BOOK V.--MORDECAI.


CHAPTER XXXV.

Were uneasiness of conscience measured by extent of crime, human
history had been different, and one should look to see the contrivers
of greedy wars and the mighty marauders of the money-market in one
troop of self-lacerating penitents with the meaner robber and cut-
purse and the murderer that doth his butchery in small with his own
hand. No doubt wickedness hath its rewards to distribute; but who so
wins in this devil's game must needs be baser, more cruel, more brutal
than the order of this planet will allow for the multitude born of
woman, the most of these carrying a form of conscience--a fear which
is the shadow of justice, a pity which is the shadow of love--that
hindereth from the prize of serene wickedness, itself difficult of
maintenance in our composite flesh.


On the twenty-ninth of December Deronda knew that the Grandcourts had
arrived at the Abbey, but he had had no glimpse of them before he went to
dress for dinner. There had been a splendid fall of snow, allowing the
party of children the rare pleasures of snow-balling and snow-building,
and in the Christmas holidays the Mallinger girls were content with no
amusement unless it were joined in and managed by "cousin," as they had
always called Deronda. After that outdoor exertion he had been playing
billiards, and thus the hours had passed without his dwelling at all on
the prospect of meeting Gwendolen at dinner. Nevertheless that prospect
was interesting to him; and when, a little tired and heated with working
at amusement, he went to his room before the half-hour bell had rung, he
began to think of it with some speculation on the sort of influence her
marriage with Grandcourt would have on her, and on the probability that
there would be some discernible shades of change in her manner since he
saw her at Diplow, just as there had been since his first vision of her at
Leubronn.

"I fancy there are some natures one could see growing or degenerating
every day, if one watched them," was his thought. "I suppose some of us go
on faster than others: and I am sure she is a creature who keeps strong
traces of anything that has once impressed her. That little affair of the
necklace, and the idea that somebody thought her gambling wrong, had
evidently bitten into her. But such impressibility leads both ways: it may
drive one to desperation as soon as to anything better. And whatever
fascinations Grandcourt may have for capricious tastes--good heavens! who
can believe that he would call out the tender affections in daily
companionship? One might be tempted to horsewhip him for the sake of
getting some show of passion into his face and speech. I'm afraid she
married him out of ambition--to escape poverty. But why did she run out of
his way at first? The poverty came after, though. Poor thing! she may have
been urged into it. How can one feel anything else than pity for a young
creature like that--full of unused life--ignorantly rash--hanging all her
blind expectations on that remnant of a human being."

Doubtless the phrases which Deronda's meditation applied to the bridegroom
were the less complimentary for the excuses and pity in which it clad the
bride. His notion of Grandcourt as a "remnant" was founded on no
particular knowledge, but simply on the impression which ordinary polite
intercourse had given him that Grandcourt had worn out all his natural
healthy interest in things.

In general, one may be sure that whenever a marriage of any mark takes
place, male acquaintances are likely to pity the bride, female
acquaintances the bridegroom: each, it is thought, might have done better;
and especially where the bride is charming, young gentlemen on the scene
are apt to conclude that she can have no real attachment to a fellow so
uninteresting to themselves as her husband, but has married him on other
grounds. Who, under such circumstances, pities the husband? Even his
female friends are apt to think his position retributive: he should have
chosen some one else. But perhaps Deronda may be excused that he did not
prepare any pity for Grandcourt, who had never struck acquaintances as
likely to come out of his experiences with more suffering than he
inflicted; whereas, for Gwendolen, young, headlong, eager for pleasure,
fed with the flattery which makes a lovely girl believe in her divine
right to rule--how quickly might life turn from expectancy to a bitter
sense of the irremediable! After what he had seen of her he must have had
rather dull feelings not to have looked forward with some interest to her
entrance into the room. Still, since the honeymoon was already three weeks
in the distance, and Gwendolen had been enthroned, not only at Ryeland's,
but at Diplow, she was likely to have composed her countenance with
suitable manifestation or concealment, not being one who would indulge the
curious by a helpless exposure of her feelings.

A various party had been invited to meet the new couple; the old
aristocracy was represented by Lord and Lady Pentreath; the old gentry by
young Mr. and Mrs. Fitzadam of the Worcestershire branch of the Fitzadams;
politics and the public good, as specialized in the cider interest, by Mr.
Fenn, member for West Orchards, accompanied by his two daughters; Lady
Mallinger's family, by her brother, Mr. Raymond, and his wife; the useful
bachelor element by Mr. Sinker, the eminent counsel, and by Mr.
Vandernoodt, whose acquaintance Sir Hugo had found pleasant enough at
Leubronn to be adopted in England.

All had assembled in the drawing-room before the new couple appeared.
Meanwhile, the time was being passed chiefly in noticing the children--
various little Raymonds, nephews and nieces of Lady Mallinger's with her
own three girls, who were always allowed to appear at this hour. The scene
was really delightful--enlarged by full-length portraits with deep
backgrounds, inserted in the cedar paneling--surmounted by a ceiling that
glowed with the rich colors of the coats of arms ranged between the
sockets--illuminated almost as much by the red fire of oak-boughs as by
the pale wax-lights--stilled by the deep-piled carpet and by the high
English breeding that subdues all voices; while the mixture of ages, from
the white-haired Lord and Lady Pentreath to the four-year-old Edgar
Raymond, gave a varied charm to the living groups. Lady Mallinger, with
fair matronly roundness and mildly prominent blue eyes, moved about in her
black velvet, carrying a tiny white dog on her arm as a sort of finish to
her costume; the children were scattered among the ladies, while most of
the gentlemen were standing rather aloof, conversing with that very
moderate vivacity observable during the long minutes before dinner.
Deronda was a little out of the circle in a dialogue fixed upon him by Mr.
Vandernoodt, a man of the best Dutch blood imported at the revolution: for
the rest, one of those commodious persons in society who are nothing
particular themselves, but are understood to be acquainted with the best
in every department; close-clipped, pale-eyed, _nonchalant_, as good a
foil as could well be found to the intense coloring and vivid gravity of
Deronda.

He was talking of the bride and bridegroom, whose appearance was being
waited for. Mr. Vandernoodt was an industrious gleaner of personal
details, and could probably tell everything about a great philosopher or
physicist except his theories or discoveries; he was now implying that he
had learned many facts about Grandcourt since meeting him at Leubronn,

"Men who have seen a good deal of life don't always end by choosing their
wives so well. He has had rather an anecdotic history--gone rather deep
into pleasures, I fancy, lazy as he is. But, of course, you know all about
him."

"No, really," said Deronda, in an indifferent tone. "I know little more of
him than that he is Sir Hugo's nephew."

But now the door opened and deferred any satisfaction of Mr. Vandernoodt's
communicativeness.

