and his moods were not entirely to be explained as ebbing energy.
We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that
a lazy stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows
not what biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from sleep and
without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping
comrade, is understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character
fairly calculable in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a
gentleman may make of himself a chancy personage, raising an uncertainty
as to what he may do next, that sadly spoils companionship.

Grandcourt's thoughts this evening were like the circlets one sees in a
dark pool, continually dying out and continually started again by some
impulse from below the surface. The deeper central impulse came from the
image of Gwendolen; but the thoughts it stirred would be imperfectly
illustrated by a reference to the amatory poets of all ages. It was
characteristic that he got none of his satisfaction from the belief that
Gwendolen was in love with him; and that love had overcome the jealous
resentment which had made her run away from him. On the contrary, he
believed that this girl was rather exceptional in the fact that, in spite
of his assiduous attention to her, she was not in love with him; and it
seemed to him very likely that if it had not been for the sudden poverty
which had come over her family, she would not have accepted him. From the
very first there had been an exasperating fascination in the tricksiness
with which she had--not met his advances, but--wheeled away from them. She
had been brought to accept him in spite of everything--brought to kneel
down like a horse under training for the arena, though she might have an
objection to it all the while. On the whole, Grandcourt got more pleasure
out of this notion than he could have done out of winning a girl of whom
he was sure that she had a strong inclination for him personally. And yet
this pleasure in mastering reluctance flourished along with the habitual
persuasion that no woman whom he favored could be quite indifferent to his
personal influence; and it seemed to him not unlikely that by-and-by
Gwendolen might be more enamored of him than he of her. In any case, she
would have to submit; and he enjoyed thinking of her as his future wife,
whose pride and spirit were suited to command every one but himself. He
had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of
petitioning solicitude and willing obedience. He meant to be master of a
woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would have been
capable of mastering another man.

Lush, having failed in his attempted reminder to Grandcourt, thought it
well to communicate with Sir Hugo, in whom, as a man having perhaps
interest enough to command the bestowal of some place where the work was
light, gentlemanly, and not ill-paid, he was anxious to cultivate a sense
of friendly obligation, not feeling at all secure against the future need
of such a place. He wrote the following letter, and addressed it to Park
Lane, whither he knew the family had returned from Leubronn:--

MY DEAR SIR HUGO--Since we came home the marriage has been absolutely
decided on, and is to take place in less than three weeks. It is so
far the worse for him that her mother has lately lost all her fortune,
and he will have to find supplies. Grandcourt, I know, is feeling the
want of cash; and unless some other plan is resorted to, he will be
raising money in a foolish way. I am going to leave Diplow
immediately, and I shall not be able to start the topic. What I should
advise is, that Mr. Deronda, who I know has your confidence, should
propose to come and pay a short visit here, according to invitation
(there are going to be other people in the house), and that you should
put him fully in possession of your wishes and the possible extent of
your offer. Then, that he should introduce the subject to Grandcourt
so as not to imply that you suspect any particular want of money on
his part, but only that there is a strong wish on yours, What I have
formerly said to him has been in the way of a conjecture that you
might be willing to give a good sum for his chance of Diplow; but if
Mr. Deronda came armed with a definite offer, that would take another
sort of hold. Ten to one he will not close for some time to come; but
the proposal will have got a stronger lodgment in his mind; and though
at present he has a great notion of the hunting here, I see a
likelihood, under the circumstances, that he will get a distaste for
the neighborhood, and there will be the notion of the money sticking
by him without being urged. I would bet on your ultimate success. As I
am not to be exiled to Siberia, but am to be within call, it is
possible that, by and by, I may be of more service to you. But at
present I can think of no medium so good as Mr. Deronda. Nothing puts
Grandcourt in worse humor than having the lawyers thrust their paper
under his nose uninvited.

Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has put you in excellent
condition for the winter, I remain, my dear Sir Hugo,

Yours very faithfully,

THOMAS CRANMER LUSH.

Sir Hugo, having received this letter at breakfast, handed it to Deronda,
who, though he had chambers in town, was somehow hardly ever in them, Sir
Hugo not being contented without him. The chatty baronet would have liked
a young companion even if there had been no peculiar reasons for
attachment between them: one with a fine harmonious unspoiled face fitted
to keep up a cheerful view of posterity and inheritance generally,
notwithstanding particular disappointments; and his affection for Deronda
was not diminished by the deep-lying though not obtrusive difference in
their notions and tastes. Perhaps it was all the stronger; acting as the
same sort of difference does between a man and a woman in giving a
piquancy to the attachment which subsists in spite of it. Sir Hugo did not
think unapprovingly of himself; but he looked at men and society from a
liberal-menagerie point of view, and he had a certain pride in Deronda's
differing from him, which, if it had found voice, might have said--"You
see this fine young fellow--not such as you see every day, is he?--he
belongs to me in a sort of way. I brought him up from a child; but you
would not ticket him off easily, he has notions of his own, and he's as
far as the poles asunder from what I was at his age." This state of
feeling was kept up by the mental balance in Deronda, who was moved by an
affectionateness such as we are apt to call feminine, disposing him to
yield in ordinary details, while he had a certain inflexibility of
judgment, and independence of opinion, held to be rightfully masculine.

When he had read the letter, he returned it without speaking, inwardly
wincing under Lush's mode of attributing a neutral usefulness to him in
the family affairs.

"What do you say, Dan? It would be pleasant enough for you. You have not
seen the place for a good many years now, and you might have a famous run
with the harriers if you went down next week," said Sir Hugo.

