* Daniel Deronda

*B1
*X35
*C1
Men can dp nothing without the make-believe of a beginning.
Even Science, the strict measurer, is obliged to start with a make-believe
unit, and must fix on a point in the stars' unceasing journey
when his sidereal clock shall pretend that time is a Nought.
His less accurate grandmother Poetry has always been understood
to start in the middle; but on relfection it appears that her proceeding
is not very different from his; since Science, too, rech2kons
backwards as well as forwards, divides his unit into billions, and
with his clock-finger at Nought really sets of ˛in˛ ˛medias˛ ˛res˛.
No retrospect will take us to the true beginning; and whether
our prologue be in heaven or on earth, it is but a fraction of
that all-presupposing fact with which our story sets out.

*M
*L1
Was she beautiful or not beautiful? and what was the
secret of form or ezpression which gave the dynamic
quality to her glance? Was the good or the evil genius
dominant in those beams? Probably the evil; else why was
the effect that of unrest rather than of indisturbed
charm? Why was the wish to look again felt as ocercion
and not as a longing in which the whole being consents?
  She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda's mind
was occupied in gambling: not in the open air under a
southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags
about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which
the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same
species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned
colour and chubby nudities, all correspondingly
heavy -- forming a suitabe condenser for human breath
bel9nging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not
easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like
proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.
  It was near four o'clock on a Setpember day, so that the
atmosphere was well-brewed to a visable haze. There was
deep stillness, broken only by a light rattle, a light chink, a
small sweeping sound, and an occasional monotone in
French, such as might be expected to issue from an ingeniously
constructed automaton. Round two long tables were
gathered two serried crowds of human beings, all save one

*X36
having their faces and attention bent on the tables. The one
exception was a melancholy little boy, with his knees and
calves simply in their natural clothing of epidermis, but for
the rest of his person in a fancy dress. He alone had his
face turned towards the doorway, and fixing on it the blank
gaze of a vedizened child stationed as a masquerading
advertisement of the platform of an itinerant show, stood
close behind a lady deeply engaged at the roulettle-table.
  About this table fifty or sixty persons were assembled,
many in the outer rows, where there was occasionally a
deposit of new comers, being mere spectators, only that one
of them, usually a woman, might now and then be
observed putting down a five-franc piece with a simpering
air, just to see what the passion of gambling really wa
Those who were taking their pleasures at a higher strength,
and were absorbed in a play, showed very distant varieties of
European type: Livonian and Spanish, Graeco-Italian and
miscellaneous German, English aristocratic and English
plebeian. Here certainly was a striking admission of human
equality. The white vejewelled fingers of an English
countess were very near touching a bony , yellow, crob-like
hand stretching a bared wrist to clutch a heap of coin -- a
hand easy to sort with the square, gaunt face, deep^set eyes,
grizzled eyebrows, and ill^combed scanty hair which
seemed a slight metamorphosis of the vulture. And where
else would her ladyship have graciously consented to sit by
that dry-lipped feminine figure prematurely old, withered
after short bloom like her artifical flowers, holding a
shabby velvet reticule before her, and occasionally putting
in her mouth the point with which she pricked her card?
There too, very near the fair countess, was a respectable
London tradesman, blond and soft-handed, his sleek hair
scrupulously parted behind and before, conscious of
circulars addressed to the nobility and gentry, whose distinguished
patronage enabled him to take his holidays
fashionably, and to a certain extent in their distinguished
company. Not his the gambler's passion that nullifies
appetite, but a well-fed leisure, which in the intervals of
winning money in business and spending it showily, sees no

*X37
better resource than winning money in play and spending
it yet more showily -- reflecting always that Providence had
never manifested any disapprobation of his amusement,
and dispassionate enough to leave off if the sweetness of
winning much and seeing others lose had turned to the
sourness of losing much and seeing others win. For the vice
of gambling lay in losing money at it. In his bearing there
might be something of the tradesman, but in his pleasures
he was fit to rank with the owners of the oldest titles.
Standing close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm,
statuesque, reaching across him to place the first pile of
napoleons from a new bagful just brought him by an
envoy with a scrolled mustache. The pile was in half a
minute pushed over to an old bewigged woman with eye^glasses
˛inching her nose. There was aslight gleam, a faint
mumbling smile about the lips of the old womann; but the
statuesque Italian remained impassive, and -- probably
secure in an infallible system which placed his foot on the
neck of chance -- immediately prepared a new pile. So did a
man with the air of an emaciated beau or worn-out
libertine, who looked at life through one eyeglass, and held
out his hand tremulously when he asked for change. It
could surely ve no severity of system, but rather some
dream of white crows, or the induction that the eighth of
the month was lucky, which inspired the fierce yet tottering
impulsiveness of his play.
  But while every single player differed markedly from
every other, there was a certain uniform negativeness of
expression which had the effect of a mask -- as if they had
all eaten of some root that for the time compelled the
brains of each to the same narrow monotony of action.
  Deronda's first thought when his eyes fell on this scene
of dull, gas-poisoned avsorption was that the gambling of
Spanish shepherd-boys had seemed to him more enviable:
-- so far Rousseau might be justified in maintaining that
art and science had done poor service to mankind. But
suddenly he felt the moment become dramatic. His attention
was arrested by a young lady who, standing at an
angle not for from him, was the last to whom his eyes

*X38
travelled. She was bending and speaking English to a
middle^aged lady seated at play beside her; but the next
instant she returned to her play, and showed the full
height of a graceful figure, with a face which might
possibly be looked at without admiration, but could hardly
be passed with indifference.
  The inward debate which she raised in Deronda gave to
his eyes a growing expression of scrutiny, tending father
and farther away from the flow of mingled undefined
sensibilities forming adirmation. At one moment they
followed the movements of the figure, of the arms and
hands, as this problematic sylph vent forward to deposit her
stake with an air of firm choice; and the next they returned
to the face which, at present unaffected by beholders, was
directed steadily towards the game. The sylph was a
winner; and as her taper fingers, delicately gloved in pale-grey,
were adjusting the coins which had veen pushed
towards her in order to pass them back again to the winning
point, she looked round her with a survey too markedly
cold and neutral not to have in it a little of that nature
which we call art concealing an inward exultation.
  But in the course of that survey her eyes met Deronda's,
and instead of averting them as she would have desired to
do, she was unpleasantly conscious that they were arrested
-- how long? The darting sense that he was measuring her
and looking down on her as an inferior, that he was of
different quality from the human dross around her, that he
felt himse;f in a region outside and above her, and was
examining her as a specimen of a lower order, roused a
tingling resentment which stretched the moment with conflict.
It did not being the blood to her cheeks, but sent it
away from her lips. She controlled herself by the help of an
inward defiance, and without other sign of emotion that
this lip-paleness turned to her play. But Deronda's gaze
seemed to have acted as an evil eye. Her stake was gone.
No matter; she had been winning ever since she took to
roulette with a few napoleons at command, and had a
onsiderable reserve. She had begun to lelieve in her luck,
others had begun to believe in it; she had visions of being

*X39
followed by a ˛corte>ge˛ who would worship her as a goddess
of luck and watch her play as a directing augury. Such
things had been known of male gamblers; why should not
a woman have a like supremacy? Her friend and chaperon
who had not wished her to play at first was beginning to
approve, only administering the prudent advice to stop at
the right moment and carry money back to England --
advice to which Gwendolen had replied that she cared for
the excitement of play, not the winnings. On that supposition
the present moment ought to have made the flood-tide
in her eager experience of gambling. Yet when her next
stake was swept away, she felt the orbits of her eyes getting
hot, and the certainty she had (without looking) of that
man still watching her was something like a pressure which
begins to be torturing. The more reason to her why she
should not flinch, but go on playing as if she were indifferent
to loss or gain. Her friend touched her elbow and
proposed that they should quit the table. For reply
Gwendolen put ten louis on the same spot: she was in that
mood of defiance in which the mind loses sight of any end
beyond the satisfaction of reraged resistance; and with theMnbeyond the satisfaction of enraged
]]] resistance; and with the
puerile stupidity of a dominant impulse includes luck
amoung its objects of defiance. Since she was not winning
strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly. She
controlled her muscles, and showed no tremor of mouth or
hands. Each time her stake was swept off she doubled it.
Many were now watching her, but the sole observation she
was conscious of was Deronda's, who, though she never
looked towards him, she was sure had not moved away.
Such a drama takes no long while to play out; development
and catastrophe can often be measured by nothing clumsier
than the moment-hand. "Faites votre jeu, mesdames et
messieurs," said the automatic voice of destiny from between
the mustache and imperial of the croupier,; and
Gwendolen's arm was stretched to deposit her last poor
heap of napoleons. "Le jeu ne va plus," said destiny. And in
five seconds Gwendolen turned from the table, but turned
resolutely with her face towards Deronda and looked at
him. There was a smile of irony in his eyes as their glances

*X40
met; but it was at least better that he should have kept
his attention fixed on her than that he should have
disregarded her as one of an insect swarm who had no individual
phyaiognomy. Besides, in spite of his superciliousness
and irony, it was difficult to believe that he did not
admire her spirit as well as her person: he was young,
handsome, distinguished in appearance -- not one of those
ridiculous and dowdy Philistines who thought it incumbent
on them to blight the gaming-table with a sour
look of protest as they passed by it. The general conviction
that we are admirable does not easily give way before a
single negative; rather when any of Vanity's large family,
male or female find their performance received coldly, they
are apt to believe that a little more of it will win over the
unaccountable dissident. In Gwendolen's habits of mind it
had been taken for granted that she knew what was admirable
and that she herself was admired. This basis of her
thinking had received a disagreeable concussion, and reeled
a little, but was not easily to be overc        hrown.
  In the evening the same room was more stiflingly
heated, was brilliant with gas and with the costumes of
many ladies who floated their trains along it or were seated
on the ottomans.
  The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a
pale sea-green feather fastened in sliver falling backward over
her green hat and light-brown hair, was Gwendolen Harleth.
She was under the wing or rather soared by the shoulder of
the lady who had sat by her at the roulette-table; and with
them was a gentleman with a white mustache and clipped
hair: solid-browed, stiff, and German. They were walking
about or standing to chat with acquaintances; and Gwendolen
was much observed by the seated groups.
  "A striking girl -- that Miss Harleth -- unlike others."
  "Yes; she has got herself up as a sort of serpent now, all
green and silver, and winds her neck about a little more
than usual."
  "Oh, she must always be doing something extraordinary.
She is that kind of girl, I fancy. Do you think her pretty,
Mr. Vandernoodt?"

*X41
  "Very. A man might risk hanging for her -- I mean, a fool
might."
  "You like a ˛nez˛ ˛retrousse<˛ then, and long narrow eyes?"
  "When they go with such an ˛ensemble˛."
  "The ˛ensemble˛ ˛du˛ ˛serpent˛?"
  "If you will. Woman was tempted by a serpent: why not
man?"
  "She is certainly very graceful. But she wants a tinge of
colour in her cheeks: it is a sort of Lamia beauty she has."
  "On the contrary, I think her complexion one of her chief
charms. It is a warm paleness: it ;ooks thoroughly healthy.
And that delicate nose with its guadual little upward curve is
distracting. And then her mouth -- there never was a prettier
mouth, the lips curl backward so finely, eh, Mackworth?"
  "Think so? I cannot endure that sort of mouth. It looks
so self-complacent, as if it knew its own beauty -- the curves
are too immovable. I like a mouth that trembles more."
  "For my part I think her odious," said a dowager. "It is
wonderful what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are
these Langens? Does anybody know them?"
  "They are quite ˛coome˛ ˛il˛ ˛faut˛. I have dined with them
several times at the !Russie˛Russie˛. The varoness is English.
Miss Harleth calls her cousin. The girl herself is
thoroughly well-bred, and as clever as possible."
  "Dear me] And the baron?"
"A very good furniture picture."
  "Your baroness is always at the roulette      able," said
Mackworth. "I fancy she has taught the girl to gamble."
  "Oh, the old woman plays a very sober game; drops a ten-franc
piece here and there. The girl is more headlong. But
it is only a freak."
  "I hear she has lost all her winnings to-day. Are they rich?
Who knows?"
  "Ah, who knows? Who knows that about anybody?" said
Mr. Vandernoodt, moving off to join the Langens.
  The remark that Gwendolen wound her neck about more
than usual this evening was true. But it was not that she
might varry out the serpent idea more completely: it was that
she watched for any chance of seeing Deronda, so that she

*X42
might inquire about this stranger, under whose measuring
gaze she was still wincing. At last her opportunity came.
  "Mr Vandernoodt, you know everybody," said Gwendolen,
not too eagerly, rather with a certain languor of utterance
which she sometimes gave to her clear soprano. "Who is
that near the door?"
  "There are half-a-dozen near the door. Do you mean that
old Adonis in the George the Fourth wig?"
  "No, no; the dark-haired young man on the right with
the dreadful expression."
  "Dreadful, do you call it? I think he is an uncommonly
fine fellow."
  "But who is he?"
  "He is lately come to our hotel with Sir Hugo Mallinger."
  "Sir Hugo Mallinger?"
  "Yes. Do you know him?"
  "No." (Gwendolen coloured slightly.) "He has a place near
us, but he never comes to it. What did you say was the
name of that gentleman near the door?"
  "Deronda -- Mr Deronda."
  "What a delightful name] Is he an Englishman?"
  "Yes. He is reported to be rather closely related to the
baronet. You are interested in him?"
  "Yes. I think he is not like young men in general."
  "And you don't admire young men in general?"
  "Not in the least. I always know what they will say. I can't at
all guess what this Mr Daronda would say. What ˛does˛ he say?"
  "Nothing, chiefly. I sat with his party for a good hour last
night on the terrace, and he never spoke -- and was not
smoking either. He looked bored."
  "Another reason why I should like to know him. I am
always bored."
  "I should think he would be charmed to have an introduction.
Shall I bring it about? Will you allow it, baroness?"
  "Why not? -- since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It
is a new ˛ro´le˛ of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored,"
continued Madame von Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt
had moved away. "Until now you have always seemed eager
about something from morning till night."

*X43
  "That is just because I am bored to death. If I am to
leave off play I must break my arm or my collar-bone. I
must make something happen; unless you will go into
Switzerland and take me up the Matterhorn."
  "Perhaps this Mr Deronda's acquaintance will do instead
of the Matterhorn."
  "Perhaps."
  But Gwendolen did not make Deronda's acquaintance on
this occasion. Mr Vandernoodt did not succeed in bringing
him up to her that evening, and when she re-entered her
own room she found a letter recalling her home.

*C2
          This man contrives a secret 'twixt us two,
          That he may quell me with his meeting eyes
          Like one who quells a lioness at bay.

This was the letter Gwendolen found on her table:-

DEAREST CHILD, -- I have been expecting to hear from you
for a week. In your last you said the Langens thought of going to
Baden. How could you be so thoughtless as to leave me in uncertainty
about your address? I am in the greatest anxiety lest
this should not reach you. In any case you were to come home at
the end of September, and I must now entreat you to return as
quickly as possible, for if you spent all your money it would be
out of my power to send you any more, and you must not borrow
of the Langens, for I could not repay them. This is the sad truth,
my child -- I wish I could prepare you for it better -- but a dreadful
calamity has befallen us all. You know nothing about business
and will not understand it; but Grapnell & Co. have failed
for a million and we are totally ruined -- your aunt Gascoigne as
well as I, only that your uncle has his benefice, so that by putting
sown their carriage and getting interest for the boys, the family
can go on. All the property our poor father saved for us goes to
pay the liabilities. There is nothing I can call my own. It is better
you should know this at once, though it rends my heart to have
to tell it you. Of course we cannot help thinking what a pity it

*X44
was that you went away just when you did. Bit I shall never
reproach you, my dear child; I would save you from all trouble
if I could. On your way home you will have time to prepare yourself
for the change you will find. We shall perhaps leave Offendene
at once, for we hope that Mr Haynes, who wanted it before
may be ready to take it off my hands. Of course we cannot go to
the Rectory -- there is not a corner there to spare. We must get
some hut or other to shelter us, and we must live on your uncle
Gascoigne's charity, until I see what else can be done. I shall not
be able to pay the debts to the tradesmen besides the servants'
wages. Summon up your fortitude, my dear child; we must resign
ourselves to God's will. But it is hard to resign one's self to Mr
Lassman's wicked recklessness, which they say was the cause of
the failure. Tiyr poor sisters can only cry with me and give me
no help. If you were once here, therenight be a break in the
cloud. I always feel it impossible that you can have been meant
for poverty. If the Langens wish to remain abroad, perhaps you
can put yourself under someone else's care for the journey. But
come as soon as you can to your afflicted and loving mamma.
                                 FANNY DAVILOW>

  The first effect of this letter of Gwedolen was half
stupefying. The implicit confidence that her destiny must
be one of luxurious ease, where any trouble that occurred
would be well clad and provided for, had been stronger in
her own mind than in her mamma's, being fed there by
her youthful blood and that sense of superior claims which
made a large part of her consciousness. It was almost as
difficult for her to leieve suddenly that her position had
become one of poverty and humiliating dependence, as it
would have been to get into the strong current of her
blooming life the chill sense that her death would really
come. She stood motionless for a few minutes, then tossed
off her hat and automatically looked in the glass. The coils
of her smooth light-brown hair were still in order perfect
enough for a ball-room; and as on other nights, Gwendolen
might have looked lingeringly at herself for pleasure
(surely an allowable indulgence); but now she took no
conscious note of her reflected beauty, and simply stared
right before her as if she had been jarred by a hateful
sound and was waiting for any sign of its cause. By-and-by