The scene was one to set off any figure of distinction that entered on it,
and certainly when Mr. and Mrs. Grandcourt entered, no beholder could deny
that their figures had distinction. The bridegroom had neither more nor
less easy perfection of costume, neither more nor less well-cut
impassibility of face, than before his marriage. It was to be supposed of
him that he would put up with nothing less than the best in outward
equipment, wife included; and the bride was what he might have been
expected to choose. "By George, I think she's handsomer, if anything!"
said Mr. Vandernoodt. And Deronda was of the same opinion, but he said
nothing. The white silk and diamonds--it may seem strange, but she did
wear diamonds on her neck, in her ears, in her hair--might have something
to do with the new imposingness of her beauty, which flashed on him as
more unquestionable if not more thoroughly satisfactory than when he had
first seen her at the gaming-table. Some faces which are peculiar in their
beauty are like original works of art: for the first time they are almost
always met with question. But in seeing Gwendolen at Diplow, Deronda had
discerned in her more than he had expected of that tender appealing charm
which we call womanly. Was there any new change since then? He distrusted
his impressions; but as he saw her receiving greetings with what seemed a
proud cold quietude and a superficial smile, there seemed to be at work
within her the same demonic force that had possessed her when she took him
in her resolute glance and turned away a loser from the gaming-table.
There was no time for more of a conclusion--no time even for him to give
his greeting before the summons to dinner.

He sat not far from opposite to her at table, and could sometimes hear
what she said in answer to Sir Hugo, who was at his liveliest in
conversation with her; but though he looked toward her with the intention
of bowing, she gave him no opportunity of doing so for some time. At last
Sir Hugo, who might have imagined that they had already spoken to each
other, said, "Deronda, you will like to hear what Mrs. Grandcourt tells me
about your favorite Klesmer."

Gwendolen's eyelids had been lowered, and Deronda, already looking at her,
thought he discovered a quivering reluctance as she was obliged to raise
them and return his unembarrassed bow and smile, her own smile being one
of the lip merely. It was but an instant, and Sir Hugo continued without
pause--

"The Arrowpoints have condoned the marriage, and he is spending the
Christmas with his bride at Quetcham."

"I suppose he will be glad of it for the sake of his wife, else I dare say
he would not have minded keeping at a distance," said Deronda.

"It's a sort of troubadour story," said Lady Pentreath, an easy, deep-
voiced old lady; "I'm glad to find a little romance left among us. I think
our young people now are getting too worldly wise."

"It shows the Arrowpoints' good sense, however, to have adopted the
affair, after the fuss in the paper," said Sir Hugo. "And disowning your
own child because of a _mesalliance_ is something like disowning your one
eye: everybody knows it's yours, and you have no other to make an
appearance with."

"As to _mesalliance_, there's no blood on any side," said Lady Pentreath.
"Old Admiral Arrowpoint was one of Nelson's men, you know--a doctor's son.
And we all know how the mother's money came."

"If they were any _mesalliance_ in the case, I should say it was on
Klesmer's side," said Deronda.

"Ah, you think it is a case of the immortal marrying the mortal. What is
your opinion?" said Sir Hugo, looking at Gwendolen.

"I have no doubt that Herr Klesmer thinks himself immortal. But I dare say
his wife will burn as much incense before him as he requires," said
Gwendolen. She had recovered any composure that she might have lost.

"Don't you approve of a wife burning incense before her husband?" said Sir
Hugo, with an air of jocoseness.

"Oh, yes," said Gwendolen, "if it were only to make others believe in
him." She paused a moment and then said with more gayety, "When Herr
Klesmer admires his own genius, it will take off some of the absurdity if
his wife says Amen."

"Klesmer is no favorite of yours, I see," said Sir Hugo.

"I think very highly of him, I assure you," said Gwendolen. "His genius is
quite above my judgment, and I know him to be exceedingly generous."

She spoke with the sudden seriousness which is often meant to correct an
unfair or indiscreet sally, having a bitterness against Klesmer in her
secret soul which she knew herself unable to justify. Deronda was
wondering what he should have thought of her if he had never heard of her
before: probably that she put on a little hardness and defiance by way of
concealing some painful consciousness--if, indeed, he could imagine her
manners otherwise than in the light of his suspicion. But why did she not
recognize him with more friendliness?

Sir Hugo, by way of changing the subject, said to her, "Is not this a
beautiful room? It was part of the refectory of the Abbey. There was a
division made by those pillars and the three arches, and afterward they
were built up. Else it was half as large again originally. There used to
be rows of Benedictines sitting where we are sitting. Suppose we were
suddenly to see the lights burning low and the ghosts of the old monks
rising behind all our chairs!"

"Please don't!" said Gwendolen, with a playful shudder. "It is very nice
to come after ancestors and monks, but they should know their places and
keep underground. I should be rather frightened to go about this house all
alone. I suppose the old generations must be angry with us because we have
altered things so much."

"Oh, the ghosts must be of all political parties," said Sir Hugo. "And
those fellows who wanted to change things while they lived and couldn't do
it must be on our side. But if you would not like to go over the house
alone, you will like to go in company, I hope. You and Grandcourt ought to
see it all. And we will ask Deronda to go found with us. He is more
learned about it than I am." The baronet was in the most complaisant of
humors.

Gwendolen stole a glance at Deronda, who must have heard what Sir Hugo
said, for he had his face turned toward them helping himself to an
_entree_; but he looked as impassive as a picture. At the notion of
Deronda's showing her and Grandcourt the place which was to be theirs, and
which she with painful emphasis remembered might have been his (perhaps,
if others had acted differently), certain thoughts had rushed in--thoughts
repeated within her, but now returning on an occasion embarrassingly new;
and was conscious of something furtive and awkward in her glance which Sir
Hugo must have noticed. With her usual readiness of resource against
betrayal, she said, playfully, "You don't know how much I am afraid of Mr.
Deronda."

"How's that? Because you think him too learned?" said Sir Hugo, whom the
peculiarity of her glance had not escaped.

"No. It is ever since I first saw him at Leubronn. Because when he came to
look on at the roulette-table, I began to lose. He cast an evil eye on my
play. He didn't approve it. He has told me so. And now whatever I do
before him, I am afraid he will cast an evil eye upon it."

"Gad! I'm rather afraid of him myself when he doesn't approve," said Sir
Hugo, glancing at Deronda; and then turning his face toward Gwendolen, he
said less audibly, "I don't think ladies generally object to have his eyes
upon them." The baronet's small chronic complaint of facetiousness was at
this moment almost as annoying to Gwendolen as it often was to Deronda.

"I object to any eyes that are critical," she said, in a cool, high voice,
with a turn of her neck. "Are there many of these old rooms left in the
Abbey?"