"I should not go on that account," said Deronda, buttering his bread
attentively. He had an objection to this transparent kind of
persuasiveness, which all intelligent animals are seen to treat with
indifference. If he went to Diplow he should be doing something
disagreeable to oblige Sir Hugo.

"I think Lush's notion is a good one. And it would be a pity to lose the
occasion."

"That is a different matter--if you think my going of importance to your
object," said Deronda, still with that aloofness of manner which implied
some suppression. He knew that the baronet had set his heart on the
affair.

"Why, you will see the fair gambler, the Leubronn Diana, I shouldn't
wonder," said Sir Hugo, gaily. "We shall have to invite her to the Abbey,
when they are married," he added, turning to Lady Mallinger, as if she too
had read the letter.

"I cannot conceive whom you mean," said Lady Mallinger, who in fact had
not been listening, her mind having been taken up with her first sips of
coffee, the objectionable cuff of her sleeve, and the necessity of
carrying Theresa to the dentist--innocent and partly laudable
preoccupations, as the gentle lady's usually were. Should her appearance
be inquired after, let it be said that she had reddish blonde hair (the
hair of the period), a small Roman nose, rather prominent blue eyes and
delicate eyelids, with a figure which her thinner friends called fat, her
hands showing curves and dimples like a magnified baby's.

"I mean that Grandcourt is going to marry the girl you saw at Leubronn--
don't you remember her--the Miss Harleth who used to play at roulette."

"Dear me! Is that a good match for him?"

"That depends on the sort of goodness he wants," said Sir Hugo, smiling.
"However, she and her friends have nothing, and she will bring him
expenses. It's a good match for my purposes, because if I am willing to
fork out a sum of money, he may be willing to give up his chance of
Diplow, so that we shall have it out and out, and when I die you will have
the consolation of going to the place you would like to go to--wherever I
may go."

"I wish you would not talk of dying in that light way, dear."

"It's rather a heavy way, Lou, for I shall have to pay a heavy sum--forty
thousand, at least."

"But why are we to invite them to the Abbey?" said Lady Mallinger. "I do
_not_ like women who gamble, like Lady Cragstone."

"Oh, you will not mind her for a week. Besides, she is not like Lady
Cragstone because she gambled a little, any more than I am like a broker
because I'm a Whig. I want to keep Grandcourt in good humor, and to let
him see plenty of this place, that he may think the less of Diplow. I
don't know yet whether I shall get him to meet me in this matter. And if
Dan were to go over on a visit there, he might hold out the bait to him.
It would be doing me a great service." This was meant for Deronda.

"Daniel is not fond of Mr. Grandcourt, I think, is he?" said Lady
Mallinger, looking at Deronda inquiringly.

"There is no avoiding everybody one doesn't happen to be fond of," said
Deronda. "I will go to Diplow--I don't know that I have anything better to
do--since Sir Hugo wishes it."

"That's a trump!" said Sir Hugo, well pleased. "And if you don't find it
very pleasant, it's so much experience. Nothing used to come amiss to me
when I was young. You must see men and manners."

"Yes; but I have seen that man, and something of his manners too," said
Deronda.

"Not nice manners, I think," said Lady Mallinger.

"Well, you see they succeed with your sex," said Sir Hugo, provokingly.
"And he was an uncommonly good-looking fellow when he was two or three and
twenty--like his father. He doesn't take after his father in marrying the
heiress, though. If he had got Miss Arrowpoint and my land too, confound
him, he would have had a fine principality."

Deronda, in anticipating the projected visit, felt less disinclination
than when consenting to it. The story of that girl's marriage did interest
him: what he had heard through Lush of her having run away from the suit
of the man she was now going to take as a husband, had thrown a new sort
of light on her gambling; and it was probably the transition from that
fevered worldliness into poverty which had urged her acceptance where she
must in some way have felt repulsion. All this implied a nature liable to
difficulty and struggle--elements of life which had a predominant
attraction for his sympathy, due perhaps to his early pain in dwelling on
the conjectured story of his own existence. Persons attracted him, as Hans
Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defending them,
rescuing them, telling upon their lives with some sort of redeeming
influence; and he had to resist an inclination, easily accounted for, to
withdraw coldly from the fortunate. But in the movement which had led him
to repurchase Gwendolen's necklace for her, and which was at work in him
still, there was something beyond his habitual compassionate fervor--
something due to the fascination of her womanhood. He was very open to
that sort of charm, and mingled it with the consciously Utopian pictures
of his own future; yet any one able to trace the folds of his character
might have conceived that he would be more likely than many less
passionate men to love a woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle food
before a delicate-eared bird: there is nothing he would more willingly
take, yet he keeps aloof, because of his sensibility to checks which to
you are imperceptible. And one man differs from another, as we all differ
from the Bosjesman, in a sensibility to checks, that come from variety of
needs, spiritual or other. It seemed to forshadow that capability of
reticence in Deronda that his imagination was much occupied with two
women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should
ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of
the knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof if
he had known what was just now going on in Deronda's mind about Mirah and
Gwendolen.

Deronda wrote without delay to announce his visit to Diplow, and received
in reply a polite assurance that his coming would give great pleasure.
That was not altogether untrue. Grandcourt thought it probable that the
visit was prompted by Sir Hugo's desire to court him for a purpose which
he did not make up his mind to resist; and it was not a disagreeable idea
to him that this fine fellow, whom he believed to be his cousin under the
rose, would witness, perhaps with some jealousy, Henleigh Mallinger
Grandcourt play the commanding part of betrothed lover to a splendid girl
whom the cousin had already looked at with admiration.

Grandcourt himself was not jealous of anything unless it threatened his
mastery--which he did not think himself likely to lose.