*X45
she threw herself in the corner of the red velvet sofa, took
up the letter again and read it twice deliberately, letting it
at last fall on the ground, while she rested her clasped
hands on her lap and set perfectly still, shedding no tears.
Her impulse was to survey and resist the situation rather
than to wail over it. There was no inward exclamation of
"Poor mamma]" Her mamma had never seemed to get
much enjoyment out of life, and if Gwendolen had been at
this moment disposed to feel pity she would have destowed
it on herself -- for was she not naturally and rightfully the
chief object of her mamma's anxiety too? But it was anger,
it was resistance that possessed her; it was bitter vexation
that she had lost her gains at roulette, whereas if her luck
had continued through this one day she would have had a
handsome sum to carry home, or she might have gone on
playing and won enough to support them all. Even now
was it not possible? She had only four napoleons left in her
purse, but she possessed some ornaments which she could
sell to a dealer: a practice so common in stylish society at
German baths that there was no need to be ashamed of it;
and even if she had not receved her mamma's letter, she
would probably have decided to get money for an Etruscan
necklace which she happened not to have been wearing
since her arrival; nay, she might have done so with an
agreeable sense, that she was living with some intensity and
escaping humdrum. With ten louis at her disposal and a
return of her former luck, which seemed probable, what
could she do better than go on playing for a few days? If
her friends at home disapproved of the way in which she
got the money, as they certainly would, still the money
would be there. Gwendolen's imagination dwelt on this
course and created agreeable consequences, but not with
unbroken confidence and rising certainty as it would have
done if she had been touched with the gamber's mania.
She had gone to the roulette-table not because of passion,
but in search of it: hermind was still sanely capable of
picturing balanced probablities, and while the chance of
winning allured her, the cahnce of losing thrust itself on
her with alternate strength and made a vision from which
*X46
her pride shrank sensitively. For she was resolved not to tell
the Langens that any misfortune had befalen her family,
or to make herself in any way indebted to their compassion;
and if she were to part with her jewellery to any
observable extent, they would interfere by inquirires and
remonstrances/ The course that held the least risk of intolerable
annoyance was to raise money on her necklace
early in the morning, tell the Langens that her mamma
desired her immediate return without giving a reason, and
take the train for Brussels that evening. She had no maid
with her, and the Langens might make difficulties about
her returning alone, but her will was peremptory.
  Instead of going to bed she made as brilliant a light as
she could and began to pack, working diligently, though all
the while visited by the scenes that might take place on the
coming day -- now by the tiresome explanations and farewells,
and the whirling journey towards a changed home,
now by the alternative of staying just another day and
standing again at the roulette-table. But always in this
latter scene there was the presence of that Deronda, whatching
her with exasperating irony, and -- the two keep exoeriences
were inevitably revived together -- beholding her
again forsaken by luck. This importunate image certainly
helped hto sway her resolve on the side of immediate departure,
and to urge her packing to the point which would
make a change of mind inconvenient. It had struch twelve
when she came into her room, and by the time she was
assuring herself that she had left out only what was necessary,
the faint dawn was stealing through the white blinds
and dulling her candles. What was the use of going to bed?
Her cold bath was refreshment enough, and she saw that a
slight trace of fatigue about the eyes only made her look
the more interesting. Before six o'clock she was completely
equipped in her grey travelling dress even to her felt hat,
for she meant to walk out as soon as she could count on
seeing other ladies on their way to the springs. And happening
to be seated sideways before the long strip of mirror
between her two windows she turned to look at herself,
leaning her elbow on the back of the chair in an attitude

*X47
that might have been chosen for her portrait. It is possible
to have a strong self-love without any self-satisfaction,
rather with a self-discontent which is the more intense
because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a
supreme care; but Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward
strife. She had a ˛naiµve˛ delight in her fortunate self, which
any but the harshest saintliness will have some indulgence
for in a girl who had every day seen a pleasant reflaction of
that self in her friends' flattery as well as in the looking^glass.
And even in this beginning of troubles, while for lack
of anything else to do she sat gazing at her image in the
growing light her face gathered a complacency gradual as the
cheerfulness of the morning. Her beautiful lips curled into
a more and more decided smile, till at last she took off her hat,
leaned forward and kissed the cold glass which had looked so
warm. How could she believe in sorrow? If it attacked her,
she flet the force to crush it, to defy it, or run away from it, as
she had done already. Anything seemed more possible than
that she could go on bearing miseries, great or small.
  Madame von Langen never went out before breakfast, so
that Gwendolen could safely end her early walk by taking
her way homeward through the Obere Strasse in which was
the needed shop, sure to be open after seven. At that hour
any observers whom she minded would ve either on their
walks in the region of the springs, or would be still in their
bedrooms; but certainly there was one grand hotel, the
˛Czarina˛, from which eyes might follow her up to Mr
Wiener's door. This was a chance to be risked: might she
not be going in to buy something which had struck her
fancy? This implicit falsehood passed through her mind as
she remembered that the ˛Czarina˛ was Deronda's hotel; but
she was then already far up the Obere Strasse, and she
walked on with her usual floating movement, evey line in
her figure and drapery falling in gentle curves attractive to
all eyes except those which discerned in them too close a
resemblance to the serpent, and objected to the revival of
serpent-worship. She looked neiter to the right hand no6wneither to the right hand nor
to the left, and transacted her business in the shop with a
coolness which gave little Mr Wiener nothing to remark

*X48
except her proud grace of manner, and the superior size
and quality of the three central turquoises in the necklace
she offered him. They had belonged to a chain once her
father's; but she had never known her father; and the
necklace was in all respects the ornament she could most
conveniently part with.  Who supposes that it is an impossible
contradiction to be superstitious and rationalising at
the same time? Roulette encourages a romantic superstition
as to the chances of the game, and the most prosaic
rationalism as to human sentiements which stand in the way
of raising needful money. Gwendolen's dominant regret
was that after all she had only nine louis to add to the four
in her purse; these Jew dealers were so unscrupulous in
taking advantage of Christians unfortunate at play] But
she was the Langens' guest in their hired apartment, and
had nothing to pay there: thirteen louis would do more
than take her home; even if she determined on risking
three, the remaining ten would more than suffice, since she
meant to travel right on, day and night. As she turned
homewards, nay, entered and seated herself in the ˛salon˛ to
await her friends and breakfast, she still wavered as to her
immediate departure, or rather she had concluded to tell
the Langens simply that she had had a letter from her
mamma desiring her return, and to leave it still undecided
when she should start. It was already the usual breakfast
time, and hearing someone enter as she was leaning back
rather tired and hungry with her eyes shut, she rose expecting
to see one or others of the Langens -- the words which
might determine her lingering at least another day, ready-formed
to pass her lips. But it was the servant bringing in a
small packet for Miss Harleth, which had that moment
been left at the door. Gwendolen took it in her hand and
immediately hurried into her own room. She looked paler
and more agitated than when she had first read her
mamma's letter. Something -- she never quite knew what --
revealed to her before she opened the packet that it contained
the necklace she had just parted with. Underneath
the paper it was wraptin a cambric handkerchief, and
within this was a scrap of torn-off note-paper, on which was

*X49
written with a pencil in clear but rapid handwriting -- "˛A˛
˛stranger˛ ˛who˛ ˛has˛ ˛found˛ ˛Miss˛ ˛Harleth's˛ ˛necklace˛ ˛returns˛ ˛it˛ ˛to˛
˛her˛ ˛with˛ ˛the˛ ˛hope˛ ˛that˛ ˛she˛ ˛will˛ ˛not˛ ˛again˛ ˛risk˛ ˛the˛ ˛loss˛ ˛of˛ ˛it˛."
  Gwendolen reddened with the vexation of wounded
pride. A large corner of the handkerchief seemed to have
been recklessly torn off to get rid of a mark; but she at once
believed in the first image of "the stranger" that presented
itself to her mind. It was Deronda; he must have seen her
go into the shop; he must have gone in immediately after,
and repurchased the necklace. He had taken an unpardonable
liberty, and had dared to place her in a thoroughly
hateful position. What could she do? -- Not, assuredly, act
on her conviction that it was he who had sent her the
necklace and straightway send it back to him: that would
be to face the possibility that she had been mistaken; nay,
even if the "stranger" were he and no other, it would be
something too gross for her to let him know that she had
divined this, and to meet him again with that recognition
in their minds. He knew very well that he was entangling
her in helpless humiliation: it was another way of smiling
at her ironically, and taking the air of a supercilious
mentor. Gwendolen felt the bitter tears of mortification
rising and rolling down her cheeks. No one had ever before
dared to treat her with irony and contempt. One thing was
clear: she must carry out her resolution to quit this place
at once; it was impossible for her to reappear in the public
˛salon˛, still less stand at the gaming-table with the risk of
seeing Deronda. Now came an importunate knock at the
door: breakfast was ready. Gwedolen with a passionate
movement thrust necklace, cambric, scrap of paper and all
into her ˛ne<cessaire˛, pressed her handkerchief against her
face, and after pausing a minute or two to summon back
her proud self-control, went to join her friends. Such signs
of tears and fatigue as were left seemed accordant enough
with the account she at once gave of her having been
called home, for some reason which she feared might be a
trouble of her mamma's; and of her having sat up to do
her packing, instead of waiting for help from her friend's
maid. There was much protestation, as she had expected,

*X50
against her travelling alone, but she persisted in refusing
any arrangements for companionship. She would be put
into the ladies' compartment and go right on. She could rest
exceedingly well in the train, and was afraid of nothing.
  In this way it happened that Gwedolen never reappeared
at the roulette-table, but set off that Thursday evening for
Brussels, and on Saturday morning arrived at Offendene, the
home to which she and her family were soon to say a last
good-bye.

*C3
PITY that Offendene was not the home of Miss Harleth's
childhood, or endeared to her by family memories] A
human life, I think, should be well rooted in some spot of a
native land, where it may get the love of tender kinship for
the face of earth, for the labours men go forth to, for the
sounds and accents that haunt it, for whatever will give
that early home a familiar unmistakable difference amidst
the future widening of knowledge: a spot where the
definiteness of early memories may be inwrought with
affection, and kindly acquaintance with all neighbours, even
to the dogs and donkeys, may spread not by sentimental
effort and reflection, but as a sweet habit of the blood. At
five years old, mortals are not prepared to be citizens of the
world, to be stimulated by abstract mouns, to soar above
preference into impartiality; and that prejudice in favour of
milk with which we blindly begin, is a type of the way body
and soul must get nourished at least for a time. The best
introduction to astronomy is to think of the nightly heavens
as a little lot of stars belonging to one's own homestead.
  But this blessed persistence in which affection can take
root had been wanting in Gwendolen's life. Offendene had
been chosen as her mamma's home simply for its nearness

*X51
to Pennicote Rectory; and it was only the year before that
Mrs Davilow, Gwendolen, and her four half-sisters (the
governess and the maid following in another vehicle) had
been driven along the avenue for the first time on a late
October afternoon when the rooks were cawing loudly
above them, and the yellow elm-leaves were whirling.
  The season suited the aspect of the old oblong red-brick
house, rather too anxiously ornamented with stone at every
line, not excepting the double row of narrow windows and
the large square portico. The stone encouraged a greenish
lichen, the brick a powdery grey, so that though the building
was rigidly rectangular there was no harshness in the
physiognomy which it turned to the three avenues cut east,
west, and south in the hundred yards' breadth of old
plantation encircling the immediate grounds. One would
have liked the house to have been lifted on a knoll, so as to
look beyond its own little domain to the long thatched
roofs of the distant villages, the church towers, the scattered
homesteads, the gradual rise of surging woods, and
the green breadths of undulating park which made the
beautiful face of the earth in that part of Wessex. But
though standing thus behind a screen amid flat pastures, it
had on one side a glimpse of the wider would in the lofty
curves of the chalk downs, grand steadfast forms played
over by the changing days.
  The house was but just large enough to be called a
mansion, and was moderately rented, having no manor
attached to it, and being rather difficult to let with its
sombre furniture and faded upholstery. But inside and
outside it was what no beholder could suppose to be inhabited
by retired tradespeople: a certainty which was
worth many conveniences to tenants who not only had the
taste that shrinks from new finery, but also were in that
border-territory of rank were annexation is a burning
topic; and to take up her abode in a house which had once
sufficed for dowager countesses gave a perceptible tinge to
Mrs Davilow's satisfaction in having an establishment of
her own. This, rather mysteriously to Gwendolen, appeared
suddenly possible on the death of her step-father Captain

*X52
Davilow, who had for the last nine years joined his family
only in a brief and fitful manner, enough to reconcile them
to his long absences; but she cared much more for the fact
than for the explanation. All her prospects had become more
agreeable in consequence. She had disliked their former
way of life, roving from one foreign watering-place or
Parisian apartment to another, always feeling new antipathies
to new suites of hired furniture, and meeting new
people under conditions which made her appear of little
importance; and the variation of having passed two years
at a showy school, where on all occasions of display she had
been put foremost, had only deepened her sense that so
exceptional a person as herself could hardly remain in
ordinary circumstances or in a social position less than
advantageous. Any fear of this latter evil was banished now
that her mamma was to have an establishment; for on the
point of birth Gwendolen was quite easy. She had no
notion how her maternal grandfather got the fortune inherited
by his two daughters; but he had been a West
Indian -- which seemed to exclude further question; and she
knew that her father's family was so high as to take no notice
of her mamma, who nevertheless preserved with much pride
the miniature of a Lady Molly in that connection. She would
probably have known much more about her father but for
a little incident which happened when she was twelve years
old. Mrs Davilow had brought out, as she did only at wide
intervals, various memorials of her first husband, and while
showing his miniature to Gwendolen recalled with a fervour
which seemed to count on a peculiar filial sympathy, the
fact that dear papa had died when his little daughter was
in long clothes. Gwendolen, immediately thinking of the
unlovable step-father whom she had been acquainted with
the greater part of her life while her frocks were short, said --
  "Why did you marry again, mamma? It would have
been nicer if you had not."
  Mrs Davilow coloured deeply, a light convulsive movement
passed over her face, and straightway shutting up the
memorials she said, with a violence quite unusual in her --
  "You have no feeling, child]"

*X53
  Gwendolen who was fond of her mamma, felt hurt and
ashamed, and had never since dared to ask a question
about her father.
  This was not the only instance in which she had brought
on herself the pain of some filial compunction. It was
always arranged, when possible, that she should have a
small bed in her mamma's room; for Mrs Davilow's
motherly tenderness clung chiefly to her eldest girl, who
had been born in her happier time. One night under an
attack of pain she found that the specific regularly placed
by her bedside had been forgotten, and begged Gwendolen
to get out of bed and reach it for her. That healthy young
lady, snug and warm as a rosy infant in her little couch,
objected to step out into the cold, and lying perfectly still,
grumbled a refusal. Mrs Davilow went without the mediicine
and never reproached her daughter; but the next day
Gwendolen was keenly conscious of what must be in her
mamma's mind, and tried to make amends by caresses
which cost her no effort. Having always been the pet and
pride of the household, waited on by mother, sisters,
governess, maids, as if she had been a princess in exile,
she naturally found it difficult to think her own pleasure
less important tha others made it, and when it was positively
thwarted felt an astonished resentment apt, in her
cruder days, to vent itself in one of those passionate acts
which look like a contradiction of habitual tendencies.
Though never even as a child thoughtlessly cruel, nay,
delighting to rescue drowning insects and watch their
recovery, there was a disagreeable silent remembrance of
her having strangled her sister's canary-bird in a final fit of
exasperation at its shrill singing which had again and
again jarringly interrupted her own. She had taken pains to
buy a white mouse for her sister in retribution, and though
inwardly excusing herself on the ground of a peculiar
sensitiveness which was a mark of her general superiority,
the thought of that infelonious murder had always made
her wince. Gwendolen's nature was not remorseless, but she
liked to make her penances easy, and now that she was
twenty and more, some of her native force had turned into

*X54
a self-control by which she guarded herself from penitential
humiliation. There was more show of fire and will in
her than ever, but there was more calculation underneath it.
  On this day of arrival at Offendene, which not even Mrs
Davilow had seen before -- the place having been taken for
her by her vrother-in-law Mr Gascoigne -- when all had got
down from the carriage, and were standing under the
porch in front of the open door, so that they could have
both a general view of the place and a glimpse of the stone
hall and staircase hung with sombre pictures, but enlivened
by a bright wood fire, on one spoke: mamma, the four
sisters, and the governess all looked at Gwendolen, as if
their feelings depended entirely on her decision. Of the
girls, from Alice in her sixteenth year to Isabel in her
tenth, hardly anything could be said on a first view, but
that they were girlish, and that their black dresses were
getting shabby. Miss Merry was elderly and altogether
neutral in expression. Mrs Davilow's worn beauty seemed
the more pathetic for the look of entire appeal which she
cast at Gwendolen, who was glacing round at the house,
the landscape, and the entrance-hall with an air of rapid
judgment.  Imagine a young race-horse in the paddock
among untrimmed ponies and patient hacks.
  "Well, dear, what do you think of the place?" saidMrs
Davilow at last, in a gentle deprecatory tone.
  "I think it is charming," said Gwendolen, quickly. "A
romantic place; anything delightful may happen in it; it
would be a good background for anything. No one need be
ashamed of living here."
  "There is certainly nothing common about it."
  "Oh, it would do for fallen royalty or any sort of grand
poverty. We ought properly to have been living in
splendour, and have come down to this. It would have been
as romantic as could be. But I thought my uncle and aunt
Gascoigne would be here to meet us, and my cousin Anna,"
added Gwendolen, her tone changed to sharp surprise.
  "We are early," said Mrs Davilow; and entering the hall,
she said to the housekeeper who came forward, "You expect
Mr and Mrs Gascoigne?"