"Not many. There is a fine cloistered court with a long gallery above it.
But the finest bit of all is turned into stables. It is part of the old
church. When I improved the place I made the most of every other bit; but
it was out of my reach to change the stables, so the horses have the
benefit of the fine old choir. You must go and see it."

"I shall like to see the horses as well as the building," said Gwendolen.

"Oh, I have no stud to speak of. Grandcourt will look with contempt at my
horses," said Sir Hugo. "I've given up hunting, and go on in a jog-trot
way, as becomes an old gentlemen with daughters. The fact is, I went in
for doing too much at this place. We all lived at Diplow for two years
while the alterations were going on: Do you like Diplow?"

"Not particularly," said Gwendolen, with indifference. One would have
thought that the young lady had all her life had more family seats than
she cared to go to.

"Ah! it will not do after Ryelands," said Sir Hugo, well pleased.
"Grandcourt, I know, took it for the sake of the hunting. But he found
something so much better there," added the baronet, lowering his voice,
"that he might well prefer it to any other place in the world."

"It has one attraction for me," said Gwendolen, passing over this
compliment with a chill smile, "that it is within reach of Offendene."

"I understand that," said Sir Hugo, and then let the subject drop.

What amiable baronet can escape the effect of a strong desire for a
particular possession? Sir Hugo would have been glad that Grandcourt, with
or without reason, should prefer any other place to Diplow; but inasmuch
as in the pure process of wishing we can always make the conditions of our
gratification benevolent, he did wish that Grandcourt's convenient disgust
for Diplow should not be associated with his marriage with this very
charming bride. Gwendolen was much to the baronet's taste, but, as he
observed afterward to Lady Mallinger, he should never have taken her for a
young girl who had married beyond her expectations.

Deronda had not heard much of this conversation, having given his
attention elsewhere, but the glimpses he had of Gwendolen's manner
deepened the impression that it had something newly artificial.

Later, in the drawing-room, Deronda, at somebody's request, sat down to
the piano and sang. Afterward, Mrs. Raymond took his place; and on rising
he observed that Gwendolen had left her seat, and had come to this end of
the room, as if to listen more fully, but was now standing with her back
to every one, apparently contemplating a fine cowled head carved in ivory
which hung over a small table. He longed to go to her and speak. Why
should he not obey such an impulse, as he would have done toward any other
lady in the room? Yet he hesitated some moments, observing the graceful
lines of her back, but not moving.

If you have any reason for not indulging a wish to speak to a fair woman,
it is a bad plan to look long at her back: the wish to see what it screens
becomes the stronger. There may be a very sweet smile on the other side.
Deronda ended by going to the end of the small table, at right angles to
Gwendolen's position, but before he could speak she had turned on him no
smile, but such an appealing look of sadness, so utterly different from
the chill effort of her recognition at table, that his speech was checked.
For what was an appreciative space of time to both, though the observation
of others could not have measured it, they looked at each other--she
seeming to take the deep rest of confession, he with an answering depth of
sympathy that neutralized all other feelings.

"Will you not join in the music?" he said by way of meeting the necessity
for speech.

That her look of confession had been involuntary was shown by that just
perceptible shake and change of countenance with which she roused herself
to reply calmly, "I join in it by listening. I am fond of music."

"Are you not a musician?"

"I have given a great deal of time to music. But I have not talent enough
to make it worth while. I shall never sing again."

"But if you are fond of music, it will always be worth while in private,
for your own delight. I make it a virtue to be content with my
middlingness," said Deronda, smiling; "it is always pardonable, so that
one does not ask others to take it for superiority."

"I cannot imitate you," said Gwendolen, recovering her tone of artificial
vivacity. "To be middling with me is another phrase for being dull. And
the worst fault I have to find with the world is, that it is dull. Do you
know, I am going to justify gambling in spite of you. It is a refuge from
dullness."

"I don't admit the justification," said Deronda. "I think what we call the
dullness of things is a disease in ourselves. Else how can any one find an
intense interest in life? And many do."

"Ah, I see! The fault I find in the world is my own fault," said
Gwendolen, smiling at him. Then after a moment, looking up at the ivory
again, she said, "Do _you_ never find fault with the world or with
others?"

"Oh, yes. When I am in a grumbling mood."

"And hate people? Confess you hate them when they stand in your way--when
their gain is your loss? That is your own phrase, you know."

"We are often standing in each other's way when we can't help it. I think
it is stupid to hate people on that ground."

"But if they injure you and could have helped it?" said Gwendolen with a
hard intensity unaccountable in incidental talk like this.

Deronda wondered at her choice of subjects. A painful impression arrested
his answer a moment, but at last he said, with a graver, deeper
intonation, "Why, then, after all, I prefer my place to theirs."

"There I believe you are right," said Gwendolen, with a sudden little
laugh, and turned to join the group at the piano.

Deronda looked around for Grandcourt, wondering whether he followed his
bride's movements with any attention; but it was rather undiscerning to
him to suppose that he could find out the fact. Grandcourt had a delusive
mood of observing whatever had an interest for him, which could be
surpassed by no sleepy-eyed animal on the watch for prey. At that moment
he was plunged in the depth of an easy chair, being talked to by Mr.
Vandernoodt, who apparently thought the acquaintance of such a bridegroom
worth cultivating; and an incautious person might have supposed it safe to
telegraph secrets in front of him, the common prejudice being that your
quick observer is one whose eyes have quick movements. Not at all. If you
want a respectable witness who will see nothing inconvenient, choose a
vivacious gentleman, very much on the alert, with two eyes wide open, a
glass in one of them, and an entire impartiality as to the purpose of
looking. If Grandcourt cared to keep any one under his power he saw them
out of the corners of his long narrow eyes, and if they went behind him he
had a constructive process by which he knew what they were doing there. He
knew perfectly well where his wife was, and how she was behaving. Was he
going to be a jealous husband? Deronda imagined that to be likely; but his
imagination was as much astray about Grandcourt as it would have been
about an unexplored continent where all the species were peculiar. He did
not conceive that he himself was a likely subject of jealousy, or that he
should give any pretext for it; but the suspicion that a wife is not happy
naturally leads one to speculate on the husband's private deportment; and
Deronda found himself after one o'clock in the morning in the rather
ludicrous position of sitting up severely holding a Hebrew grammar in his
hands (for somehow, in deference to Mordecai, he had begun to study
Hebrew), with the consciousness that he had been in that attitude nearly
an hour, and had thought of nothing but Gwendolen and her husband. To be
an unusual young man means for the most part to get a difficult mastery
over the usual, which is often like the sprite of ill-luck you pack up
your goods to escape from, and see grinning at you from the top of your
luggage van. The peculiarities of Deronda's nature had been acutely
touched by the brief incident and words which made the history of his
intercourse with Gwendolen; and this evening's slight addition had given
them an importunate recurrence. It was not vanity--it was ready sympathy
that had made him alive to a certain appealingness in her behavior toward
him; and the difficulty with which she had seemed to raise her eyes to bow
to him, in the first instance, was to be interpreted now by that
unmistakable look of involuntary confidence which she had afterward turned
on him under the consciousness of his approach.

"What is the use of it all?" thought Deronda, as he threw down his
grammar, and began to undress. "I can't do anything to help her--nobody
can, if she has found out her mistake already. And it seems to me that she
has a dreary lack of the ideas that might help her. Strange and piteous to
human flesh like that might be, wrapped round with fine raiment, her ears
pierced for gems, her head held loftily, her mouth all smiling pretence,
the poor soul within her sitting in sick distaste of all things! But what
do I know of her? There may be a demon in her to match the worst husband,
for what I can tell. She was clearly an ill-educated, worldly girl:
perhaps she is a coquette."

This last reflection, not much believed in, was a self-administered dose
of caution, prompted partly by Sir Hugo's much-contemned joking on the
subject of flirtation. Deronda resolved not to volunteer any _tete-a-tete_
with Gwendolen during the days of her stay at the Abbey; and he was
capable of keeping a resolve in spite of much inclination to the contrary.

But a man cannot resolve about a woman's actions, least of all about those
of a woman like Gwendolen, in whose nature there was a combination of
proud reserve with rashness, of perilously poised terror with defiance,
which might alternately flatter and disappoint control. Few words could
less represent her than "coquette." She had native love of homage, and
belief in her own power; but no cold artifice for the sake of enslaving.
And the poor thing's belief in her power, with her other dreams before
marriage, had often to be thrust aside now like the toys of a sick child,
which it looks at with dull eyes, and has no heart to play with, however
it may try.

The next day at lunch Sir Hugo said to her, "The thaw has gone on like
magic, and it's so pleasant out of doors just now--shall we go and see the
stables and the other odd bits about the place?"

"Yes, pray," said Gwendolen. "You will like to see the stables, Henleigh?"
she added, looking at her husband.

"Uncommonly," said Grandcourt, with an indifference which seemed to give
irony to the word, as he returned her look. It was the first time Deronda
had seen them speak to each other since their arrival, and he thought
their exchange of looks as cold or official as if it had been a a ceremony
to keep up a charter. Still, the English fondness for reserve will account
for much negation; and Grandcourt's manners with an extra veil of reserve
over them might be expected to present the extreme type of the national
taste.

"Who else is inclined to make the tour of the house and premises?" said
Sir Hugo. "The ladies must muffle themselves; there is only just about
time to do it well before sunset. You will go, Dan, won't you?"

"Oh, yes," said Deronda, carelessly, knowing that Sir Hugo would think any
excuse disobliging.

"All meet in the library, then, when they are ready--say in half an hour,"
said the baronet. Gwendolen made herself ready with wonderful quickness,
and in ten minutes came down into the library in her sables, plume, and
little thick boots. As soon as she entered the room she was aware that
some one else was there: it was precisely what she had hoped for. Deronda
was standing with his back toward her at the far end of the room, and was
looking over a newspaper. How could little thick boots make any noise on
an Axminster carpet? And to cough would have seemed an intended signaling
which her pride could not condescend to; also, she felt bashful about
walking up to him and letting him know that she was there, though it was
her hunger to speak to him which had set her imagination on constructing
this chance of finding him, and had made her hurry down, as birds hover
near the water which they dare not drink. Always uneasily dubious about
his opinion of her, she felt a peculiar anxiety to-day, lest he might
think of her with contempt, as one triumphantly conscious of being
Grandcourt's wife, the future lady of this domain. It was her habitual
effort now to magnify the satisfactions of her pride, on which she
nourished her strength; but somehow Deronda's being there disturbed them
all. There was not the faintest touch of coquetry in the attitude of her
mind toward him: he was unique to her among men, because he had impressed
her as being not her admirer but her superior: in some mysterious way he
was becoming a part of her conscience, as one woman whose nature is an
object of reverential belief may become a new conscience to a man.

And now he would not look round and find out that she was there! The paper
crackled in his hand, his head rose and sank, exploring those stupid
columns, and he was evidently stroking his beard; as if this world were a
very easy affair to her. Of course all the rest of the company would soon
be down, and the opportunity of her saying something to efface her
flippancy of the evening before, would be quite gone. She felt sick with
irritation--so fast do young creatures like her absorb misery through
invisible suckers of their own fancies--and her face had gathered that
peculiar expression which comes with a mortification to which tears are
forbidden.

At last he threw down the paper and turned round.

"Oh, you are there already," he said, coming forward a step or two: "I
must go and put on my coat."

He turned aside and walked out of the room. This was behaving quite badly.
Mere politeness would have made him stay to exchange some words before
leaving her alone. It was true that Grandcourt came in with Sir Hugo
immediately after, so that the words must have been too few to be worth
anything. As it was, they saw him walking from the library door.

"A--you look rather ill," said Grandcourt, going straight up to her,
standing in front of her, and looking into her eyes. "Do you feel equal to
the walk?"

"Yes, I shall like it," said Gwendolen, without the slightest movement
except this of the lips.

"We could put off going over the house, you know, and only go out of
doors," said Sir Hugo, kindly, while Grandcourt turned aside.

"Oh, dear no!" said Gwendolen, speaking with determination; "let us put
off nothing. I want a long walk."

The rest of the walking party--two ladies and two gentlemen besides
Deronda--had now assembled; and Gwendolen rallying, went with due
cheerfulness by the side of Sir Hugo, paying apparently an equal attention
to the commentaries Deronda was called upon to give on the various
architectural fragments, to Sir Hugo's reasons for not attempting to
remedy the mixture of the undisguised modern with the antique--which in
his opinion only made the place the more truly historical. On their way to
the buttery and kitchen they took the outside of the house and paused
before a beautiful pointed doorway, which was the only old remnant in the
east front.

"Well, now, to my mind," said Sir Hugo, "that is more interesting standing
as it is in the middle of what is frankly four centuries later, than if
the whole front had been dressed up in a pretense of the thirteenth
century. Additions ought to smack of the time when they are made and carry
the stamp of their period. I wouldn't destroy any old bits, but that
notion of reproducing the old is a mistake, I think. At least, if a man
likes to do it he must pay for his whistle. Besides, where are you to stop
along that road--making loopholes where you don't want to peep, and so on?
You may as well ask me to wear out the stones with kneeling; eh,
Grandcourt?"