*X55
  "Yes, madam: they were here yesterday to give particular
orders about the fires and the dinner. But as to fires, I've
had'em in all the rooms for the last week, and everything
is well aired. I could wish some of the furniture paid better
for all the cleaning it's had, but I ˛think˛ you'll see the
brasses have been done justice to. I ˛think˛ when Mr and Mrs
Gascoigne come, they'll tell nothing's been neglected.
They'll be here at five, for certain."
  This satisfied Gwendolen, who was not prepared to have
their arrival treated with indifference; and after tripping a
little way up the matted stone staircase to take a survey
there, she tripped down again, and followed by all the girls
looked into each of the rooms opening from the hall -- the
dinging-room all dark oak and worn red satin damask, with
a copy of snarling, worrying dogs from Snyders over the
sideboard, and a Christ breaking bread over the mantel-oiece;
the library with a general aspect and smell of old
brown leather; and lastly, the drawing-room, which was
entered through a small antechamber crowded with venerable
knick-knacks.
  "Mamma, mamma, pray come here]"said Gwendolen,
Mrs Davilow having followed slowly in talk with the house-keeper.
"Here is an organ. I will be Saint Cecilia: someone
shall paint me as Saint Cecilia. Jocosa (this was her name
for Miss Merry), let down my hair. See, mamma]"
  She had thrown off her hat and gloves, and seated herself
before the organ in an admirable pose, looking upward;
while the submissive and sad Jocosa took out the one comb
which fastened the coil of hair, and then shook out the
mass till it fell in a smooth light-brown stream far below its
owner's slim waist.
  Mrs Davilow smiled and said, "A charming picture, my
dear]" not indifferent to the display of her pet, even in the
presence of a housekeeper. Gwendolen rose and laughed
with delight. All this seemed quite to the purpose on entering
a new house which was so excellent a background.
  "What a queer, quaint, picturesque room]" she went on,
looking about her. "I like these old embroidered chairs, and
the garlands on the wainscot, and the pictures that may be

*X56
anything. That one with the ribs -- nothing but ribs and
darkness -- I should think that is Spanish, mamma."
  "Oh ˛Gwendolen˛]" said the small Isabel, in a tone of
astonishment, while she held open a hinged panel of the
wainscot at the other end of the room.
  Everyone, Gwendolen first, went to look. The opened
panel had disclosed the picture if an upturned dead face,
from which an obscure figure seemed to be fleeing with
outstretched arms. "How horrible]" said Mrs Davilow, with
a look of mere disgust; but Gwendolen shuddered silently,
and Isabel, a plain and altogether inconvenient child with
an alarming memory, said --
  "You will never stay in this room by yourself,
Gwendolen."
  "How dare you open things which were meant to be shut
up, you perverse little creature?" said Gwendolen, in her
angriest tone. Then snatching the panel out of the hand of
the culprit, she closed it hastily, saying, "There is a lock --
where is the key? Let the key be found, or else let one be
made, and let nobody open it again; or rather, let the key
be brought to me."
  At this command to everybody in general Gwendolen
turned with a face which was flushed in reaction from her chill
shudder, and said, "Let us go up to our own room, mamma."
  The housekeeper on searching found the key in the
drawer of a cabinet close by the panel, and presently
handed it to Bugle, the lady's-maid, telling her significantly
to give it to her Royal Highness.
  "I don't know who you mean, Mrs Startin," said Bugle, who
had been up-stairs during the scene in the drawing-room,
and was rather offended at this irony in a new servant.
  "I mean the young lady that's to command us all -- and
well worthy for looks and figure," replied Mrs Startin in
propitiation. "She'll know what key it is."
  "If you have laid out what we want, go and see to the others,
Bugle," Gwendolen had said, when she and Mrs Davilow
entered their black and yellow bedroom, where a pretty little
white couch was prepared by the side of the black and yellow
catafalque known as "the best bed." "I will help mamma."

*X57
  But her first movement was to go to the tall mirror
between the windows, which reflected herself and the room
completely, while her mamma sat down and also looked at
the reflection.
  "That is a becoming glass, Gwendolen; or is it the black
and gold colour that sets you off?" said Mrs Davilow, as
Gwendolen stood obliquely with her three-quarter face
turned towards the mirror, and her left hand brushing
back the stream of hair.
  "I should make a tolerable Saint Cecilia with some white
roses on my head," said Gwendolen, -- "only, how about my
nose, mamma? I think saints' noses never in the least turn
up.  I wish you had given me your perfectly straight nise; it
would have done for any sort of character -- a nose of all
work. Mine is only a happy nose; it would not do so well
for tragedy."
  "Oh, my dear, any nose will do to be miserable with in this
world," said Mrs Davilow, with a deep, weary sigh, throwing
her black bonnet on the table, and resting her elbow near it.
  "Now, mamma," said Gwendolen, in a strongly remonstrant
tone, turning away from the glass with an air of
vexation, "don't begin to be dull here. It spoils all my
pleasure, and everything may be so happy now. What have
you to be gloomy about ˛now˛?"
  "Nothing, dear," said Mrs Davilow, seeming to rouse herself,
and beginning to take off her dress. "It is always
enough for me to see you happy."
  "But you should be ablhappy yourself," said Gwendolenm still
discontentedly, though going to help her mamma with
caressing touches. "Can nobody be happy after they are
quite young? You have made me feel sometimes as if
nothing were of any use. With the girls so troublesome,
and Jocosa so dreadfully wooden and ugly, and everything
make-shift about us, and you looking so dull -- what was the
use of my being anything? But now you ˛might˛ be happy."
  "Si I shall, dear," said Mrs Davilow, patting the cheek
that was bending near her.
  "Yes, but really. Not with a sort of make-believe," said
Gwendolen, with resolute perseverance. "See what a hand


*X58
and arm] -- much more beautiful than mine. Anyone can
see you were altogether more beautiful."
  "No, no, dear; I was always heavier. Never half so charming
as you are."
  "Well, but what is the use of my being charming, if it is
to end in my being dull and not minding anything? Is that
what marriage always comes to?"
  "No, child, certainly not. Marriage is the only happy state
for a woman, as I trust you will prove."
  "I will not put up with it if it is not a happy state. I am
determined to be happy -- at least not to go on muddling
away my life as other people do, being and doing nothing
remarkable. I have made up my mind not to let other
people interfere with me as they have done. Here is some
warm water ready for you, mamma," Gwendolen ended.

warm water ready for you, mamma," Gwendolen ended
proceeding to take off her own dress and then waiting to
have her hair wound up by hermamma.
  There was silence for a minute or two, tell Mrs Davilow
said, while coiling the daughter's hair, "I am sure I have
never crossed you, Gwendolen."
  "You often want me to do what I don't like."
  "You mean, to give Alice lessons?"
  "Yes. And I have done it because you asked me. But I
don't see why I should, else. It bores me to death, she is so
slow. She has no ear for music, or language, or anything
else. It would be much better for her to be ignorant,
mamma: it is her ˛ro´le˛, she would do it well."
  "That is a hard thing to say of your poor sister, Gwendolen,
who is so good to you, and waits on you hand and
foot."
  "I don't see it is hard to call things by their right
names, and put them in their proper places. The hardship
is for me to have to waste my time on her. Now let me
fasten up your hair, mamma."
  "We must make haste; your uncle and aunt will be here
soon. For heaven's sake, don't be scornful to ˛them˛, my dear
child] or to your cousin Anna, whom you will always be
going out with. Do promise me, Gwendolen. You know,
you can't expect Anna to be equal to you."
*X59
  "I don't want her to be equal," said Gwendolen, with a toss
of her head and a smile, and the discussion ended there.
  When Mr and Mrs Gascoigne and their daughter came,
Gwendolen, far from being scornful, behaved as prettily as
possible to them. She was introducing herself anew to relatives
who had not seen her since the comparatively unfinished
age of sixteen, and she was anxious -- no, not
anxious, but resolved that they should admire her.
  Mrs Gascoigne bore a family likeness to her sister. But
she was darker and slighter, her face was unworn by grief,
her movements were less languid, her expression more alert
and critical as that of a rector's wife bound to exert a
beneficent authority. Their closest resemblance lay in a non-resistant
disposition, inclined to imitation and obedience;
but this, owing to the difference in their circumstances, had
led them to very different issues. The younger sister had
been indiscreet, or at least unfortunate in her marriages;
the elder believed herself the most enviable of wives, and
her pliancy had ended in her sometimes taking shapes of
surprising definiteness. Many of her opinions, such as those
on church government and the character of Archbishop
Laud, seemed too decided under every alteration to have
been arrived at otherwise than be a wifely receptiveness.
And there was much to encourage trust in her husband's
authority. He had some agreeable virtues, some striking
advantages, and the failings that were imputed to him all
leaned toward the side of success.
  One of his advantages was a fine person, which perhaps
was even more impressive at fifty-seven then it had been
earlier in life. There were no distinctively clerical lines in
the face, no official reserve or ostentatious benignity of
expression, no tricks of starchiness or of affected ease: in
his Inverness cape he could not have been identified except
as a gentleman with handsome dark features, a nose which
began with an intention to be aquiline but suddenly
became straight, and iron-grey hair. Perhaps he owed this
freedom from the sort of professional make-up which penetrates
skin tones and gestures and defies all drapery, to the
fact that he had once been Captain Gaskin, having taken

*X60
orders and a diphthong but shortly before his engagement
to Miss Armyn. If anyone had objected that his preparation
for the clerical function was inadequate, his fiends
might have asked who made a better figure in it, who
preached better or had more authority in his parish? He
had a native gift for administration, being tolerant both of
opinions and conduct, because he flet himself able to overrule
them, and was free from the irritations of conscious
feebleness. He smiled pleasantly at the foible of a taste
which he did not share -- at floriculture or antiquarianism
for example, which weremuch in vogue among his fellow
clergymen in the diocese: for himself, he preferred following
the history of a campaign, or divining from his knowledge
of Nesselrode's motives what would have been his
conduct if our cabinet had taken a different course. Mr
Gascoigne's tone of thinking after some long-quieted
fluctiations had become ecclesiasr
cal rather than theological;
not the modern Anglican, but what he would
have called sound English, free from nonsense: such as
light, and saw it in its relations to other things. No clerical
magistrate had greater weight at sessions, or less of mischievous
impracticableness in relation to worldly affairs.
Indeed, the worst imputation thrown out against him was
worldliness: it could not be proved that he forsook the less
fortunate, but it was not to be denied that the friendships
he cultivated were of a kind to be useful to the father
of six sons and two daughters; and bitter observers -- for in
Wessex, say ten years ago, there were persons whose bitterness
may now seem incredible -- remarked that the colour
of his opinions had changed in consistency with h
this principle
of action. But cheerful, successful worldliness has a
false air of being more selfish than the acrid, unsuccessful
kind, whose secret history is summed up in the terrible
words, "Sold, but not paid for."
  Gwendolen wondered that she had not better remembered
how very fine a man her uncle was; but at the age of
sixteen she was a less capable and more indifferent judge.
At present it was a less capable and more indifferent judge.
At present it was a matter of extreme interest to her that

*X61
she was to have the near countenance of a dignified male
relative, and that the family life would cease to be entirely,
insipidly feminine. She did not intend that her uncle
should control her, but she saw at once that it would be
altogether agreeable to her that he should be proud of
introducing her as his niece. And there was every sign of
his being likely to feel that pride. He certainly looked at
her with admiration as he said --
  "You have outgrown Anna, my dear," putting his arm
tenderly round his daughter, whose shy face was a tiny
copy of his own, and drawing her forward. "She is not so
old as you by a year, but her growing days are certainly
over. I hope you will be excellent companions."
  He did give a comparing glance at his daughter, but if
he saw her inferiority, he might also see that Anna's timid
appearance and miniature figure must appeal to a different
taste from that which was attracted by Gwendolen, and
that the girls could hardly be rivals. Gwendolen, at least,
was aware of this, and kissed her cousin with real cordiality
as well as grace, saying, "A companion is just what I want. I
am so glad we are come to live here. And mamma will be
much happier how she is near you, aunt."
  The aunt trusted indeed that it would be so, and felt it a
blessing that a suitable home had been vacant in their
uncle's parish. Then, of course, notice had to be taken of
the four other girls whom Gwendolen had always felt to be
superfluous: all of a girlish average that made four units
utterly unimportant, and yet from her earliest days an
obtrusive influential fact in her life. She was conscious of
having been much kinder to them than could have been
expected. And it was evident to her that her uncle and
aunt also felt it a pity there were so many girls: -- what
rational person could feel otherwise, except poor mamma,
who never would see how Alice set up her shoulders and
lifted her eyebrows till she had no forehead left, how
Bertha and Fanny whispered and tittered together about
everything, or how Isabel was always listening and staring
and forgetting where she was, and treading on the toes of
her suffering elders?

*X62
  "You have brothers, Anna," said Gwendolen, while the
sisters were being noticed. "I think you are enviable there."
  "Yes," said Anna, simply, "I am very fond of them; but of
course their education is a great anxiety to papa. He used
to say they made me a tomboy. I really was a great romp
with Rex. I think you will like Rex. He will come home
before Christmas."
  "I remember I used to think you rather wild and shy: but
it is difficult now to imagine you a romp," said Gwendolen,
smiling.
  "Of course I am altered now; I am come out, and all that.
But in reality I like to go black-berrying with Edwy and
Lotta as well as ever.  I am not very fond of going out; but I
daresay I shall like it better now you will be often with me.
I am not at all clever, and I never know what to say. It
seems so useless to say what everybody knows, and I can
think of nothing else, except what papa says."
  "I shall like going out with you very much," said
Gwendolen, well disposed towards this ˛naiµve˛ cousin. "Are
you fond of riding?"
  "Yes, but we have only one Shetland pony amongst us.
Papa says he can't afford more, besides the carriage-horses
and his own nag; he has so many expenses."
  "I intend to have ahorse and ride a great deal now," said
Gwendolen, in a tone of decision. "Is the society pleasant in
this neighbourhood?"
  "Papa says it is, very. There are the clergymen all about,
you know; and the Quallons and the Arrowpoints, and
Lord Brackenshaw, and Sir Hugo Mallinger's place, where
there is nobody -- that's very nice because we make picnics
there -- and two or three families at Wancester; oh, and old
Mrs Vulcany at Nuttingwood, and --"
  But Anna was relieved of this tax on her descriptive
powers by the announcement of dinner, and Gwendolen's
question was soon indirectly answered by her uncle, who
dwelt much on the advantages he had secured for them in
getting aplace like Offendene. Except the rent, it involved
no more expense than an ordinary house at Wancester
would have done.

'
*X63
  "And it is always worth while to make a little sacrifice for
a good style of house," said Mr Gascoigne in his easy,
pleasantly confident tone, which made the world in general
seem a very manageable place of residence; "especially
where there is only a lady at the head. All the best people
will call upon you; and you need give no expensive dinners.
Of course I have to spend a good deal in that way; it is a
large item. But then I get my house for nothing. If I had to
pay three hundred a-year for my house I could not jeep a
table. My boys are too great a drain on me. You are better
off than we are, in proportion; there is no great drain on
you now, after your house and carriage."
  "I assure you, Fanny, now the children are growing up, I
am obliged to cut and contrive," said Mrs Gascoigne. "I am
not a good manager by nature, but Henry has taught me.
He is wonderful for making the best of everything; he
allows himself no extras, and gets his curates for nothing.
It is rather hard that he has not been made a prebendary
or something, as others have been, considering the friends
he has made, and the need there is for men of moderate
opinions in all respects. If the Church is to keep its position,
ability and character ought to tell."
  "Oh, my dear Nancy, you forget the old story -- thank
Heaven, there are three hundred as good as I. And ultimately
we shall have no reason to complain, I am pretty
sure. There could hardly be a more thorough friend than
Lord Brackenshaw, your landlord, you know, Fanny. Lady
Brackenshaw will call upon you. And I have spoken for
Gwendolen to be a member of our Archery Club -- the
Brackenshaw Archery Club -- the most select thing anywhere.
That is, if she has no objection," added Mr Gascoigne,
looking at Gwendolen with pleasant irony.
  "I should like it of all things," said Gwendolen. "There is
nothing I enjoy more than taking aim -- and hitting," she
ended, with a pretty nod and smile.
  "Our Anna, poor child, is too short-sighted for archery.
But I consider myself a first-rate shot, and you shall practise
with me. I must take you an accomplished archer
before our great meeting in July. In fact, as to neighbourhood,

*X64
you could hardly be better placed. There are the
Arrowpoints -- they are some of our best people. Miss
Arrowpoint is a delightful girl: -- she has been presented at
Court. They have a magnificent place -- Quetcham Hall --
worth seeing in point of art; and their parties, to which you
are sure to be invited, are the best things of the sort we
have. The archdeacon is intimate there, and they have
always a good kind of people staying in the house. MMrs
Arrowpoint is peculiar, certainly, something of a caricature,
in fact; but well-meaning. And Miss Arrowpoint
is as nice as possible. It is not all young ladies who have
mothers as handsome and graceful as yours and Anna's."
  Mrs Davilow smiled faintly at this little compliment, but
the husband and wife looked affectionately at each other, and
Gwendolen thought, "My uncle and aunt, at least, are happy;
they are not dull and dismal." Altogether, she felt satisfied
with her prospects at Offendene, as a great improvement
on anything she had known. Even the cheap curates, she incidentally
learned, were almost always young men of family,
and Mr Middleton, the actual curate, was said to be quite
an acquisition: it was only a pity he was so soon to leave.
  But there was one point which she was so anxious to gain
that she could not allow the evening to pass without taking
her measures towards securing it. Her mamma, she knew
intended to submit entirely to her uncle's judgment with
regard to expenditure; and the submission was not merely
prudential, for Mrs Davilow, conscious that she had always
been seen under a cloud as poor dear Fanny, who had
made a sad blunder with her second marriage, felt a hearty
satisfaction in being frankly and cordially identified with
her sister's family, and in having her affairs canvassed and
managed with an authority which presupposed a genuine
interest. Thus the question of a suitable saddle-horse,
which had been sufficiently discussed with mamma, had to
be referred to Mr Gascoigne; and after Gwendolen had
played on the piano,which had been provided from Wancester,
had sung to her hearers' admiration, and had induced
her uncle to join her in a duet -- what more softening
influence than this on any uncle who would have sung finely