"A confounded nuisance," drawled Grandcourt. "I hate fellows wanting to
howl litanies--acting the greatest bores that have ever existed."

"Well, yes, that's what their romanticism must come to," said Sir Hugo, in
a tone of confidential assent--"that is if they carry it out logically."

"I think that way of arguing against a course because it may be ridden
down to an absurdity would soon bring life to a standstill," said Deronda.
"It is not the logic of human action, but of a roasting-jack, that must go
on to the last turn when it has been once wound up. We can do nothing
safely without some judgment as to where we are to stop."

"I find the rule of the pocket the best guide," said Sir Hugo, laughingly.
"And as for most of your new-old building, you had need to hire men to
scratch and chip it all over artistically to give it an elderly-looking
surface; which at the present rate of labor would not answer."

"Do you want to keep up the old fashions, then, Mr. Deronda?" said
Gwendolen, taking advantage of the freedom of grouping to fall back a
little, while Sir Hugo and Grandcourt went on.

"Some of them. I don't see why we should not use our choice there as we do
elsewhere--or why either age or novelty by itself is an argument for or
against. To delight in doing things because our fathers did them is good
if it shuts out nothing better; it enlarges the range of affection--and
affection is the broadest basis of good in life."

"Do you think so?" said Gwendolen with a little surprise. "I should have
thought you cared most about ideas, knowledge, wisdom, and all that."

"But to care about _them_ is a sort of affection," said Deronda, smiling
at her sudden _naivete_. "Call it attachment; interest, willing to bear a
great deal for the sake of being with them and saving them from injury. Of
course, it makes a difference if the objects of interest are human beings;
but generally in all deep affections the objects are a mixture--half
persons and half ideas--sentiments and affections flow in together."

"I wonder whether I understand that," said Gwendolen, putting up her chin
in her old saucy manner. "I believe I am not very affectionate; perhaps
you mean to tell me, that is the reason why I don't see much good in
life."

"No, I did _not_ mean to tell you that; but I admit that I should think it
true if I believed what you say of yourself," said Deronda, gravely.

Here Sir Hugo and Grandcourt turned round and paused.

"I never can get Mr. Deronda to pay me a compliment," said Gwendolen. "I
have quite a curiosity to see whether a little flattery can be extracted
from him."

"Ah!" said Sir Hugo, glancing at Deronda, "the fact is, it is useless to
flatter a bride. We give it up in despair. She has been so fed on sweet
speeches that every thing we say seems tasteless."

"Quite true," said Gwendolen, bending her head and smiling. "Mr.
Grandcourt won me by neatly-turned compliments. If there had been one word
out of place it would have been fatal."

"Do you hear that?" said Sir Hugo, looking at the husband.

"Yes," said Grandcourt, without change of countenance. "It's a deucedly
hard thing to keep up, though."

All this seemed to Sir Hugo a natural playfulness between such a husband
and wife; but Deronda wondered at the misleading alternations in
Gwendolen's manner, which at one moment seemed to excite sympathy by
childlike indiscretion, at another to repel it by proud concealment. He
tried to keep out of her way by devoting himself to Miss Juliet Fenn, a
young lady whose profile had been so unfavorably decided by circumstances
over which she had no control, that Gwendolen some months ago had felt it
impossible to be jealous of her. Nevertheless, when they were seeing the
kitchen--a part of the original building in perfect preservation--the
depth of shadow in the niches of the stone-walls and groined vault, the
play of light from the huge glowing fire on polished tin, brass, and
copper, the fine resonance that came with every sound of voice or metal,
were all spoiled for Gwendolen, and Sir Hugo's speech about them was made
rather importunate, because Deronda was discoursing to the other ladies
and kept at a distance from her. It did not signify that the other
gentlemen took the opportunity of being near her: of what use in the world
was their admiration while she had an uneasy sense that there was some
standard in Deronda's mind which measured her into littleness? Mr.
Vandernoodt, who had the mania of always describing one thing while you
were looking at another, was quite intolerable with his insistence on Lord
Blough's kitchen, which he had seen in the north.

"Pray don't ask us to see two kitchens at once. It makes the heat double.
I must really go out of it," she cried at last, marching resolutely into
the open air, and leaving the others in the rear. Grandcourt was already
out, and as she joined him, he said--

"I wondered how long you meant to stay in that damned place"--one of the
freedoms he had assumed as a husband being the use of his strongest
epithets. Gwendolen, turning to see the rest of the party approach, said--

"It was certainly rather too warm in one's wraps."

They walked on the gravel across a green court, where the snow still lay
in islets on the grass, and in masses on the boughs of the great cedar and
the crenelated coping of the stone walls, and then into a larger court,
where there was another cedar, to find the beautiful choir long ago turned
into stables, in the first instance perhaps after an impromptu fashion by
troopers, who had a pious satisfaction in insulting the priests of Baal
and the images of Ashtoreth, the queen of heaven. The exterior--its west
end, save for the stable door, walled in with brick and covered with ivy--
was much defaced, maimed of finial and gurgoyle, the friable limestone
broken and fretted, and lending its soft gray to a powdery dark lichen;
the long windows, too, were filled in with brick as far as the springing
of the arches, the broad clerestory windows with wire or ventilating
blinds. With the low wintry afternoon sun upon it, sending shadows from
the cedar boughs, and lighting up the touches of snow remaining on every
ledge, it had still a scarcely disturbed aspect of antique solemnity,
which gave the scene in the interior rather a startling effect; though,
ecclesiastical or reverential indignation apart, the eyes could hardly
help dwelling with pleasure on its piquant picturesqueness. Each finely-
arched chapel was turned into a stall, where in the dusty glazing of the
windows there still gleamed patches of crimson, orange, blue, and palest
violet; for the rest, the choir had been gutted, the floor leveled, paved,
and drained according to the most approved fashion, and a line of loose
boxes erected in the middle: a soft light fell from the upper windows on
sleek brown or gray flanks and haunches; on mild equine faces looking out
with active nostrils over the varnished brown boarding; on the hay hanging
from racks where the saints once looked down from the altar-pieces, and on
the pale golden straw scattered or in heaps; on a little white-and-liver-
colored spaniel making his bed on the back of an elderly hackney, and on
four ancient angels, still showing signs of devotion like mutilated
martyrs--while over all, the grand pointed roof, untouched by reforming
wash, showed its lines and colors mysteriously through veiling shadow and
cobweb, and a hoof now and then striking against the boards seemed to fill
the vault with thunder, while outside there was the answering bay of the
blood-hounds.

"Oh, this is glorious!" Gwendolen burst forth, in forgetfulness of
everything but the immediate impression: there had been a little
intoxication for her in the grand spaces of courts and building, and the
fact of her being an important person among them. "This _is_ glorious!
Only I wish there were a horse in every one of the boxes. I would ten
times rather have these stables than those at Diplow."

But she had no sooner said this than some consciousness arrested her, and
involuntarily she turned her eyes toward Deronda, who oddly enough had
taken off his felt hat and stood holding it before him as if they had
entered a room or an actual church. He, like others, happened to be
looking at her, and their eyes met--to her intense vexation, for it seemed
to her that by looking at him she had betrayed the reference of her
thoughts, and she felt herself blushing: she exaggerated the impression
that even Sir Hugo as well as Deronda would have of her bad taste in
referring to the possession of anything at the Abbey: as for Deronda, she
had probably made him despise her. Her annoyance at what she imagined to
be the obviousness of her confusion robbed her of her usual facility in
carrying it off by playful speech, and turning up her face to look at the
roof, she wheeled away in that attitude. If any had noticed her blush as
significant, they had certainly not interpreted it by the secret windings
and recesses of her feeling. A blush is no language: only a dubious flag-
signal which may mean either of two contradictories. Deronda alone had a
faint guess at some part of her feeling; but while he was observing her he
was himself under observation.

"Do you take off your hat to horses?" said Grandcourt, with a slight
sneer.

"Why not?" said Deronda, covering himself. He had really taken off the hat
automatically, and if he had been an ugly man might doubtless have done so
with impunity; ugliness having naturally the air of involuntary exposure,
and beauty, of display.

Gwendolen's confusion was soon merged in the survey of the horses, which
Grandcourt politely abstained from appraising, languidly assenting to Sir
Hugo's alternate depreciation and eulogy of the same animal, as one that
he should not have bought when he was younger, and piqued himself on his
horses, but yet one that had better qualities than many more expensive
brutes.

"The fact is, stables dive deeper and deeper into the pocket nowadays, and
I am very glad to have got rid of that _demangeaison_," said Sir Hugo, as
they were coming out.

"What is a man to do, though?" said Grandcourt. "He must ride. I don't see
what else there is to do. And I don't call it riding to sit astride a set
of brutes with every deformity under the sun."

This delicate diplomatic way of characterizing Sir Hugo's stud did not
require direct notice; and the baronet, feeling that the conversation had
worn rather thin, said to the party generally, "Now we are going to see
the cloister--the finest bit of all--in perfect preservation; the monks
might have been walking there yesterday."

But Gwendolen had lingered behind to look at the kenneled blood-hounds,
perhaps because she felt a little dispirited; and Grandcourt waited for
her.

"You had better take my arm," he said, in his low tone of command; and she
took it.

"It's a great bore being dragged about in this way, and no cigar," said
Grandcourt.

"I thought you would like it."

"Like it!--one eternal chatter. And encouraging those ugly girls--inviting
one to meet such monsters. How that _fat_ Deronda can bear looking at
her----"

"Why do you call him _fat_? Do you object to him so much?"

"Object? no. What do I care about his being a _fat_? It's of no
consequence to me. I'll invite him to Diplow again if you like."

"I don't think he would come. He is too clever and learned to care about
_us_," said Gwendolen, thinking it useful for her husband to be told
(privately) that it was possible for him to be looked down upon.

"I never saw that make much difference in a man. Either he is a gentleman,
or he is not," said Grandcourt.

That a new husband and wife should snatch, a moment's _tete-a-tete_ was
what could be understood and indulged; and the rest of the party left them
in the rear till, re-entering the garden, they all paused in that
cloistered court where, among the falling rose-petals thirteen years
before, we saw a boy becoming acquainted with his first sorrow. This
cloister was built of a harder stone than the church, and had been in
greater safety from the wearing weather. It was a rare example of a
northern cloister with arched and pillard openings not intended for
glazing, and the delicately-wrought foliage of the capitals seemed still
to carry the very touches of the chisel. Gwendolen had dropped her
husband's arm and joined the other ladies, to whom Deronda was noticing
the delicate sense which had combined freedom with accuracy in the
imitation of natural forms.

"I wonder whether one oftener learns to love real objects through their
representations, or the representations through the real objects," he
said, after pointing out a lovely capital made by the curled leaves of
greens, showing their reticulated under-side with the firm gradual swell
of its central rib. "When I was a little fellow these capitals taught me
to observe and delight in the structure of leaves."

"I suppose you can see every line of them with your eyes shut," said
Juliet Fenn.

"Yes. I was always repeating them, because for a good many years this
court stood for me as my only image of a convent, and whenever I read of
monks and monasteries, this was my scenery for them."

"You must love this place very much," said Miss Fenn, innocently, not
thinking of inheritance. "So many homes are like twenty others. But this
is unique, and you seem to know every cranny of it. I dare say you could
never love another home so well."

"Oh, I carry it with me," said Deronda, quietly, being used to all
possible thoughts of this kind. "To most men their early home is no more
than a memory of their early years, and I'm not sure but they have the
best of it. The image is never marred. There's no disappointment in
memory, and one's exaggerations are always on the good side."

Gwendolen felt sure that he spoke in that way out of delicacy to her and
Grandcourt--because he knew they must hear him; and that he probably
thought of her as a selfish creature who only cared about possessing
things in her own person. But whatever he might say, it must have been a
secret hardship to him that any circumstances of his birth had shut him
out from the inheritance of his father's position; and if he supposed that
she exulted in her husband's taking it, what could he feel for her but
scornful pity? Indeed it seemed clear to her that he was avoiding her, and
preferred talking to others--which nevertheless was not kind in him.

With these thoughts in her mind she was prevented by a mixture of pride
and timidity from addressing him again, and when they were looking at the
rows of quaint portraits in the gallery above the cloisters, she kept up
her air of interest and made her vivacious remarks without any direct
appeal to Deronda. But at the end she was very weary of her assumed
spirits, and Grandcourt turned into the billiard-room, she went to the
pretty boudoir which had been assigned to her, and shut herself up to look
melancholy at her ease. No chemical process shows a more wonderful
activity than the transforming influence of the thoughts we imagine to be
going on in another. Changes in theory, religion, admirations, may begin
with a suspicion of dissent or disapproval, even when the grounds of
disapproval are but matter of searching conjecture.

Poor Gwendolen was conscious of an uneasy, transforming process--all the
old nature shaken to its depths, its hopes spoiled, its pleasures
perturbed, but still showing wholeness and strength in the will to
reassert itself. After every new shock of humiliation she tried to adjust
herself and seize her old supports--proud concealment, trust in new
excitements that would make life go by without much thinking; trust in
some deed of reparation to nullify her self-blame and shield her from a
vague, ever-visiting dread of some horrible calamity; trust in the
hardening effect of use and wont that would make her indifferent to her
miseries.