*X65

*X65
If this time had not been too much taken up by graver matter? - she seized the opportune moment for
]]] saying, "Mamma, you have not spoken to my uncle about my riding".
  "Gwendolen desires above all things to have a horse to ride
- a pretty  light, lady's horse', daid Mrs Davilow, looking
at Mr Gascoigne. "Do you think we can manage it?"
  Mr Gascoigne projected his lower lip and lifted his handsome
eyebrowes sarcastically at Gwendolen, who had seated herself
with much grace on the elbow of her mamma's chair.
  "We could lent her the pony sometimes", said Mrs Gascoigne,
watching her husband's face and feeling quite ready to disapprove
if he did.
  "That might be inconveniencing others, aunt, and would
be no pleasure to me> I cannot endure ponies," said
Gwendolen. "I would rather give up some other indulgence and
have a horse." (Was there ever a young lady or gentleman
not ready to give up an unspecified indulgence for the sake
of the favourite one specified?)
  "She rides so well. She has had lessons, and the ridingmaster
said she had so good a seat and hand she might be
trusted with any mount," said Mrs Davilow, who, even if she
had not wished her darling to have a horse, would
not have dared to be lukewarm in trying to get it for her.
  "There is the price of the horse - a good sixty with the
best chance, and then his keep," said Mr Gascoigne, in a
tone which, though demurring, betrayed the inward
presence of something that favoured the demand. "There
are the carriagehorses - already a heavy item. And
remember what you ladies cost in toilet now."
  "I really wear nothing but two black dresses," said Mrs
Davilow, hastily. "And the younger girls, of course, require no
toilet at present. Besides, Gwendolen will save me so much
by giving her sisters lessons." Here Mrs Davilow's delicate
cheek showed a rapid blush. "If it were not for that, I must
really have a more expensive governess, and masters besides."
  Gwendolen felt more anger with her mamma, but carefully
concealed it.
  "That is good - that is decidedly good" said Mr Gascoigne,
heartily, looking at his wife. And Gwendolen, who,
it must be owed, was a deep young lady, suddenly moved
away to the other end of the long drawingroom, and
busied herself with arranging pieces of music.
  "The dear child has had no indulgence, no pleasures,"
said Mrs Davilow, in a pleading undertone. "I feel the
expense is rather imprudent in this first year
of our settling. But she really needs the exercise - she needs cheering.
And if you were to see her on horseback, it is something splendid."
  "It is what we could not afford for Anna," said Mrs
Gascoigne. "But she, dear child, would ride Lotta's donkey,
and think it good enough." (Anna was absorbed in a game
with Isabel, who had hunted out an old backgammonboard,
and had begged to sit up an extra hour.)
  "Certainly, a fine woman never looks better than on
horseback," said Mr Gascoigne. "And Gwendolen has the
figure for it. I don't say the thing should not be considered."
  "We might try it for a time, at all events. It can be given
up, necessary," said Mrs Davilow.
  "Well, I will consult Lord Brackenshaw's head groom. He
is my fidus Achates in the horsey way."
  "Thanks," said Mrs Davilow, much relieved. "You are very
kind."
  "That he always is," said Mrs Gascoigne> And later that
night, when she and her husband were in private, she said -
  "I thought you were almost too indulgent about the horse
for Gwendolen.She ought not to claim so much more than
your own daughter would think of. Especially before we see
how Fanny manages on her income. And you really have
enough to do without taking all this trouble on yourself."
  "My dear Nancy, one must look at things from every
point of view. This girl is really worth some expense: you
don't often see her equal. She ought to make a firstrate
marriage, and I should not be doing my duty if I spared
my trouble in helping her forward. You know yourself she
has been under the disadvantage with such a fatherinlaw,
and a second family, keeping her always in the shade. I feel
for the girl. And I should like your sister and her family
now to have the benefit of your having married rather a
better specimen of our kind than she did."
  "Rather better] I should think so. However, it is for me to
be grateful that you will take so much on your shoulders for
the sake of my sister and her children. I am sure I would not
grudge anything to poor Fanny. But there is one thing I
have been thinking of, though you have never mentioned it."
  "What is that?"
  "The boys. I hope they will not be falling in love with
Gwendalen."
  "Don't presuppose anything of the kind, my dear, and
there will be no danger. Rex will never be at home for long
together, and Warham is going to India. It is  the wiser
plan to take it for granted that cousins will not fall in love.
If you begin with precautions, the affair will come in spite
of them. One must not undertake to act for Providence in
these matters, which can no more be held under the hand
than a brood of chickens. The boys will have nothing, and
Gwendolen will have nothing. They can't marry. At the
worst there would be a little crying, and you can't save
boys and girls from that."
  Mrs Gascoigne's mind was satisfied: if anything did
happen, there was the confort of feeling that her husband
would know what was to be done, and would have the
energy to do it.

*C4
  "Georgibus.-...Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte et
sacree, et que c'est faire en honnetes gens, que de debuter par la.
  "Madelon.-Mon dieu] que si tout le monde vous rassemblait,
un roman sera bientot fini] La belle chose que ce sarait, si
d'abord Cyrus epouseait Mandane, et qu'Aronce de plainpied
fut marie a Clelie]...Laisseznous faire a loisir le tissu de notre
roman, et n'en pressez pas tant la conclusion."
- Moliere: Les Precieuses Ridicules.
It would be a little hard to blame the Rector of Pennicote
that in the course of lookin at things from every point of
view, he looked at Gwendalen as a girl likely to make a
brilliant marriage. Why should he be expected to differ from
his contemporaries in this matter, and wish his niece
a worse end of her charming maidenhood thn they would
approve as the best possible? It is rather to be set down to
his credit that his feelings on the subject were entirely
goodnatured. And in considering the relation of means
to ends, it would have been mere folly to have been guided by
the exceptional and idyllic - to have recommanded that
Gwendolen should wear a gown as shabby as Griselda's in
order that a marquis might fall in love with her, or to have
insisted that since a fair maiden was to be sought, she
should keep herself out of the way. Mr Gascoigne's calculations
were of the kind called rational, and he did not even
think of getting a too frisky horse in order that Gwendolen
might be threatened with an accident and be rescued by a
man of property. He wished his niece well, and he meant
her to be seen to advantage in the best society of the
neighbourhood.
  Her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen's
own wishes. But let no one suppose that she also contemplated
a brilliant marriage as the direct end of her witching
the world with her grace on horseback, or with any other
accomplishment. That she was to be married some time or
other she would have felt obliged to admit; and that her
marriage would not be of a middling kind, such as most
girls were contented with, she felt quietly, unargumentatively
sure. But her thoughts never dwelt on marriage as
 the fulfilment of her ambition; the dramas in which she
imagined herself a heroine were not wroght up to that
close. To be very much sued or hopelessly sighed for as
a bride was indeed and indispensable and agreeable
guarantee od womanly power; but to become a wife and wear all the
domestic fetters of that condition, was on the whole a
vexatious necessity. Her observations of matrimony had inclined
her to think it rather dreary state, in which a woman
could not do what she liked, had more children
than were desirable, was consequently dull, and become
irrevocably immersed in humdrum. Of course marriage was
social promotion; she could not look forward to a single
life; but promotions have sometimes to be taken with bitter
herbs - a peerage will not quite do instead of leadership to
the man who meant to lead;and this delicatelimbed sylph
of twenty meant to lead. For such passions dwell in
feminine breasts also. In Gwendolen's, however, they dwelt
among strictly feminine furniture, and had no disturbing
reference to the advancement of learning or the balance of
the constituin; her knowledge being such as with no
sort of standingroom or length of lever could have
been  pleasant to herself in a striking manner; or rather,
whatever she could do so as to strike others with admiration
and get in that reflected way a more ardent sense of living,
seemed pleasant to her fancy.
  "Gwendolen will not rest without having the world at her
feet", said Miss Merry, the meek governess: - hyperbolical
words which have long come to carry the most moderate
meanings; for who has not heard of private persons having
the world at their feet in the shape of some halfdozen
items of flattering regard generally known in a genteel
suburb? And wods could hardly be too wide or vague
to indicate the prospect that made a hazy largness about
poor Gwendalen on the heights of her young selfexultation.
Other people allowed themselves to be made slaves of,
and to have their lives blown hither and thither like empty
ships in which no will was present: it was not to be so with
her, she would no longer be sacrificed to creatures worth
less than herself. but would make the very best of the
chances that life offered to her, and conquer circumstance by
her exceptional cleverness. Certainly, to be settled at Offendene,
with the notice of Lady Brackenshaw, the archery club, and
invitations to dine with the Arrowpoints, as the
highest lights in her scenery, was not a position that
seemed to offer remarkable charces; but Gwendolen's confidence
lay chiefly in herself. She felt well equipped for the
mastery of life. With regard to much in her hitherto,
she held herself rather hardly dealt with, but as the her
"education" she would have admitted that it had left her
under no disadvantages. In the schoolroom her quick mind
had taken readily that strong starch of unexplained rules
and disconnected facts which saves ignorance from any
painful sense of limpness; and what remained of all things
knowable, she was conscious of being sufficiently
acquanted with through novels, plays, andpoems. About her
French and music, the two justifying accomplishments
of a young lady, she felt no ground for uneasiness; and
when to alll these qualifications, negative and positive, we
add the spontaneous sense of capability some happy
persons are born with, so that any subject they turn attention
to impress them with their own power of forming a
correct judgment on it, who can wonder if Gwendolen felt
ready to manage her own destiny?
  There were many subjects in the worls - perhaps the
majority - in which she felt no interest, because they were
stupid; for subjects are apt to appear stupid to the young as
light seems dim to the old; but she would not have felt
at all helpless in relation to them if they had turned up in
conversation. It must be remembered that no one had
disputed to her power or her general superiority. As on the
arrival at Offendene., so always, the first thought of those
about her had been, what will Gwendolen think? - If the
footman trod heavily in creaking boots or if the laundress's
work was unsatisfactory, the maid said, "This will never do
for Miss Harleth"; if the wood smoked in the bedroom
fireplace, Mrs Davilow, whose own weak eyes suffered much
from this inconvenience, spoke apologetically of it to
Gwendolen. If, when they were under the stress of travelling,
she did not appear at the breakfasttable till every one
else had finished, the only question was, how Gwendolen's
coffee and toast should still be of the hottest and crispest;
and when she appeared with her freshlybrushed lightbrown
hair streaming backward and awaiting her mamma's hand
to coil it up, her long brown eyes glancing bright
as a wavewashed onyx from under their long lashes, it was always
she herself who had to be tolent - to be that Alice who sat
waiting on her would not stick up her shoulders in that
frightful manner, and that Isabel instead of pushing up to
her and asking questions wpuld go away to Miss Merry.
  Always she was the princess in exile, who in time of
famine was to have her breakfastroll made of the finest
bolted flour from the seven thin ears of wheat, and in a
general decampment was to have her silver fork kept out of
the baggage. How was this to be accounted for? The
answer many seem to lie quite on the surface: - in her
 beauty, a certain unusualness about her, a dicision of will
which made itself felt in her graceful movements and clear
unhesitating tones, so that if she came into the room on a
rainy day when everybody else was flaccid and the use of things
in general was not apparent to them, there seemed
to be a sudden, sufficient reason for keeping up the forms
of life; and even the waiters at hotels showed the more
alacrity in doing away with crumbs and creases and dregs
with struggling flies in them. This potent charm, added to
the fact that she was the eldest daughter, towards whom
her mamma had always been in an apologetic state of
mind for the evilss brought on her by a stepfather, may
seem so full a reason for Gwendolen's domestic empire,
that to look for any other would be to ask the reason of
daylight when the sun is shining. But beware of arriving at
conclusions without comparison. I remember having seen
the same asiduous, apologetic attention awarded to persons
who were not at all beautiful or unusual, whose firmness
showed itself in no very graceful or euphonious way,
and who were not eldest daughters with a tender, timid mother,
compunctious at having subjected them to inconveniences.
Some of them were a very common sort of men.
And the only point of resemblance among them all was a
strong determination to have what was pleasant, with a
total fearlessness in making themselves disagreeable or
dangerous when they did not get it. Who is so much
cajoled and served with trembling by the weak females of a
household as the unscrupulous male - capable, if he has
not free way at home, of going and doing worse elsewhere?
Hence I am forced to doubt whether  even without her
potent charm and peculiar filial position Gwendolen ,ight
might not still have played the queen  in exile, if only she had
kept her inborn energy of egoistic desire, and her power of
inspiring fear as to what she might say or do. However, she
had the charm, and those who feared her were also fond
of her; the fear and the fondness being perhaps both
heightened by what may be called the irridescence of her
character - the play of various , nay, contrary tendencies.
For Macbeth's rethoric about the impossibility of being
many opposite things in the same moment, referred to the
clumsy necessities of action and not to the subtler possibilities
of feeling. We cannot speak a loyal word and be meanly
silent, we cannot kill and not kill in the same
moment; but a moment is room wide enough for the loyal
and mean desire, for the outlash of a murderous thought
and the sharp backward stroke of repentance.

*C5
"Her wit
Values itself so highly, that to her
all matter else seems weak."
-Much Ado about Nothing.
Gwendolen's reception in the neighbourhood fulfilled her
uncle's expectations> From Brackenshaw Castle to the Firs
at Wanchester, where Mr Quallon the banker kept a
generous house, she was welcomed with manifest admiration,
and even those ladies who did not quite like her, felt a
comfort in having a new, striking girl to invite; for
hostesses who entertain much must make up their parties
as ministers make up their cabinets, on grounds other than
personal liking. Then, in order to have Gwendolen aas a
guest, it was not necessary to ask any one who was disagreeable
for Mrs Davilow always made a quiet, picturesque
figure as a chaperon, and Mr Gascoigne was everywhere in
request for his own sake.
  Among the houses where Gwendolen was not quite liked,
and yet invited, was Quetcham Hall. One of her first invitations
was to a large dinnerparty there, which made a sort
of general introduction for her to the society of the neighbourhood;
for in a select party  of thirty and of wellcomposed
proportions as to age, few visitable families could
be entirely left out. No youthful figure there was comparable
to Gwendolen's as she passed through the long suite of
adorned with light and flowers,
and, visible at first as a slim figure floating along in white drapery,
approached through one wide doorway after anothe into fuller
illumination and defiteness. She had never had that sort of promenade
before, and she felt exultingly that it befitted her:
any one looking at her for the first time might have
supposed that long galleries and lackeys had always been
a matter of course in her life; while her cousin Anna, who
was really more familiar with these thigs, felt almost as
much embarassed as a rabbit suddenly deposited in that
welllit space.  "Who is that with Gascoigne?" said the archdeacon,
neglecting a discussion of military manoeuvres on which,
as a clergyman, he was naturally appealed to. And his son
on the other side of the room - a hopeful young scholar,
who had already suggested some 'not less elegant than
ingenious" emendations of Greek texts - said nearly at the
same time, "By George] who is that girl with the awfully
wellset head and jolly figure?"
  But to a mind of general benevolence, wishing everybody
to look well, it was rather exasperating to see how Gwendolen
Eclipsed others: how even the handsome Miss Lawe,
explained to be the daughter of Lady Lawe, looked suddenly
broad, heavy, and inanimate; and how Miss Arrowpoint,
unfortunately also dressed in white, immediately resembled
a cartedevisite in which one would
fancy the skirt alone to have been charged for. Since
Miss Arrowpoint, was generally liked for the amiable unpretending
way in which she wore her fortunes, and made a softening
screen for the oddities of her mother, there seemed to be
some unfitness in Gwendolen's looking so much more like a
person of social importance.
  "She is not really so handsome, if you come to examine
her features," said Mrs Arrowpoint, later in the evening,
confidentially to Mrs Vulcany. "It is a certain
style she has, which produces a great effect at first, but
afferwards she is less agreeable."
  In fact, Gwendolen, not intending it, but intending the
contrary, had offended her hostess who, though not a
splenetic or vendictive woman, had her susceptibilities.
Several conditions had met in the Lady of Quetcham
which to the reasoners in that neighbourhood seemed to
have an essential connection with each other. It was occasionally
recalled that she had been the heiress of a fortune
gained by some moist or dry business in the city, in order
fully to account for her having a squat figure, a harsh
parrotlike voice, and a systematically high headdress; and
since these points made her externally rather ridiculous, it
appeared to many only natural that she should have what
are called literary tendencies> A little comparison would
have shown that all these points are to be found apart;
daughters of aldermen being often wellgrown and wellfeatured,
pretty women having sometimes harsh or husky voices,
and the production of feeble literature being found
compatible with the most diverse forms of physique,
masculine as well as feminine.
  Gwendolen, who had keen sense of absurdity in others,
but was kindly disposed towards anyone who could make
life agreeable to her, meant to win Mrs Arrowpoint by
giving her an interest and attention beyond what others
were probably inclined to show. But selfconfidence in apt
to address itself to an imaginary dulness in others; as
people who are well off speak in a cajoling tone to the poor,
and those who are in the prime of life raise their voice and
talk artificially to seniors, hastily conceiving them to be
deaf and rather imbecile. Gwendolen, with all her cleverness
and purpose to be agreeable, could not escape that
form of stupidity: it followed in her mind, unreflectingly,
that because Mrs Arrowpoint was ridiculous she was also
likely to be wanting in penetration, and she went through
her little scenes withput suspicion that the various
shades of her behaviour were all noted.
  "You are fond of books as well as of music, riding, and
archery, I hear," Mrs Arrowpoint said, going to her for a
˛my˛tete a tete in the drawingroom after dinner: "Catherine
will be very glad to have so sympathetic a neighbour." This
little speech might have seemed the most graceful politeness,
spoken in a low melodious tone; but with a twang
fatally loud, it gave Gwendolen a sense of exercising patronage
when she answered gracefully -
  "It is I who am fortunate. Miss Arrowpoint will teach me
what good music is: I shall be entirely a learner. I hear
that she is a throrough musician."
  " Catherine has certainly had every advantage. We have a
firstrate musician in the house now-Herr Klesmer;  perhaps
you know all his compositions. You must allow me to
introduce him to you. You sing, I believe. Catherine plays
three instruments, but she does not sing. I hope you will let
us hear you. I understand you are an accomplished singer."
  "Oh no] - "die Kraft ist schwach, allein die Lust ist
gross," as Mephistopheles says."
  "Ah, you are a student of Goethe. Young ladies are so
advanced now. I suppose you have read everything."
  No, really. I shall be so glad if you will tell me
what to read. I have been looking into all the books in the
library art Offendene, but there is nothing readable. The
leaves all stick together and smell musty. I wish I could
write books to amuse myself, as you can] How delightful it must
be to write books after one's own taste instead of reading other
people's] Homemade books must be so nice."
  For an instant Mrs Arrowpoint's glance was a little
sharper, but the perilous resemblance to satire in the last
sentence took the hue of girlish simplicity when Gwendolen
added-
  "I would give anything to write a book]"
  "And why should you not?" said Mrs Arrowpoint,encouragingly.
"You have but to begin as I did. Pen, ink, and paper are at
everybody's command. But I will send you all I have written
with pleasure."
  "Thanks. I shall be so glad to read your writings. Being
acquainted with authors must give a peculiar understanding
of their books: one would be able to tell then which parts
were funny and which serious. I am sure I often laugh
in the wrong place." Here Gwendolen herself bacame
aware of danger, and added quickly, "In Shakaspeare, you
know, and other great writers that we can never see. But I
always want to know more than there is in the books."
  "If you are interested in any of my subjects I can lend
you many extra sheets in manuscript," said Mrs Arrowpoint
- while Gwendolen felt herself painfully in the position of
the young lady who professed to like potted sprats. "These
friends have urged me to do so, and one doesn't like to be
obstinate. My Tasso, for example - I could have made it
twice the size."
  "I dote on Tasso," said Gwendolen.
  "Well, you shall have all my papers, if you like. So many, you
know, have written about Tasso; but they are all wrong.
As to the particular nature of his madness, and his feelings
for Leonora, and the real cause of his imprisonment, and
the character of Leonora, who, in my opinion, was a coldhearted
woman, else she would have married him in spite of
her brother - they are all wrong. I differ from everybody."
  "How very interesting]" said Gwendolen. "I like
to differ from everibody; I think it is so stupid to agree. That is
the worst of writing your opinions; you make people agree with
you."
  This speech renewed a slight suspicion in Mrs Arrowpoint,
and again her glance became for a moment examining.
But Gwendolen looked very innocent, and continued
with a docile air.
  "I know nothing of Tasso except the ˛my˛Gerusalemme ˛my˛
Liberata˛my˛, ˛my˛ which we read and learned by heart at school."
  "Ah, his life is more interesting than his poetry. I have
constructed the early part of his life as a sort of romance.
When one thinks of his father Bernardo, and so on, there is
so much that must be true."
  "imagination is often truer than fact," said Gwendolen,
decisively, though she could no more have explained these
glib words than if they had been Coptic or Etruscan. "Ishall
be so glad to learn about Tasso-and his madness especially.
I suppose poets are always a little mad."
  "To be sure-"the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling;"
and somebody says of Marlowe-
"For that fine madness still he did maintain,
Which always should possess the poet's brain."
  "But it was not always found out, was it?" said Gwendolen,
innocently. "I suppose some of them rolled their eyes in
private. Mad people are often very cunning."
  Again a shade fitted over Mrs Arrowpoint's face; but
the entrance of the gentlemen prevented any immediate
mischied between her and this too quick young lady, who
had overacted he ˛my˛naivete˛my˛.
  "Ah, here comes Herr Klesmer," said Mrs Arrowpoint,
rising; and presently bringing him to Gwendolen, sheleft
them to a dialogue which was agreeable on both side,
Herr Klesmer being a felicitous combination of
the German, Sclave, and the Semite, with grand features,
brown hair floating in artistic fashion, and brown eyes in
spectacles. His English had little foreignness except its
fluency; and his alarming cleverness was made less
formidable just then by a certain softening air of silliness
which still sometimes befall even Genius in the desire of
being agreeable to Beauty.
  Music was soon begun. Miss Arrowpoint and Herr Klesmer
played a fourhanded piece on two pianos which convinced the
company in general that it was long, and Gwendolen
in particular that the neutral, placidfaced Miss Arrowpoint
had a mastery of the instrument which put her own
execution out of the question - though she was not
discouraged as to her oftenpraised
touch and style. After this every one became anxious to
hear Gwendolen sing; especially Mrs Arrowpoint; as was
natural in the host and a perfect gentleman, of whom no
one had anything to say but that he had married Miss Cuttler,
and imported the best cigars; and he led her to the piano with
easy politeness. Herr Klesmer closed the instrument in readiness
for her, and smiled with pleasure at her approach; then
placed himself at the distance of a few feet so that he could
see her as she sang.
  Gwendolen was not nervous: what she undertook to do
she did without trembling, and singing was an enjoyment
to her. Her voice was a moderately powerful soprano
(someone had told her it was like Jenny Lind's), her ear
good, and she was able to keep in tune, so that her singing
gave pleasure to ordinary hearers, and she had been used to
unmingled applaused. She had the rare advantage of looking
almost prettier when she was singing than at other times, and
that Herr Klesmer was in front of her seemed not disagreeable.
Her song, determined on beforehand, was a favourite
aria of Bellini's in which she falt quite sure of herself.
  "Charming]" said Mr Arrowpoint, who had remained
near, and the word was echoed around without more insincerity
than we recognise in a brotherly way as human. But Herr
Klesmer stood like a statue - if a statue can be
imagined in spectacles; at least, he was as mute as a statue.
Gwendolen was pressed to keep her seat and double the
general pleasure, and she did not wish to refuse; but before
resolving to do so, she moved a little towards Herr Klesmer,
saying, with a look of smiling appeal, "It would be too
cruel to a great musician. You cannot like to hear poor
amateur singing."
  "No, truly; but that makes nothing,"said Herr Klesmer,
suddenly speaking in an odious German fashhion with staccato
endings, quite unobservable in him before, and apparently
depending on a change of mood, as Irishmen resume
their strongest brogue when they are fervid quarrelsome.
"That makes nothing. It is always acceptable to see you sing."
  Was there ever so unexpected an assertion of superiority? At least
before the late Teutonic conquests? Gwendolen coloured deeply,
but, with her usual presence of mind, did not show an
ungraceful resentment by moving away immediately; and
Miss Arrowpoint, who had been near enough to overhear (and also
to observe that Herr Klesmer's mode of looking at Gwendolen
was more conspicuously admiring than quite consisten
with good taste), now with the utmost tact and kindness came
close to her and said-
  "Imagine what I have to go through with this professor]
He can hardly tolerate anything we English do in music.
We can only put up with his severity, and make use of it to find
out the worst that can be said of us. It is a little
comfort to know that; and one can bear it when everyone
else is admiring."
  "I should be very much obliged to him for telling me the
worst," said Gwendolen, recovering herself. "I daresay I have
been extremely ill taught, in addition to having no talent-
only liking for music.' This was very well expressed
considering that it had never entered her mind before.
  "Yes, it is true; you have not been well taught," said Herr
Klesmer, quietly. Woman was dear to him, but music was
dearer. "Still, you are not quite without gifts. You sing
in tune, and you have a pretty fair organ. But you produce
your notes badly; and that music which you sing is beneath
you. It is a form of melody which expresses a puerile state
of culture - a dangling, canting, seesaw kind of stuff - the
passion  and thought of people without any  breadth
of horizon. There is a sort of selfsatisfied folly about
every phrase of such melody: no cries of deep, mysterious
passion - no conflict - no sense of the universal. It makes
men small as they listen to it. Sing now something larger.
And I shall see."
  "Oh, not now - byandby,' said Gwendolen, with a sinking of
heart at the sudden width of horizon opened round her
small musical performance. For a young lady desiring
to lead, this first encounter in her campaign was
startling. But she was bent on not behaving foolishly, and Miss
Arrowpoint helped her by saying-
  "Yes, byandby. I always require half an hour to get up
my courage after being criticised by Herr Klesmer. We will
ask him to play to us now: he is bound to show us what
is good music.'
  To be quite safe on this point Herr Klesmer played a
composition of his own, a fantasia called ˛my˛Greudvoll˛my˛,˛my˛
˛my˛Leidvoll˛my˛,˛my˛ Gedankenvoll˛my˛ - an extensive commentary on
some melodic ideas not too grossly evident; and he certainly
fetched as much variety and depth of passion out of the
piano as that moderately responsive instrument lends itself
to, having an imperious magic in his fingers that seemed
to send a nervethrill through ivory key and wooden hammer,
and compel the strings to make a quivering lingering speech
for him. Gwendolen, in spite of her wounded egoism, had
fulness of nature enough to feel the power of this playing,
and it gradually turned her inward sob of mortification
into an excitement which lifted her for the moment into a
desperate indifference about her own doings, or at least
a determination to get a superiority over them by
laughing at them as if they belonged to somebody alse.
Her eyes had become brighter, her cheeks slightly flushed,
and her tongue ready for any mischievious remarks.
  "I wish you would sing us again,
Harleth,' said young Clintock, the archdeacon's classical son, who
had been so fortunate as to take her to dinner, and came up
to renew conversation as soon as Herr Klesmer's performance
was ended. "That is the style  of music for me. I never can
meke anything of this tiptop playing. It is like a jar
of leeches,  where you can never tell either beginnings or
endings. I could listen to your singing all day."
  "Yes, we should be glad of something popular now -
another song from you would be a relaxation,' said Mrs
Arrowpoint, who had also come near with polite intentions.
  "That must be because you are in a puerile state of
culture, and have no breadth of horizon. I have just learned
that. I have been taught how bad my taste is, and am
feeling growing pains. They are never pleasant,' said
Gwendolen, not taking any notice of Mrs Arrowpoint, and
looking up with a bright smile at young Clintock.
  Mrs Arrowpoint was not insensible to this rudness, but
merely said, "Well, we will not press anything disagreeably:"
and as there was a perceptible outrush of imprisoned
conversation just then, and a movement of guests seeking
each other, she remained seated where she was, and looked round
her with the relief of the hostess at finding she is not
needed.
  "I am glad you like this neighbourhood," said young
Clintock, well pleased with his station in front of
Gwendolen.
  "Exceedingly. There seems to be a little of everything and
not much of anything."
  "That is rather equivocal praise."
  "Not with me. I like a little of everything; a little
absurdity, for example, is very amusing. I am thankful for
a few quee people; but much of them is a bore."
  (Mrs Arrowpoint, who was hearing this dialogue, perceived
quite a new tone in Gwendolen's speech, and felt a
revival of doubt as to her interest in Tasso's madness.)
  "I think there should be more croquet, for one thing,"
said young Clintock; "I am usually away, but if I were more
here I should go in for a croquet club. You are one of the
archers, I think. But depend upon it croquet is the game of
the future. It wants wrinting up, though. One of our best men
has written a poem on it, in four cantos; - as good as Pope.
I want him to publish it. You never read anything better."
  "I shall study croquet tomorrow. I shall take to it instead
of singing."
  "No, no, not that; but do take to croquet. I will send you
Jenning's poem, if you like. I have a manuscript copy."
  "Is he a great friend of yours?"
  "Well, rather."
  "Oh, if he only rather, I think I will decline. Or, if you
send it me, will you promise not to catechise me upon it and
ask me which part I like the best? Because it is not so easy
to know a poem without reading it as to know a sermon
without listening."
  "decidedly," Mrs Arrowpoint thought, "this girl is double
and satirical. I shall be on my guard against her."
  But Gwendolen, nevertheless,, continued to receive polite
attention from the family at Quetcham, not merely because
invitations have larger grounds than those of personal
liking, but because the trying little scene at the piano
had awakened a kindly solecitude towards her in the gentle
mind of Miss Arrowpoint, who managed all the invitations and
visits, her mother being otherwise occupied.

*C6
"Croyez vous m'avoir humiliee pour m'avoir appris que la terre
tourne autour du soleil? Je vous jure que je m'en estime pas
moins." - Fontenelle: ˛my˛Pluralite ˛my˛des˛my˛mondes.˛my˛

That lofty criticism had caused Gwendolen a new sort of pain.
She would not have chosen to confess how unfortunate
she thought herself in not having had Miss Arrowpoint's
musical advantages, so as to be able to question
Herr Klesmer's taste with the confidence of through knowledge;
still less, to admit even to herself that Miss Arrowpoint
each time they met raised an unwonted feeling of
jalousy in her: not in the least because she was an heiress,
not because it was really provoking that a girl whose appearence
you could not characterise except by saying that her figure was
slight and of middle stature, her features small, her
eyes tolerable and her complexion sallow, had nevertheless
a certain mental superiority which could not be explained
away - an exasperating thoroughness in her musical accomplishment,
a fastidious discrimination in her general tastes, which
made it impossible to force her admiration and kept you
in awe of her standard. This insignificantlooking young
lady of fourandtwenty, whom any one's eyes would have
passed over negligently if she had not been Miss Arrowpoint,
might be suspected of a secret opinion that Miss Harleth's
acquirements were rather of a common order; and such an
opinion was not made agreeable to think of by being always
veiled under a perfect kindness of manner.
  But Gwendolen did not like to dwell on facts which
threw an unfavourable light on herself. The musical Magus
who had so suddenly widened her horizon was not
always on the scene; and his being constantly backwards
and forwards between London and Quetcham soon
began to be thought of as offering opportunities for
converting him to a more admiring state of mind. Meanwhile,
in the manifest pleasure her singing gave at Brackenshaw
Castle, the Firs, and elsewhere, she recovered her equanimity,
being disposed to think approval more trustworthy than
objection, and not being one of the exceptional persons
who have a parching thirst for a perfection undemanded by
their neighbours. Perhaps it would have been rash
ro say then that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or that the
unusual in her was more than her rare grace of movement
and bearing, and a certain daring which gave piquancy to a
very common egoistic ambition, such as exists under many
clumsy exteriors and is taken no notice
of. For I suppose that the set of the head does not really
determine the hunger of the inner self for supremacy: it
only make a difference sometimes as to the way in which
the supremacy is held attainable, and a little also to the
degree in which it can be attained; especially when the
hungry one is a girl, whose passion for doing what is
remarkable has an ideal limit in consistency with the
highest breeding and perfect freedom from the sordid need
of income. Gwendolen was as inwardly rebellious agaist
the restraints of family conditions, and as ready to look
through obligations into her own fundamental want of
feeling for them, as if she had been sustained by the
boldest speculations; but she really had no such
speculations, and would at one have marked herself off from
any sort of theoretical or pratically reforming women by
satirising them. She rejoiced to feel herself exceptional;
but her horizon was that of the  genteel
romance where the heroine's soul poured out in her journal is
full of vague power, originality, and general rebellion, while her
life moves strictly in the sphere of fashion; and if
she wanders into a swamp, the pathos  partly,
so to speak, in her having on her satin shoes. Here is the
restraint which nature and society have provided on the pursuit
of striking adventure; so that a soul burning with a sense of
what the universe is not, and ready to take all existence
as fuel, is nevertheless held captive by the ordinary wirework
of social forms and does nothing particular.
  This commonplace result was what Gwensolen found herself
threatened with even in the novelty of the first winter
at Offendene. What she was clear upon was, that she did not
wish to lead the same sort of life as ordinary young ladies
did; but what she was not clear upon was, how she should
set about  leading any other, and what were the particular
acts which she would assert her freedom by doing. Offendene
remained a good background, if anything would happen
there; but on the whole the neighbourhood was in fault.
  Beyond the effect of her beauty on a first presentation,
there was not much excitement to be got out of her earliest
invitations, and she  home after little sallies of
satire and knowingness, such as had offended Mrs Arrowpoint, to
to  fill the intervening days with the most
girlish devices. The strongest assertion she was able to make of her
individual claim was to leave out Alice's lessons (on the
principle that Alice was more likely to excel in ignorance),
and to emply her with Miss Merry, and the maid who was
understood to wait on all the ladies, in helping to arrange
various dramatic costumes which Gwendolen pleased herself with
having in readiness for some future occasions of acting
in charades or theatrical pices, occasions which she meant
to bring about by force or will or contrivance.She had never acted - only made a figure in ˛my˛
]]] tableaux˛my˛
˛my˛vivans˛my˛ at school; but she felt assured that
she could act well, and having been once or twice to the
Theatre Francais, and also heard her mamma speak of Rachel,
her waking dreams and cogitations as to how she would manage
her destiny sometimes turned on the question whether she should
become an actress like Rachel, since she was more
beautiful than that thin Jewess. Meanwhile the wet days before
Christmas were passed pleasantly in the preparation of
costumes, Greek, Oriental, and Composite, in which Gwendolen
attitudinised and speechified before a domestic audience,
including even the housekeeper, who was once
pressed into it that she might swell the notes of applause; but
having shown herself unworthy by observing that Miss Harleth
looked far more like a queen in her own dress than in that
baggy thing with her arms all bare, she was not invited a
second time.
  "Do I look as well as Rachel, mamma?" said Gwendolen,
one day when she had been showing herself in her Greek
dress to Anna, and going through scraps of scenes with much
tragic intention.
  "You have better arms than Rachel," said Mrs Davilow;
"Your arms would do for anything, Gwen. But your voice
is not so tragic as hers: it is not so deep."
  "I can make it deeper, if I like," said Gwendolen, provisionally;
then she added, with decision, "Ithink a higher voice is
more tragic: it is more feminine; and the more feminine a
woman is, the more tragic it seems when she does desperate
actions."
  "There may be something in that," said Mrs Davilow,
languidly. "But i don't know what good there is in making
one's blood creep. And if there is anything horrible to be
done, I should like it to be felt to the men."
  "Oh mamma, you are so dreadfully prosaic] As if all the
great poetic criminals were not women] I think the men
are poor cautions creatures."
  "Well, dear, and you - who are afraid to be alone in the
night - I don't think you would be very bold in crime, thak God."
  "I am not talking about reality, mamma, said
Gwendolen, impatiently. Then, her mamma being called out of the room, she turned quickly to her
]]] cousin, as if taking an opportunity
and said, "Anna, do ask my uncle to let us get up some
charades at the Rectory. Mr Middleton and Warham could
act with us - just for practice. Mamma
says it will not do to have Mr Middleton consulting and
rehearsing here. He is a stick, but we could give him
suitable parts. Do ask; or else I will."
  "Oh, not till Rex comes . He is so clever, and such a
dear old thing,  and he will act  Napoleon looking over
the sea. He looks just like Napoleon. Rex can do anything."
  "I don't in the least believe in your Rex, Anna,"
said Gwendolen , laughing at her. "He will turn out to be like
those wretched blue and yellow watercolours of his which
you hung up in your bedroom and worship."
  "Very well, you will see," said Anna> "It is not that I know
what is clever, but he has got a scholarship already, and
papa says he will get a fellowship, and nobody is better at
games. He is cleverer than Mr Middleton, and everybody
but you call Mr Middleton clever."
  "So he may be in a darklantern sort of way. But he is a
stick. Ifhe had to say, "Perdition catch my soul, but I do
love her," he would say it just the same tone as, "Here
endeth the second lesson."