Yes--miseries. This beautiful, healthy young creature, with her two-and-
twenty years and her gratified ambition, no longer felt inclined to kiss
her fortunate image in the glass. She looked at it with wonder that she
could be so miserable. One belief which had accompanied her through her
unmarried life as a self-cajoling superstition, encouraged by the
subordination of every one about her--the belief in her own power of
dominating--was utterly gone. Already, in seven short weeks, which seemed
half her life, her husband had gained a mastery which she could no more
resist than she could have resisted the benumbing effect from the touch of
a torpedo. Gwendolen's will had seemed imperious in its small girlish
sway; but it was the will of a creature with a large discourse of
imaginative fears: a shadow would have been enough to relax its hold. And
she had found a will like that of a crab or a boa-constrictor, which goes
on pinching or crushing without alarm at thunder. Not that Grandcourt was
without calculation of the intangible effects which were the chief means
of mastery; indeed, he had a surprising acuteness in detecting that
situation of feeling in Gwendolen which made her proud and rebellious
spirit dumb and helpless before him.

She had burned Lydia Glasher's letter with an instantaneous terror lest
other eyes should see it, and had tenaciously concealed from Grandcourt
that there was any other cause of her violent hysterics than the
excitement and fatigue of the day: she had been urged into an implied
falsehood. "Don't ask me--it was my feeling about everything--it was the
sudden change from home." The words of that letter kept repeating
themselves, and hung on her consciousness with the weight of a prophetic
doom. "I am the grave in which your chance of happiness is buried as well
as mine. You had your warning. You have chosen to injure me and my
children. He had meant to marry me. He would have married me at last, if
you had not broken your word. You will have your punishment. I desire it
with all my soul. Will you give him this letter to set him against me and
ruin us more--me and my children? Shall you like to stand before your
husband with these diamonds on you, and these words of mine in his
thoughts and yours? Will he think you have any right to complain when he
has made you miserable? You took him with your eyes open. The willing
wrong you have done me will be your curse."

The words had nestled their venomous life within her, and stirred
continually the vision of the scene at the Whispering Stones. That scene
was now like an accusing apparition: she dreaded that Grandcourt should
know of it--so far out of her sight now was that possibility she had once
satisfied herself with, of speaking to him about Mrs. Glasher and her
children, and making them rich amends. Any endurance seemed easier than
the mortal humiliation of confessing that she knew all before she married
him, and in marrying him had broken her word. For the reasons by which she
had justified herself when the marriage tempted her, and all her easy
arrangement of her future power over her husband to make him do better
than he might be inclined to do, were now as futile as the burned-out
lights which set off a child's pageant. Her sense of being blameworthy was
exaggerated by a dread both definite and vague. The definite dread was
lest the veil of secrecy should fall between her and Grandcourt, and give
him the right to taunt her. With the reading of that letter had begun her
husband's empire of fear.

And her husband all the while knew it. He had not, indeed, any distinct
knowledge of her broken promise, and would not have rated highly the
effect of that breach on her conscience; but he was aware not only of what
Lush had told him about the meeting at the Whispering Stones, but also of
Gwendolen's concealment as to the cause of her sudden illness. He felt
sure that Lydia had enclosed something with the diamonds, and that this
something, whatever it was, had at once created in Gwendolen a new
repulsion for him and a reason for not daring to manifest it. He did not
greatly mind, or feel as many men might have felt, that his hopes in
marriage were blighted: he had wanted to marry Gwendolen, and he was not a
man to repent. Why should a gentleman whose other relations in life are
carried on without the luxury of sympathetic feeling, be supposed to
require that kind of condiment in domestic life? What he chiefly felt was
that a change had come over the conditions of his mastery, which, far from
shaking it, might establish it the more thoroughly. And it was
established. He judged that he had not married a simpleton unable to
perceive the impossibility of escape, or to see alternative evils: he had
married a girl who had spirit and pride enough not to make a fool of
herself by forfeiting all the advantages of a position which had attracted
her; and if she wanted pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind
properly he would take care not to withhold them.

Gwendolen, indeed, with all that gnawing trouble in her consciousness, had
hardly for a moment dropped the sense that it was her part to bear herself
with dignity, and appear what is called happy. In disclosure of
disappointment or sorrow she saw nothing but a humiliation which would
have been vinegar to her wounds. Whatever her husband might have come at
last to be to her, she meant to wear the yoke so as not to be pitied. For
she did think of the coming years with presentiment: she was frightened at
Grandcourt. The poor thing had passed from her girlish sauciness of
superiority over this inert specimen of personal distinction into an
amazed perception of her former ignorance about the possible mental
attitude of a man toward the woman he sought in marriage--of her present
ignorance as to what their life with each other might turn into. For
novelty gives immeasurableness to fear, and fills the early time of all
sad changes with phantoms of the future. Her little coquetries, voluntary
or involuntary, had told on Grandcourt during courtship, and formed a
medium of communication between them, showing him in the light of a
creature such as she could understand and manage: But marriage had
nulified all such interchange, and Grandcourt had become a blank
uncertainty to her in everything but this, that he would do just what he
willed, and that she had neither devices at her command to determine his
will, nor any rational means of escaping it.

What had occurred between them and her wearing the diamonds was typical.
One evening, shortly before they came to the Abbey, they were going to
dine at Brackenshaw Castle. Gwendolen had said to herself that she would
never wear those diamonds: they had horrible words clinging and crawling
about them, as from some bad dream, whose images lingered on the perturbed
sense. She came down dressed in her white, with only a streak of gold and
a pendant of emeralds, which Grandcourt had given her, round her neck, and
the little emerald stars in her ears.

Grandcourt stood with his back to the fire and looked at her as she
entered.

"Am I altogether as you like?" she said, speaking rather gaily. She was
not without enjoyment in this occasion of going to Brackenshaw Castle with
her new dignities upon her, as men whose affairs are sadly involved will
enjoy dining out among persons likely to be under a pleasant mistake about
them.

"No," said Grandcourt.

Gwendolen felt suddenly uncomfortable, wondering what was to come. She was
not unprepared for some struggle about the diamonds; but suppose he were
going to say, in low, contemptuous tones, "You are not in any way what I
like." It was very bad for her to be secretly hating him; but it would be
much worse when he gave the first sign of hating her.

"Oh, mercy!" she exclaimed, the pause lasting till she could bear it no
longer. "How am I to alter myself?"

"Put on the diamonds," said Grandcourt, looking straight at her with his
narrow glance.

Gwendolen paused in her turn, afraid of showing any emotion, and feeling
that nevertheless there was some change in her eyes as they met his. But
she was obliged to answer, and said as indifferently as she could, "Oh,
please not. I don't think diamonds suit me."