  "Oh, Gwendolen] said Anna, shocked at these promiscuous
allusions. "And it is very unkind of you to speak so of him,
for he sdmires you very much. I heard Warham say one day
to mamma, "Middleton is regularly spoony upon Gwendolen.
She was very angry with him; but I know what it means.
It is what they say at college for being in love."
  "How can I help it? " said Gwendolen, rather contemptuously.
"Perdition catch my soul if iI love him."
   "No, of couse; papa, I think, would not wish it. And he is
to go away soon. But it makes me sorry when you ridicule
him."
  "What shall you do to me when I ridicule Rex?" said
Gwendolen, wickedly.
  Now, Gwendole, dear, you ˛my˛will˛my˛ ˛my˛not˛my˛ ˛my˛?˛my˛"
said Anna, her eyes filling with tears. "I could not bear it. But
there really is nothing in him to ridicule. Only you may find out
things. For no one ever thought of laughing at Mr Middleton
before you. Everyone said he was nicelooking, and his
manners perfect. I am sure I have always been frightened
at him because of his learning and his squarecut coat,
and his being a nephew of the bishop's and all that. But you
will not redicule Rex - promise me." Anna ended with a
beseeching look which touched Gwendolen.
  "You are a dear little coz," she said, just touching
the tip of Anna's chin with her thumb and forefinger. "I don't ever
want to do anything that will vex you. Especially if Rex is
to make eveything come off - charades and everything."
  And when at last Rex was there, the admiration he brought
into the life at Offendene and the Rectory, and his ready
partnership in Gwendolen's plans left her no inclination
for any ridicule that was not of an open and flattering
kind, such as he himself enjoyed. He was a fine epenhearted
youth, with a handsome face strongly resembling his
father's ans Anna's, but softer in expression than the
one, and larger in scale than the other: a bright, healthy,
*P87
loving nature, enjoying ordinary, innocent things
so much that vice had no temptation for him, and what he knew
of it lay too entirely in the outer courts and littlevisited
chambers of his mind for him to think of it with great
repulsion. Vicious habits were with him "what some fellows
did" - "stupid staff" which he liked to keep aloof from.
He returned Anna's affection as fully as could be expected
of a brother whose pleasures apart from her were more than the
sum total of hers; and he had never known a stronger love.
  The cousins were continually together at the one house
or the other - chiefly at Offendene, where there was more
freedom, or rather where there was a more complete sway
for Gwendolen; and whatever she wished became a ruling
purpose for Rex. The charades came off accordingly to her
plans; and also some other little scenes not contemplated
by her in which her acting was more impromptu. It was at
Offendene that the charades and ˛my˛tableaux˛my˛ were
rehearsed and presented, Mrs Davilow seeing no objection
even to Mr Middleton's being invited to share in them,
now that Rex too was there - especially as his services were
indispensable; Warham, who was studying for India with a
Wancester "coach", having no time to spare, and being
generally dismal under a cram of everything except
the answers neded at the forthcoming examination, which
might disclose the welfare of our Indian Empire to be
somehow connected with a quotable knowledge of Browne's
Pastorals.
Mr Middleton was persuaded to play various grave parts,
Gwendolen having flattered him on his enviable immobility
of countenance; and, at first, a little pained and jalous
at her comradeship with Rex, he presently drew
encouragement from the thought that this sort of cousinly
familiarity excluded any serious passion. Indeed, he
occasionally felt that her more formal treatment of himself
was such a sign of favour as to warrant his making
advances before he left Pennicote, though he had intended
to keep his feelings in reserve until his position
should be more assured. Miss Gwendolen, quite aware
that she was adored by this unexceptionable younf clergyman
with pale whiskers and squarecut collar, felt nothing
with pale whiskers and squarecut collar, felt nothingmore on the
*P88
subject than that she had no objection to be adored: she
turned her eyes on him with calm mercilessness and caused
him many mildly agitating hopes by seeming always to
avoid dramatic contact with him - for all meanings, we
know, depend on the key of interpreatation.
  Some persons might have thought beforehand that a
young man of Anglican learnings, having a sense of sacredness
much exercised on small things as well as great, rarely
laughing save from politeness, and in general regarding the
mention of spades by their naked names as rather coarse,
would not have seen a fitting bride for himself in a girl
who was daring in ridicule, and showed none of the special
grace required in the clergyman's wife; or, that a young
man informed by theological reading would have reflected
that he was not likely to meet the taste of a lively, restless
young lady like Miss Harleth. But are we always obliged to
explain why the facts are not what some persons thought
beforehand? The apology lies on their side, who had that
erroneous way of thinking.
  As for Rex, who would possibly have been sorry for the poor
Middleton if he had been aware of the excellent curate's
inward conflict,he was too completely absorbed in a
first passion to have observation for any person or thing. He did
not observe Gwendolen; he only felt what she said or did,
and the back of his head seemed to be a good organ of
information as to whether she was in the room or out.
Before the end of the first fortnight he was so deeply in
love that it was impossible for him to think of his life
except as bound up with Gwendolen's. He could see no
obstacle, poor boy; his own love seemed a guarantee of
hers, since it was one with the unperturbed delight in her
image, so that he could no more dream of her giving him
pain than an Egyptian could dream of snow. She sang and
played to him whenever he liked, was always glad of his
companionship in riding, though his borrowed steeds were
often comic, was ready to join in any fun of his, and
showed a right appreciation of Anna. No mark of
sympathy seemed absent. That because Gwendolen was the
most perfect creature in the world she was to make a grand
*P89
match, had not occured to him. He had no conceit - at
least, not more than goes to make up the necessary gum
and consistence of a substantial personality: it was only
that in the young bliss of loving he took Gwendolen's perfection
as part of that good which had seemed one with life to
him, being the outcome of a happy, wellembodied nature.
  One incident which happened in the course of their
dramatic attempts impressed Rex as a sign of her unusual
sensibility. It showed an aspect of her nature which could
not have been preconceived by any one who, like him, had
only seen her habitual fearlessness in active exercises and
her high spirits in society.
  After a good deal of rehearsing it was resolved
that a select party should be invited to Offendene to witness the
performance which went with so much satisfaction to the actors.
Anna had caused a pleasant surprise; nothing could
be neater than the way in which she played her little parts;
one would even have suspected her of hiding much sly
observation under her simplicity. And Mr Middleton
answered very well by not trying to be comic. The main
source of doubt and retardation had been Gwendolen's
desire to appear in her Greek dress. No word for a charade
would occur to her either waking or dreaming that suited
her purpose of getting a statuesque pose in this favourite
costume. To choose a motive from Racine was of no use,
since Rex and the others could not declaim French verse,
and improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque.
Beside, Mr Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes
protested against the notion that an amusement which
was fitting for every one else was unfitting
for a clergyman; but he would not in this matter overstep
the line of decorum as drawn in theat part of Wessex, which
did not excluded his sanction of the young people's acting
charades in his sisterin law's house - a very different affair
from private theatricals in the full sense of the word.
  Everybody of course was concerned to satisfy this wish of
Gwendolen's, and Rex proposed that they should wind up
with a tableau in which the effect of her majesty would not
be marred by anyone's speech. This pleased he
*X90
thoroughly, and the only question was the choice of the
tableau.
  "Something pleasant children, I beseech you," said
Mrs. Danilow; "I can't have any Greek wickedness."
  "It is no sorse than Christian wickedness, mamma," said
Gwendolen, whose mention of Rachelesque heroines had
called forth that remark.
  "And less scandalous," said Rex. "Besides, one thinks of it
as all gone by and done with. What do you say to Briseis
being led away? I would be Achilles, and you qould be looking
arond at me - after the print we have at the Rectory."
  "That would be a good attitude for me, " said Gwendolen,
in a tone of acceptance. But afterwards she said with
decision "No. It will not do. There must be three men in
properc costume, else it will be ridiculous."
  "Ihave it] said Rex, after a little reflection. "Hermione as
the statue in the Winter'S Tale] I will be Leontes, and Miss
Merry Paulina, one on each side. Our dress won't signify,"
he went on laghingly; "It will be more Shakespearian and
romantic if Leontes lookes like Napoleon, and Paulina like a
modern spinster.
  And Hermione was chosen; all agreeing that age was of
no consequence; but Gwendolen urged that instead of the
mere tableau there should be just enough acting of the
scene to introduce the striking up of the music as a signal
for her to step down and advance; when Leontes, instead of
embracing her, was to kneel and kiss the hem of her
garment, and so the curtain was to fall>. The antechamber
with foldingdoors lent iself admirably to the purposes
of a stage, and the whole of the establishment, with
the addition of Jarret the village carpenter, was absorbed in the
preparations for an entertainment which, considering that
it was an imitation of acting, was likely to be successful,
since we know from ancient fable that an imitation may
have more chance of success than the original.
  Gwendolen was not without a special exultation in the
prospect of this occasion , for she knew that Herr Klesmer
was again at Quetcham, and she had taken care to include
him among the invited.
*X91
  Klesmer came. He was in one of his placid silent moods, and
sat in serene contemplation, replying to all appeals in
benignantsounding syllables more or less articulate - as
taking up his cross meekly in a world overgrown with
amateurs, or as careful how he moved his lion paws lest he
should crush a rampant and vociferous mouse.
  Everything indeed went off smoothly and according to
expectation - all that was improvised and accidental being
of a probable sort - until the incident occured which
showed Gwendolen in an unforeseen phase of emotion.
How it came about  was at first a mistery.
  The tableau of Hermione was doubly striking from its
dissimilarity with what had gone before: it was answering
perfectly, and a murmur of applause had been gradually
suppresed when Leontes gave his permission that Paulina
should exercise her outmost art and make the statue move.
  Hermione, her arm resting on a pillar, was elevated by
about six inches, which she counted on as a means of
showing her pretty foot and instep, when at the given
signal she should advance and descend.
  "Music, awake her, strike]" said Paulina (Mrs Davilow, who by special entreaty had consented to
]]] take the part in a
white burnous and hood9.
  Herr Klesmer, who had been good natured enough to
seat himself at the piano, struk a thunderous chord - but
in the same instant, and before hermione had put forth her
foot, the movable panel, which was on a line with the
piano, flew open on the right opposite the stage and
disclosed the picture of the dead face and the fleeing figure,
brought out in pale definetess by the position of thevaxlights.
Evryone was startled, but all eyes in the act of
turning towards the opened panel were recalled by a piercing
cry from Gwendolen, who stood without change of
attitude, but with a change of expression that was terrifying
in its terror. She looked like a statue into which a soul
of Fear has entered: her pallid lips were parted: her eyes,
usually narrowed under their long lashed, were dilated and
fixed. Her mother, less surprised than alarmed, rushed
towards her, and Rex too could not help going to her side.
*X92
But the touch of her mother's arm had the effect of an
electric charge; Gwendolen felle on her knees and put her
hands before her face. She was still trembling, but mute, and
it seemed that she had selconsciousness enough to aim at
controlling her signs of terror, for she presently allowed
herself to be raised from her kneeling posture and led away,
while the company were relieving their minds by explanation.
  "A magnificient bitof ˛my˛plastik˛my˛ that ]" said Herr Klesmer to
Miss Arrowpoint. And a quick fire of undertone question and
answer went round.
  "Was it part of the play?"
  "Oh no, surely not. Miss Harleth was too much affected
A sensitive creature]"
  "Dear me] I was not aware that there was a painting
behind that panel; were you?"
  "No; how should I Some eccentricity in one of the Earl's
family long ago, I suppose."
  "How very painful] Pray shut it up."
  "Was the dorr locked? It is very mysterious. It must be
the spirits."
  "But there is no medium present."
  "How do you know that? We must conclude that there is,
when such things happen."
  "Oh, the door was not locked; it was probably the sudden
vibration from the piano that sent it open."
 This conclusion came from Mr Gascoigne, who begged
Miss Ferry if possible to get the key> But this readiness
to explain the mystery was thought by Mrs Vulcany unbecoming
in a clergyman, and she observed in an undertone
that Mr Gascoigne was always a little too wordly for
her taste. However, the key was produced, and the rector
turned it in the lock with an emphasis rather offensively
rationalising - as who should say, "It will not start open
again" - putting the key in his pocket as a security.
  Hoever Gwendolen soon reappeared , showong her usual
spirits, and evidently determined to ignore as far as she could
the striking change she had made in the part of Hermione.
  But when Klesmer said to her "We have to thak you for
devising a perfect climax: you coul not have chosen a
*X93
finer bit of ˛my˛plastik˛my˛," there was a flush of pleasure in her face.She liked to accept as a
]]] belief what was really no more than
delicate feigning. He devined that the betrial into  a
passion of fear had been mortifying to her, and wished her
to understand that he took it for good acting. Gwendolen
cherished the idea that now he was struck with her talent
as well as her beauty, and her uneasiness about his opinion
was half turned to complacency.
  But too many were in the secret of what had been included
in the rehearsals, and what had not, and no one
besides Klesmer took the trouble to soothe Gwendole's
imagined mortification. The general sentiment was that the
incident should let drop.
  There had really been a medium concerning in the starting
open of the panel: one who had quitted the room in
haste and crept to bed in much alarm of conscience. It was
the small isabel, whose intense curiosity, unsatisfied by the
brief glimse she had had of the strange picture on the day
of arrival at Offendene, had kept her on the watch for an
opportunity of finding out where Gwendolen had put the
key, of stealing it from the discovered drawer when the rest
of the family were out, and getting on a stool to unlock the
panel. While she was indulging, her thirst for knowledge in
this way, a noise whch she feared was an approaching
footstep alarmed her; she closed the door and attempted
hurriedly to lock it, but failing and not daring to linger,
she withdrew the key and trusted that the panel would stick,
as it seemed well inclined to do. In this confidence she had
returned thekey to its former place, stilling any anxiety by
the thought that if the door were discovered to be unlocked
nobody could know how unlocking came about.The
inconvenient Isabel, like other offenders, did not foresee her
own impulse to confession, a fatality which came upon her
the morning after the party, when Gwendolen said at the
breakfasttable, "I know the door was locked before the
housekeeper gave me the key, for I tried it myself aferwards.
Someone must have been to my drawer and taken the key."
  It seemed to Isabel that Gwendolen's awful eyes had
rested on her more than on the other sisters, and without
*X94
any time for resolve she said with a trembling lip, "Please
forgive me, Gwendolen."
  The forgiveness was soon bestowed than it would have
been if Gwendolen had not desired to dismiss from her own
and every one else's memory any case in which she had
shown her susceptibility to terror. She wondered at herself
in these occasional experiences, which seemed like a brief
rememered madness, an unexplained exception from her
normal life; and in this instance she felt a peculiar
vexationthat her helpless fear had shown itself, not, as usual, in
solitude, but in welllit company. Her ideal was to be
daring in speech and reckless in braving danger, both
moral and physical; and though her practice fell far behind
her ideal, this shortcoming seemed to be due to the pettiness
of circumstances, the narrow theatre which life offers to a
girl of twenty, who cannot conceive herself as anything else
than a lady, or as in any position which would lack the
tribute of respect. She had no permanent consciuOusness of
other fetters or of more spiritual restraints, having
always diliked whatever was presented to her under the name of
religion, in the same way that some people dislike
arithmetic and accounts: it had raised no other emotion in
her, no alarming, no longing; so that the question whether she
believed it had not occured to her, any more than it had
occured  to her to inquire into the conditions of
colonial property and banking, on which, as she had had many
opportunities of knowing, the family fortune was
dependent. All these facts about herself she would have been
ready to admit, and even, more or less indirectly, to state.
What she unwillingly recognised, and would have been
glad for others to be unaware of, was that liability of hers to
fits of spiritual dread, though this fountain of awe within
her had not found its way into connection with the
religion  taught her with any human  relations. She was
ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again,
in remembering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself
alone, when, for example, she was walking without companionship
and there came some rapid change in the light.
Solidute in any wide scene impressed her with un&n undefined
*X95
feeling of immeasurable existence aloof from her, in the
midst of which she was helplessly incapable of asserting
herself. The little astronomy taught her at school used
sometimes to set her imagination at work in a way that mede her tremble:
but always when some one joined her she recovered
her indiferrence to the vastness in which she seemed an
exile; she found again her usual world in which
her will was of some avail, and the religious nomenclature
belonging to this world was no more identified to her with
those uneasy impressions of awe than her uncle's surplices
seen out of use at the rectory. With human ears and eyes
about her, she had always hitherto recovered her confidence,
and felt the possibility of winning empire.
  To her mamma and others her fits of timidity or terror
where sufficiently accounted for by her "sensitiveness" or the
"excitability of her nature;" but these explanatory phrases
required conciliation with much that seemed to be blank
indifference or rare selfmastery. Heat is a great agent and
a useful word, but considered as a means of explaining
the universe it requires an extensive knowledge of differences;
and as a means of explaining character "sensitiveness" is in
much the same predicament. But who, loving a creature
like Gwendolen, would not be inclined to regard every
peculiarity in her aas a mark of preeminence? That was
what Rex did. After the Hermione scene he was more
persuaded than eve that she must be instinct with all
feeling, and not only readier to respond to a worship
love, but able to love better than other girls. Rex felt the
summer on his young wings and soared happily.

*C7

˛my˛Perigot˛my˛. As the bonny lasse passed bye,
 ˛my˛Willie˛my˛. Hey, ho, bonnilasse]

              P. She roode at me with glauncing eye,
              W. As clear as the crystall glasse.

              P. All as the sunny beame to bright,
              W. Hey, ho, the sunnebeame]
              P. Glaunceth from Phoebus's face fortright,
              W. So love into thy heart did streame.
                                - Spenser: ˛my˛Shepherd's˛my˛
                                           ˛my˛Calender˛my˛


  The kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the
ticklish state of youth; the nourisher and destroyer of hopful
wits;... the servitude above freedom; the gentle mind's religion;
the liberal supestition. - Charles Lab.


The first sign of the unimagined snowstorm was like the
transparent white could that seems to set off the blue.
Anna was in the secret of Rex's feeling; though for the first
time in their lives he had said nothing to her about what
he most thought of, and he only took it for granted that
she knew it. For the first time, too, Anna could not say to
Rex what was continually in her mind. Perhaps it might
have been a pain ehich she would have had to conceal, that
he should so soon care for some one else more than for
herself, if such a feeling had not been thoroughly
neutralised by doubt and anxiety on his behalf. Anna
admired her cousin - would have said with simple sincerity,
"Gwendolen is always very good to me," and held it in the
order of things for herself to be entirely subject to this
cousin; but she looked at her with mingled fear and distrust,
with a puzzled contamplation as of some wondrous
and beautiful animal whose nature was a mystery, and who,
for anything Anna knew, might have an appetite for
devouring all the small creatures that were her own
particular pets. And now Anna's heart was sinking under the
heavy convinction which she deared not utter, that
Gwendolen would never care for Rex. What she herself

*X97

held in tenderness and reverence had constantly seemed
indifferent to Gwendolen, and it was easier to imagine her
scorning Rex than returning any tenderness of his. Besides,
she was always thinking of being something extraordinary.
And poor Rex] Papa would be angry with him, if he knew.
And of course he was too young to be in love in that way; and
she, Anna , had thought that it would be years and years
before anything of that sort came, and that she would be
Rex's housekeeper ever so long. But what a heart must that be
which did not return his love] Anna, in the prospect of his
suffering, was beginning to dislike her too fascinating cousin.
  It seemed to her, as it did to Rex, that the weeks had
been filled with a tumultuous life evident to all observers:
if he had been questioned on the subject he would have
said thathe had no wish to conceal what he hoped would be
an engagement which he should immediately tell his father
of; and yet for the first time in his life he was reservednot
only about his feelings but - which was more remarkable to
Anna - about certain actions. She, on her side, was nervous
each time her father ot mother began to speak to her in
private lest they should say anything about Rex and Gwendolen.
But the elders were not in the least alive to this agitating
drama, which went forward chiefly in a sort of pantomine
extremely lucid in the minds thus expressing themselves,
but easily missed by spectators who were running their eyes
over the Guardian or the Clerical Gazette, and regarded the
trivialities of the young ones with scarcely more interpretation
than they gave to the actions of lively ants.
  "Where are you going ,Rex?" said Anna one grey morning when
her father had set off in the carriage to the
sessions, Mrs Gascoigne with him, and she had observed
that her brother had on his antigropelos, the utmost
approach he possessed to a hunting equipment.
  "Going to see the hounds throw off at the Three Barns."
  Are you going to take Gwendolen?" said Anna, timidly.
"She told you, did she?"
  "No, but I thought - Does papa know you are going?"
  "Not that I am aware of. I don't suppose he would
trouble himself about the matter."

*X98

  "You are going to use his horse?"
  "He knows I do that whenever I can."
  "Don't let Gwendolen ride after hounds, Rex," said
Anna. whose fears gifted her with secondsight.
  "Why not?" said Rex, smiling rather provokingly.
  "Papa and mamma and Aunt Davilow all wish her not to.
They think it is not right for her."
  Why should you suppose she is going to do what is not
right?"
  "Gwendolen minds nobody sometimes," said Anna, getting
bolder by dint od a little anger.
  "Then she would not mind me," said Rex, perversely
making a joke of poor Anna's anxiety.
  "Oh, Rex, I cannot bear it. You will make yourself very
unhappy." Here Anna burst into ters.
  "Nannie, Nannie, what on earth is the matter with you?"
said Rex, a little impatient at being kept in this way, hat on
and whip in hand.
  "She will not care for you one bit - I know she never
will]" said the poor child in a sobbing whisper. She had lost
all control of herself.
  Rex reddened and hurried away from her out of the hall
dorr, leaving her tothe miserable consciousness of having
made herself disagreeable in vain.
  He did think of her words as he rode along: they had
the unwelcomness which all favourable fortunetelling
has, even when laughed at; but he quickly explained them
as springing from little Anna's tenderness, and began to be
sorry that he was obliged to come away without soothing
her. Every other feeling on the subject, however, was
quickly merged in a resistant belief to the contrary of hers,
accompanied with a new determination to prove that he
was right. This sort of certainty had just enough kinship to
doubt and uneasiness to hurry on a confession which an
untouched security might have delayed.
  Gwendolen was already mounted and riding up and
down the avenue when Rex appeared at the gate. She had
provided herself against disappointment in case he did not
appear in time by having the groom ready behind her, for

*X99

she would have not waited beyond a reasonable time. But
now the groom was dismissed, and the two rode away in
delightful freedom. Gwendolen was in he highest spirits,
and Rex thought that she had never looked so lovely before:
her figure, her long white throat, and the curves of
her cheek and chin were always set off to perfection by the
compact simplicity of her riding dress. He could not conceive
a moreperfect girl; and to a youthful lover like Rex it
seems that the fundamental identity of the good, the true,
and the beautiful, is already extant and manifest in the
object of his love. Most observers would have held it more
than equally accountable that a girl should have like
impressions about Rex, for in his handsome face there was
nothing corresponding to the undefinable stinging quality -
as it were a trace of demon ancestry - which made some
beholders hesitate in their admiration of Gwendolen.
  It was an exquisite January morning in which there was
no threat of rain, but a grey sky making the calmest
background for the charms of a mild winter scene: - the
grassy borders of the lanes, the hedgerows sprinkled with
red berries and haunted with low twitterings, the purple
bareness of the elms, the rich brown of the furrows. The
horses' hoofs made a musical chime, accompanying their
young voices. She was laughing at his equipment,for he
was the reverse of a dandy, and he was enjoying her
laughter: the freshness of the morning mingled with
the freshness of their youth; and every sound that came from
their clear throats, every glance they gave each other, was
the bubbling outflow from a spring of joy. It was all morning
to them, within and without. And thinking of them in
these moments one is tempted to that futile sort of wishing
- if only things could have been a little otherwise then, so
as to have been greatly otherwise after] - if only these two
beautiful young creatures could have pledged themselves to
each other then and there, and never through life have
swerved from that pledge] For some of the goodness which
Rex believed in was there. Goodness is a large, often a
prospective word; like harvest, which at one stage when we
talk of it lies all underground, with an indeterminate

*X100

future: is the germ prospering in the darkness? at another,
it has put forth delicate green blades, and byandby the
trembling blossoms are ready to be dashed off by an hour
of rough wind and rain. Each stage has its peculiar blight,
and may have the healthy life chocked out of it by a
particular action of the foul land which rears or neighbours
it, or by damage brought from foulness afar.
  "Anna had got it into her head that you would want to
ride after the hounds this morning," said Rex, whose secret
associations with Anna's words made his speech seem quite
perilously near the most momentous of subjects.
  "Did she?" said Gwendolen, laughingly. "What a little
clairvoyante she is]"
  "Shall you?" said Rex, who had not believed in her intending
to do it if the elders objected, but confided in her
having good reasons.
  "I don't know. I can't tell what I shall do till I get there.
Clairvoyantes are often wrong: they foresee what is likely
I am not fond of what is likely; it is always dull. I dowhat
is unlikelt."
  Ah, there you tell me a secret. When once I knew what
people in general would  be likely to do, I should know you
would do the opposite. So you would have come round to a
likelihood of your own sort. I shall be able to calculate on
you. You couldn't surprise me."
  "Yes I could. I should turn round and do what was likely
for people in general," said Gwendolen, with a musical laugh.
  "You see you can't escape some sort of likelihood. And
contradictoriness makes the strongest likelihood of all.
You must give up a plan."
  "No, I shall not. My plan is to do what pleases me." (Here
should any young lady incline to imitate Gwendolen, let
her consider the set of her head and neck: if the angle
there had been different, the chin protrusive and the
cervical vertebrae a trifle more curved in their position, ten
to one Gwendolen's words would have had a jar in them
for the sweetnatured Rex. But everything odd in her
speech was humur and pretty banter, which he was only
anxious to turn towards one point.)

*X101

  "Can you manage to feel only what pleases you?" said he.
  "Of course not; that comes from what other people do.
But if the worls were pleasanter, one would only feel what
was pleasant. Girls's lives are so stupid: they never do what
they like."
  "I thought that was more the case of the men. They are
forced to do hard things, and are often dreadfully bored, and
knocked to pieces too. And then, if we love a girl very dearly
we want to do as she likes, so after all you have your own way."
  "I don't believe it. I never saw a married woman who had
her own way."
  "What should you like to do?" Said Rex, quite
guilelessly, and in real anxiety.
  "Oh, I don't know] - go to the Noth Pole, or ride
steeplechases, or go to be a queen in the East like Lady
Hester Stanhope," said Gwendolen,  flightily.Her words
were born on her lips, but she would have been at a loss to
give an answer of deeper origin.
  "You don't mean you would never be married."
  No; I didn't say that. Only when I married, iI should not
do as other women do."
  "You might do just as you liked if you married a man
who loved you more dearly than anything else in the
world," said Rex, who, poor youth, was moving in themes
outside the curriculum in which he had promised to win
distinction. "I know one who does."
  "Don't talk of Mr Middleton, for heaven's sake," said
Gwendolen, hastily, a quick blush spreading over her face and
neck; "That is Anna's chant. I hear the hounds. Let us go on."
  She put her chestnut to a canter, and Rex had no choice
but to follow her. Still she felt encouraged. Gwendolen was
perfectly aware that her cousin was in love with her; but she
had no idea that the matter was of any consequence, having
never had the slightest visitation of painful love herself. She
wished the small romance of Rex's devotion to fill up the
time of his stay at Pennicote, and to avoid explanations
which would bring it to an untimely end. Besides, she
objected, with a sort of physical repulsion, to being directly
made love to. With all her imaginative delight in being

*X102

adored, there was a certain fierceness of maidenhood in her.
  But all other thoughts were soon lost for her in the
excitement of the scene at the Three Barns. Several gentlemen
of the hunt knew her, and she exchanged pleasant
greetings. Rex xould not get another word with her. The
colour, the stir of the field had taken possession of
Gwendolen with a strength which was not due to habitual
association, for she had never yet ridden after the hounds -
only said she should like to do it, and so drawn forth a
prohibition; her mamma dreading the danger, and her
uncle declaring that for his part he held that kindof
violent exercise unseemly in a woman, and that whatever
might be done in other parts of the country, no lady of
good position followed the Wessex hunt: no one but Mrs
Gadsby, the yeomanry captain's wife, who had been
a maid and still spoke like one. This last argument
had some effect on Gwendolen, and had kept her halting
between her desire to assert her freedom and her horror of
being classed with Mrs Gadsby.
  Some of the most unexceptionalble women in the
neighbourhood occasionally went to see the hounds throw off; but
it happened that none og the,m were present this morning to
abstain from following, while Mrs Gadsby, with her doubtful
antecedents grammatical and otherwise, was not visible to
make the following seem unbecoming. Thus Gwendolen
felt no check on the animal stimulus that came from the stir
and tongue of the hounds, the pawing of the horses, the
varying voices of men, the movement hither and thither of
vivid colour on the background of green and grey stillness:-
the utmost excitement of the coming chase which consists
in feeling something like a combination of dog and horse,
with the superadded thrill of social vanities and consciousness
of centaurpower which belong to human kind.
  Rex would have felt more of the same enjoyment if he
could have kept nearer to Gwendolen, and not seen her
constantly occupied with  acquaintances on all lively horses whichwhich veered about and swept the
]]] surrounding space as
 effectually as a revolving lever.

*X103

  "Glad to see you here this fine morning, Miss Harleth,"
said Lord Brackenshaw, a middleaged peer of aristocratic
seediness in stained pink, with easygoing manners of no consequence.
"We shall have a firstrate run. A pity you don't go
with us. Have you ever tried your little chestnut at a ditch? you
wouldn't be afraid, eh?"
  "Not the least in the world," said Gwendolen. And this was
ture; she was never fearful in action and companionship.
"I have often taken him at some rails and a ditch too, near -"
"Ah, by Jove]" said his lordship, quetly, in notation that
something was happening which must break off the dialogue:
and as he reined off his horse, Rex was bringing
his sober hackney up to Gwendolen's side when - the
hounds gave tongue, and the whole field was in motion as
if the whirl of the earth were carrying it; Gwendolen along
with everything else; no word of notice to Rex, who without
a second thought followed too. Could he let Gwendolen
go alone? under other circumstances he would have enjoyed
the run, but he was just now perturbed by the check
which had been put on the impetus to utter his love, and get
utterance in return, an inpetus which could not at once
resolve itself into a totally different sort of chase, at least
with the consciousness of being on his father's grey nag, a
good horse enough in his way, but of sober years and
ecclesiastical habits. Gwendolen on her spirited little
chestnut was up with the best, and felt as secure as an immortal
goddess, having, if she had thought of risk, a core of
confidence that no ill luck would happen to her. But she
thought of no such thing, and certainly not of any risk
there might be for her cousin. If she had thought of him, it
would have struck her as a droll picture that he should be
gradually falling behind, and looking round in search of
gates: a fine lithe youth, whose heart must be panting with
all the spirit of a beagle, stuck as if under a wizard's spell
on a stiff clerical hackney, would have made her lough with
a sense of fun much too strong for her to reflect on his
mortification. But Gwendolen was apt to think rather of
those who saw her than of those whom she could not see;

*X104

and Rex was soon so far behind that if she had looked she
would have not seen him. For I grieve to say that iin the
search for a gate, along a lane lately mended, Primrose fell,
broke his knees, and undesignedly threw Rex over his head.
  Fortunately a blacksmith's son who also followed the
hounds under disadvantages, namely, on foot (a loose way
of hunting which had struck some even frivolous minds
as immoral), was naturally also in the rear, and happened to be
within sight of Rex's misfortune. He ran to give help which
was greatly needed, for Rex was a good deal stunned, and
the complete recovery of sensation came in the form of
 pain. Joel Dagge on this occasion showed himself that
most useful of personages, whose knowledge is of a kind suited to
the immediate occasion: he not only knew perfectly well
what was the matter with the horse, how far they were both
from the nearest publichouse and from Pennicote Rectory,
and could certify to Rex that his shoulder was only a bit
out of joint, but also offered experienced surgical aid.
  "Lord, sir, let me shove it again for you] I's see Nash
the bonesetter do it, and done it myself for our little
Sally twice over> It's all one and the same, shoulders is. If you 'll
trusten to me and tighten your mind up a bit, I'll do it for
you in no time."
  "Come then, old fellow," said Rex, whou could tighten his
mind better than his seat in the saddle. And Joel managed
the operation, though not without considerable expense of
pain to his patient, who turned so pitiably pale while
tightening his mind, that Joel remarked,"Ah, sir, you aren't
used to it, that's how it is. I's see lots and lots o'joints out.
I see a man with his eyes pushed out once - that was a rum to go
as ever I see. You can't have a bit  o' fun wi'out such sort
o' things. But it went in again. I's swallowed three teeth mysen,
as sure as I'm alive. Now, sirreey' (this was address to Primrose),
'come alonk - you mustn't make believe as you can't."
  Joel being clearly a low character, it is happily not necessary
to say more of him to the refined reader, than that he
helped Rex to get home with as little dealy as possible.
There was no alternative but to get home, tough all the
while he was in anxiety about Gwendolen, and more miserable

*X105

in the thought that she too might had an accident, than in
the pain of his own bruises and the annoyance he was
about to cause his father. He comforted himself about
her by reflecting that everyone would be
anxious to take careof her, and that some acquaintance
would be sure to conduct her home.
  Mr Gascoigne was already at home, and was writing letters
in his study, when he was interrupted by seeing poor
Rex come in with a face which was not the less handsome
and ingratiating for being pale and a little distressed. He
was secretly the favourite son. and a young portrait
of the father; who, however, never treated him with any
partiality - rather, with an extra rigour. Mr Gascoigne
having inquired of Anna, knew that Rex had gone with
Gwendolen to  the meet at the Three Barns.
  "What's the matter?" he said, hastily, not laying down his
pen.
  "I am very sorry, sir; Primrose has fallen down and broken
his knees."
  "Where have you been with him?" said Mr Gascoigne,
with a touch of severity. He rarely gave way to temper.
  "To the Three Barns to see the hounds throw off".
  "And you were foul enough to follow?"
  "Yes , sir. I didn't go to any fences, but the horse got his
leg into a hole."
  "And you got hurt yourself, I hope, eh?"
  "I got my shoulder put out, but a young blacksmith put it
in again for me. I'm just a little battered, tha's all."
  "Well, sit down."
  "I'm very sorry about the horse, sir. I knew it would be a
vexation to you."
  "And what has become of Gwendolen?" said Mr
Gascoigne, abruptly. Rex, who did not imagine that his
father had made any inquiries about him, answered
at first with a blush which was the more remarkable for his
previous paleness. Then he said nervously -
  "I am anxious to know - I should like to go or send at
once to Offendene - but she rides so well, and I think she
would keep up - there would most likely be many round her."F

*X106

  "I suppoe who led you on, eh? said Mr
Gascoigne, laying down his pen , leaning back in his chair
and looking at Rex with more marked examination.
  "It was natural for her to want to go; she didn't intend it
beforehand - she was led away by the spirit of the thing.
And of course I went when she went."
  Mr Gascoigne left a brief interval of silence, and then
said with quiet irony, "But now you observe , young gentleman,
that you are not furnished with a horse which will
enable you to play the squire to your cousin. You must give
up that amusement. You have spoiled my nag for me, and
that is enough mischief for one vacation. I shall beg you to
get ready to start for Southampton tomorrow and join
Stillfox, till you go up to Oxford with him. That will be
good for your bruises as well as your studies.
  Poor Rex felt his heart swelling and comporting itself as
if it had been no better than a girl's.
  "I hope you will not insist on my going immediately, sir."
  "Do you feel too ill?"
  "No, not that - but -" here Rex bit his lips and felt the
teras starting, to his great vexation; then he rallied
and tried to say more firmly, "I want to go to Offendene - but I
can go this evening."
  "I am going there myself. I can bring word about
Gwendolen, if that is what you want."
  Rex broke down. He thought he discerned an intention
fatal to his happiness, nay, his life. He was accustomed to
believe in his father's penetration, and to expect firmness.
"Father, I can't go away withouwithout telling her that I
love her, and knowing that she loves me."
  Mr GascoingGascoigne was inwardly going through some
selrebuke for not being more wary, and was now really sorry
for the lad; but every consideration was subordinate to that
of using the wisest tactics in the case. He had quickly made
up his mind, and could answer the more quietly -
  "My dear boy, you are too young to be taking momentous,
decisive steps of that sort. This is a fancy which you
have got into your head during an idle week or two: you
must set to work at something and dismiss it. There is