"What you think has nothing to do with it," said Grandcourt, his _sotto
voce_ imperiousness seeming to have an evening quietude and finish, like
his toilet. "I wish you to wear the diamonds."

"Pray excuse me; I like these emeralds," said Gwendolen, frightened in
spite of her preparation. That white hand of his which was touching his
whisker was capable, she fancied, of clinging round her neck and
threatening to throttle her; for her fear of him, mingling with the vague
foreboding of some retributive calamity which hung about her life, had
reached a superstitious point.

"Oblige me by telling me your reason for not wearing the diamonds when I
desire it," said Grandcourt. His eyes were still fixed upon her, and she
felt her own eyes narrowing under them as if to shut out an entering pain.

Of what use was the rebellion within her? She could say nothing that would
not hurt her worse than submission. Turning slowing and covering herself
again, she went to her dressing-room. As she reached out the diamonds it
occurred to her that her unwillingness to wear them might have already
raised a suspicion in Grandcourt that she had some knowledge about them
which he had not given her. She fancied that his eyes showed a delight in
torturing her. How could she be defiant? She had nothing to say that would
touch him--nothing but what would give him a more painful grasp on her
consciousness.

"He delights in making the dogs and horses quail: that is half his
pleasure in calling them his," she said to herself, as she opened the
jewel-case with a shivering sensation.

"It will come to be so with me; and I shall quail. What else is there for
me? I will not say to the world, 'Pity me.'"

She was about to ring for her maid when she heard the door open behind
her. It was Grandcourt who came in.

"You want some one to fasten them," he said, coming toward her.

She did not answer, but simply stood still, leaving him to take out the
ornaments and fasten them as he would. Doubtless he had been used to
fasten them on some one else. With a bitter sort of sarcasm against
herself, Gwendolen thought, "What a privilege this is, to have robbed
another woman of!"

"What makes you so cold?" said Grandcourt, when he had fastened the last
ear-ring. "Pray put plenty of furs on. I hate to see a woman come into a
room looking frozen. If you are to appear as a bride at all, appear
decently."

This martial speech was not exactly persuasive, but it touched the quick
of Gwendolen's pride and forced her to rally. The words of the bad dream
crawled about the diamonds still, but only for her: to others they were
brilliants that suited her perfectly, and Grandcourt inwardly observed
that she answered to the rein.

"Oh, yes, mamma, quite happy," Gwendolen had said on her return to Diplow.
"Not at all disappointed in Ryelands. It is a much finer place than this--
larger in every way. But don't you want some more money?"

"Did you not know that Mr. Grandcourt left me a letter on your wedding-
day? I am to have eight hundred a year. He wishes me to keep Offendene for
the present, while you are at Diplow. But if there were some pretty
cottage near the park at Ryelands we might live there without much
expense, and I should have you most of the year, perhaps."

"We must leave that to Mr. Grandcourt, mamma."

"Oh, certainly. It is exceedingly handsome of him to say that he will pay
the rent for Offendene till June. And we can go on very well--without any
man-servant except Crane, just for out-of-doors. Our good Merry will stay
with us and help me to manage everything. It is natural that Mr.
Grandcourt should wish me to live in a good style of house in your
neighborhood, and I cannot decline. So he said nothing about it to you?"

"No; he wished me to hear it from you, I suppose."

Gwendolen in fact had been very anxious to have some definite knowledge of
what would be done for her mother, but at no moment since her marriage had
she been able to overcome the difficulty of mentioning the subject to
Grandcourt. Now, however, she had a sense of obligation which would not
let her rest without saying to him, "It is very good of you to provide for
mamma. You took a great deal on yourself in marrying a girl who had
nothing but relations belonging to her."

Grandcourt was smoking, and only said carelessly, "Of course I was not
going to let her live like a gamekeeper's mother."

"At least he is not mean about money," thought Gwendolen, "and mamma is
the better off for my marriage."

She often pursued the comparison between what might have been, if she had
not married Grandcourt, and what actually was, trying to persuade herself
that life generally was barren of satisfaction, and that if she had chosen
differently she might now have been looking back with a regret as bitter
as the feeling she was trying to argue away. Her mother's dullness, which
used to irritate her, she was at present inclined to explain as the
ordinary result of woman's experience. True, she still saw that she would
"manage differently from mamma;" but her management now only meant that
she would carry her troubles with spirit, and let none suspect them. By
and by she promised herself that she should get used to her heart-sores,
and find excitements that would carry her through life, as a hard gallop
carried her through some of the morning hours. There was gambling: she had
heard stories at Leubronn of fashionable women who gambled in all sorts of
ways. It seemed very flat to her at this distance, but perhaps if she
began to gamble again, the passion might awake. Then there was the
pleasure of producing an effect by her appearance in society: what did
celebrated beauties do in town when their husbands could afford display?
All men were fascinated by them: they had a perfect equipage and toilet,
walked into public places, and bowed, and made the usual answers, and
walked out again, perhaps they bought china, and practiced
accomplishments. If she could only feel a keen appetite for those
pleasures--could only believe in pleasure as she used to do!
Accomplishments had ceased to have the exciting quality of promising any
pre-eminence to her; and as for fascinated gentlemen--adorers who might
hover round her with languishment, and diversify married life with the
romantic stir of mystery, passion, and danger, which her French reading
had given her some girlish notion of--they presented themselves to her
imagination with the fatal circumstance that, instead of fascinating her
in return, they were clad in her own weariness and disgust. The admiring
male, rashly adjusting the expression of his features and the turn of his
conversation to her supposed tastes, had always been an absurd object to
her, and at present seemed rather detestable. Many courses are actually
pursued--follies and sins both convenient and inconvenient--without
pleasure or hope of pleasure; but to solace ourselves with imagining any
course beforehand, there must be some foretaste of pleasure in the shape
of appetite; and Gwendolen's appetite had sickened. Let her wander over
the possibilities of her life as she would, an uncertain shadow dogged
her. Her confidence in herself and her destiny had turned into remorse and
dread; she trusted neither herself nor her future.

This hidden helplessness gave fresh force to the hold Deronda had from the
first taken on her mind, as one who had an unknown standard by which he
judged her. Had he some way of looking at things which might be a new
footing for her--an inward safeguard against possible events which she
dreaded as stored-up retribution? It is one of the secrets in that change
of mental poise which has been fitly named conversion, that to many among
us neither heaven nor earth has any revelation till some personality
touches theirs with a peculiar influence, subduing them into
receptiveness. It had been Gwendolen's habit to think of the persons
around her as stale books, too familiar to be interesting. Deronda had lit
up her attention with a sense of novelty: not by words only, but by
imagined facts, his influence had entered into the current of that self-
suspicion and self-blame which awakens a new consciousness.

"I wish he could know everything about me without my