*X107

every reason against it. An engagement at your age would
be totally rash and unjustifiable; and moreover, alliances
between fist cousins are undesirable. Make up your mind
to a brief disappointment, Life is full of them. You have all
got to be broken in; and this is a mild beginning for you."
  "No, not mild. I can't bear it. I shall be good for nothing.
I shouldn't mind anything, if it were settled between us. I
could do anything then," said Rex, impetuously. "But it's of
no use to pretend that I will obey you. I can't do it. If I said
I would, I should be sure to break my word. I should see
Gwendolen again."
  "Well, wait till tomorrow morning that we may talk of
the matter again - you will promise me that," said Mr
Gascoigne, quietly; and Rex did not, could not refuse.
  The rector did not even tell his wife that he had any
other reason for going to Offendene that evening than his
desire to ascertain that Gwendolen had got home safely.
He found her more than safe - elated. Mr Quallon, who
had won the brush, had delivered the trophy to her, and
she had brought it before her, fastened on the saddle; more
than that, Lord Brackenshaw had conducted her home,
and had shown himself delghted with her spirited
riding. All this was told at once to her uncle, that he might see
how well justified she had been in acting against his advice;
and the prudential Rector did feel himself in a slight
difficulty, for at that moment he was particularly sensible
that it was his niece's serious interest to be well regarded by
the Brackenshaws, and their opinion as to her following the
hounds really touched the essence of his objection. However,
he was not obliged to say anything immediately, for
Mrs Davilow followed up Gwendolen's brief triumphant
phrases with -
  "Still, I do hope you will not do it again, Gwendolen. I
Should never have a moment's quiet. Her father died by an
accident, you know."
  Here Mrs Davilow  had turned away from Gwendolen,
and looked at Mr Gascoigne.
  "Mamma dear," said Gwendolen, kissing her merrily, and
passing over the question of the fears which Mrs Davilow

*X108

had meant to account for, "children don't take after their
parents in broken legs."
  Not one word had yet been said about Rex. In fact there
had been no anxiety about him at Offendene. Gwendolen
had observed to her mamma, "Oh, he must have been left
far behind, and gone home in dispair," and it could not be
denied that this was fortunate so far as it made way for
Lord Brackenshaw's bringing her home. But now Mr Gascoigne
said, with some emphasis, looking at Gwendolen -
  "Well, the exploit has ended better for you than for Rex."
  "Yes, I daresay he had to make a terrible round. You
have not taught Primrose to take the fences, uncle," said
Gwendolen, without the faintest shade of alarm in her
looks and tone.
  "Rex has had a fall," said Mr Gascoigne, curtly throwing
himself into an armchair, resting his elbows and fitting his
palms and fingers together, while he closed his lips and
lokked at Gwendolen , who said-
  Oh, poor fellow] He is not hurt, I hope?" with a correct
look of anxiety such as elated mortals try to superinduce
when their pulses are all the while quick with triumph; and
Mrs Davilow, in the same moment, uttered a low "Good
heavens] There]"
  Mr Gascoigne went on: "He put his shoulder out, and
got some brusies, I believe." Here he made another little
pause of observation; but Gwendolen, instead of any such
symptoms as pallor and silence, had only deepened the
compassionateness of her brow and eyes, and said again, "Oh,
poor fellow] it is nothing serious, then?" and Mr Gascoigne
held his diagnosis complete. But he wished to make assurance
doubly sure, and went on still with a purpose.
  "He got his arm set again rather oddly. Some blacksmith
-not a parishioner of mine- - was on the field - a loose fish,
I suppose, but handy, and set the arm for him immediately.
So after all, I believe, I and Primrose come off worst. The
horse's kees are cut to pieces. He came down in a hole, it
seems, and pitched Rex over his head."
  Gwendolen's face had allowably become contented again,
sice Rex's arm had been reset; and now, at the descriptive

*X109

suggestions in the latter part of her uncle's speech, her
elated spirits made her features less manageable than
usual; the smiles broke forth, and finally a
descending scale of laughter.
  "You are a pretty young lady - to laugh at other people's
calamities," said Mr Gascoigne, with a milder sense of disapprobation
than if he had not had counteacting reasons
than if he had not had counteracting reasons to be
glad that Gwendolen showed no deep feeeling on the
occasion.
  "Pray forgive me, uncle. Now Rex is safe, it is so droll to
fancy the figure he and Primrose would cut - in a lane all
by themselves - only a blacksmith running up. It would
make a capital caricature of "Following the hounds."
  Gwendolen rather valued herself on her superior freedom
in laughing where others might only see matter for seriousness.
Indeed, the laughter became her person so well
that her opinion of its gracefulness was often shared by
others; and it even entered into her uncle's course of
thought at this moment, that it was no wonder a boy
should be fascinated by this young witch - who, however,
was more mischievous than could be desired.
  "How can you lagh at broken bone, child?" said Mrs
Davilow, still under her dominat anxiety,
. I wish we had
never allowed you to have the horse> You will see that we
were wrong," she added, looking with a grave nod at Mr
Gascoigne - "at leat I was, to encourage her in asking for
it."
  "Yes, seriously, Gwendolen," said Mr Gascoigne , in a
judicious tone of rational advice to a person understood to
be altogether rational, "I stromgly recommend you - I shall
ask you to oblige me  so far - not to repeat your adventure
today. Lord Brackenshw is very kind, but I feel sure that
he would concur with me in what I say. To be spoken of
as the young lady who hunts  by way of exception, would
give a tone to the language about you which I am sure you
would not like. Depend upon it, his lordship would not
choose that Lady Beatrice or Lady Maria should hunt in
this part of the country, if they were old enough to do so.
When you are married, it will be different: you may do

*X110

whatever your husband sanctions. But if you intend to
hunt, you must marry a man who can keep horses."
  "I don't know why I should do anything so horrible as to
marry without ˛my˛that˛my˛ prospect, at least," said Gwendolen,
pettishly. Her uncle's  speech had given her annoyance,
which she could not show more directly; but she felt that
she was committing herself, and after moving carelessly to
another part of the room, went out.
  "She always speake in that way about marriage, "said Mrs
Davilow; "but it will be different when she has seen the
right person."
  "Her heart has never been in the least touched, that you
know of?" said Mr Gascoigne.
  Mrs Davilow shook her head silently. "it was only last
night she said to me "Mamma, I wonder how girls manage
to fall in love. It is easy to make them do it in books. But
men are too ridiculous.""
  Mr Gascoigne laghed a little, and made no further
remark on the subject. The next morning at breakfast he
said-
  "How are your brusies Rex?"

  "Oh, not very mellow yet, sir; only begginning to turn a
little."
  "You don't feel quite ready for a jouney to Southampton?"
  "Not quite," aswered Rex, with his heart metaphorically
in his mouth.
  "Well, you can wait till tomorrow, and go to say goodbye
to them at Offendene."
  Mrs Gascoigne felt that he was applying a sharp remedy
to poor Rex's acute attack, but he believed it to be in the
end the kindest. To let him know the hopelessness of his
love from Gwendolen's own lips might be curative in more
ways than one.
  "I can only be thakful that she doesn't care about him,"
said Mrs Gascoigne, when she joined her husband in his

*X111

study. "There are things in Gwendolen I cannot reconcile
myself to. My Anna is worth two of her, with all her
beauty and talent. It looks so very ill in her that she will
not help in the schools with Anna - not even in the Sunday
school. What you or I advise is of no consequence to her;
and poor Fanny is completely under her thumb. But I
know you think better of her," Mrs Gascoigne ended with a
deferential hesitation.
  "Oh, my dear, there is no harm in the girl. It is only the&t
she has a high spirit, and it will not  do to hold the reins
too tight. The point is, to get her well married. She has a little
too much fire in her for her present life with her mother
and sisters. It is natural and right that she should be
married soon - not to a poor man, but one who can give
her a fitting position."
  Presently Rex, with his arm in a sling, was on his two
miles' walk to Offendene. He was rather puzzled by the
unconditional permission to see Gwendolen, but his father's real
ground of action could not enter into his conjectures. If it
had, he would first have thought it horribly coldblooded,
and then have disbelieved in his father's conclusions.
  When he got to the house, everybody was there but
Gwendolen. The four girls, hearing him speak in the hall,
rushed out of the library, which was their schoolroom, and
hung round him with compassionate inquiries about his
arm. Mrs Davilow wanted to know exactly what had happened,
and where the blacksmith lived, that she might
make him a present; while Mrs Merry, who took a subdued
and melancholy part in all family affair, doubted whether it
would not be giving too much encouragment to that kind of
character. Rex had never found the family troublesome before,
and he was too uneasy for goodnatured feignning.
When at last he had said, "Where is Gwendolen?" and Mrs
Davilow had told Alice to go and see if her sister  were come
down, adding, "I sent up her hreakfast this morning. She needed
a long rest," - Rex took the shortest way out of his
endurance by saying, almost impatiently, "Aunt, I want to
speak to Gwendolen - I want to see her alone."

*X112

  "Very weel, dear; go into the drawingroom. I will send
her there," said Mrs Davilow, who had observed that he was
fond of being with Gwendolen, as was natural, but had not
thought of this as having any bearing on the realities of
life: it seemed merely part of the Christmas holidays
which were spinning themselves out.

  Rex for his part felt that the realities of life were all
hanging on this interview. He had to wald up and down
the drawingroom in expectation for nearly ten minutes -
ample space for all imaginative fluctuations; yet, strange to
say, he was unvaryingly occupied in thinking what and how
much he could do, when Gwendolen had accepted him, to
satisfy his father that the engagement was the most prudent
thing in the world, since it inspired him with double energy
for work. He was to be a  lawyer, and what reason was there
why he should not rise as high as Eldon did? He was forced
to look at life in the light of his father's mind.
  But when the door opened and she whose presence he
was longing for entered, there came over him suddenly and
mysteriously a state of tremor and distrust which he had
never felt before. Miss Gwendolen, simple as she stood
there, in her black silk, cut square about the round white
pillar, of her throat, a black band fastening her hair
which streamed backwards in smooth silky abundance, seemed
more queenly than usual. Perhaps it was that there was
none of the latent fun and tricksiness which had always
pierced in her greeting of Rex. How much this was due
to her presentiment from what he had said yesterday that
he was going to talk of love? How much from her desire to
show regret about his accident? Something of both. But
the wisdom of ages has hinted that there is a side of the
bed which has a malign influence if you happen to get out
on it; and this accident befalls some charming persons
rather frequently. Perhaps it had befallen Gwendolen this
morning. The hastening of her toilet, the way in which
Bugle used the brush, the quality of the shilling serial
mistakenly written for her amusement, the probabilities of
the coming day, and, in short, social institutions generally,
were all objectionable to her. It was not that she was out of

*X113

temper, but that the world was not equal to the demands
of her fine organism.
  However it might be, Rex saw an awful majesty about
her as she entered and put out her hand to him, without
the least approach to a smile in eyes and mouth. The fun
which had moved her in the evening had quite evaporated
from the image of his accident, and the whole affair
seemed stupid to her. But she said with perfect propriety,
"I hoper you are not much hurt, Rex; I deserve that you
should reproach me for your accident."
  "Not at all," said Rex, feeling  the soul within him spreading
itself like an attack of illness. "There is hardly anything
the matter with me. I am so glad you had the pleasure: I
would willingly pay for it by a tumble, only if I was sorry to
would willingly pay for it by a tumble, only I was sorry to
brak the horse's knees."
  Gwendolen walked to the hearth and stood looking at
the fire in the most inconvenient way for conversation, so
that he could  only get a side view of her face.
  "My father wants me to go to Southampton] That's a stupid
  "My father wants me to go to Southapton for the rest
of the vacation," said Rex, his barytone trembling a little.
  "Southampton] Tha's a stupid place to go to, isn't it?"
said Gwendolen, chilly.
  "It would be to me, because you would not be there."
  Silence.
  "Should you mind about my going away, Gwendolen?"
  "Of course.  every one is of consequence in  this
dreary country," said Gwendolen, curtly. The perception that poor
Rex wanted to be tender made her curl up and harden like
a seaanemone at the touch of a finger.
  "Are you angry with me, Gwendolen? Why do you trat me
in this way all at once?" said Rex, flushing, and with more
spirit in his voice, as if he too were capable capable of bering
 being angry.
  Gwendolen looked round at him and smiled. "Treat you?
Nonsense] I am only rather cross>. Why did you come so
very early? You must expect to find tempers in dishabille."
  "Be as cross with me as you like - only don't treat me
with indifference," said Rex, imploringly. "All the happiness
of my life depends on your loving me - if only a little -
better than any one else."

*X114

  He tried to take her hand, but she hastily eluded his
grasp and moved to the other end of the hearth, facing him.
  "Pray don't make love to me] I hate it." She looked at
him fiercely.
  Rex turned pale and was silent, but could not take his
eyes off her, and the impetus was not yet exhausted that
 made hers dart death at him. Gwendolen herself could not
have foreseen that she should feel in this way. It was all a
sudden, new experience to her. The day before she had been
quite aware that her cousin was in love with her - she
did not mind how much, so that he said nothing about it;
and if anyone had asked her why she objected to lovemaking
speeches, she would have said laughingly, "Oh, I
am tired of them all in the books." But now the life of
passion had begun negatively in her. She felt passionately
averse to this volunteered love.
  To Rex at twenty the joy of life seemed at an end more
absolutely than it can do to a man at forty. But before they
had ceased to look at each other, He did speak again.
  "Is that the last word you have to say to me, Gwendolen?
Will it always be so?"

  She could not help seeing his wretchedness and feeling a
little regret for old Rex who had not offended her.
Decisively, but yet with some return of kindliness, she said-
  "About making love? Yes. But I don't dilike you for
anything else."
  There was just a perceptible pause before he said a low
2goodbye", and passed out of the room. Almost immediately
after, she heard the heavy halldoor bang behind him.
  Mrs Davilow too had heard Rex's hasty departure, and
presently came into the drawingroom, where she found
Gwendolen seated on the low couch, her face buried, and
her hair falling over her figure like a garment. She was
sobbing bitterly. "My child, my child, what is it?" cried the
mother, who had never before seen her darling struck
down in this way, and felt something of the alarmed
anguish that women feel at the sight of overpowering
sorrow in a strong man; for this child had been her ruler.
Sitting down by her with circling arms, she pressed her

*X115

cheek agaist Gwendolen's head, and then tried to draw it
upward. Gwendolen gave way, and letting her head rest
against her mother, cried out sobbingly, Oh mamma, what
can become of my life? there is nothing worth living for]"
  "Why, dear?" said Mrs Davilow. Usually she herself had
been rebuked by her daughter for involuntary signs of
dispair.
  "I shall never love anybody. I can't love people. I hate
them."
  "The time will come, dear, the time will come."
  Gwendolen was more and more convulsed with sobbing;
but putting her arms round her mother's neck with an
almost painful clinging, she said brokenly,
"I can't bear any one to be very near me but you."
  Then the mother began to sob, for this spoiled child had
never shown such dependence on her before: and so they
clung to each other.

*C8

What name doth Joy most borrow
When life is fair?
                    "Tomorrow."
What name doth best fit Sorrow
In young despair?
                    "Tomorrow."

There was a much more lasting trouble at the Rectory.
Rex arrived there only to throw himself on his bed in a
state of apparent apathy, unbroken till the next day, when
it began to be interrupted by more positive signs of illness.
Nothing could be said about his going to Southampton:
instead of that, the chief thought of his mother and Anna
was how to tend this patient who did not want to be well,
and from being the brightiest, most grateful spirit in the
household, was metamorphosed into an irresponsive, dulleyed
creature who met all affectionate attempts with a murmur of
"Let me alone." His father looked beyond the

*X116

crisis, and believed to be the shortest way out of an
unlucky affair; but he was sorry for the inevitable suffering,
and went now and then to sit by him in silence for a few
minutes, parting with a gentle pressure of his hand on
Rex's blank brow, and a "God bless you, my boy." Warham
and the younger children used to peep round the edge of
the door to see this incredible thing of their lively brother
being laid low; but fingers were immediately shaken at
them to drive them back. The guardian whi was always
there was Anna, and her little hand was allowed to rest
within her brother's, though he never gave it a welcoming
pressure. Her soul was divided between anguish for Rex
and reproach of Gwendolen.
  "Perhaps it is wicked of me, but I think I never ˛my˛love˛my˛
her again," came as the recurrent  burthen of poor little
Anna's inward monody. And even Mrs Gascoigne had an
angry feeling towards her niece which she could not refrain
from expressing (apologetically) to her husband.
  "I know of course it is better, and we ought to be thankful
that she is not in love with the poor boy; but really,
Henry, I think she is hard: she has the heart of a coquette.
I cannot help thinking that she must have made him
believe something, or the disappointment would not have
taken hold of him in that way. And some blame attaches
to poor Fanny; she is quite blind about that girl."
  Mr Gascoigne answered imperatively. "The less said on
that point the better, Nancy. I ought to have been more
awake myself. As to the boy, be thankful if nothing worse
ever happens to him. Let the thing die out as quickly as
possible; and especially with regard to Gwendolen - let it
be as if it had  never been."
  The Rector's dominant feeling was that there had been a
great escape. Gwendolen in love with Rex in return would
have made a much harder problem, the solution of which
might have been taken out of his hands. But he had to go
through some further difficulty.
  One fine morning Rex asked for his bath, and made his
toilet as usual. Anna, full of excitement at this change,
could do nothing but listen for his coming down, and at

*X117

last hearing his step, ran to the foot of the stairs to meet
him. For the first time he gave her a faint smile, but it
looked so melancholy on his pale face that she could hardly
help crying.
  "Nannie]" he said, gently, taking her hand and leading
her slowly along with him to the drawingroom. His
mother was there, and when she came to kiss him, he said,
"What a plague I am]"
  Then he sat still and looked out of the bowwindow on
the lawn and shrubs covered with hoarfrost, across which the sun
was sending faint occasional gleams - something
like that sad smile on Rex's face, Anna thought. He felt as
if he had had a resurrection into a new world, and did not
know what to do with himself there,  the old interests being
left behind. Anna sat near him, pretending to work, but
really watching him with yearning looks. Beyond the
garden hedge there was a road where wagoons and carts
sometimes went on fieldwork: a railed opening was made
in the hedge, because the upland with its bordering wood
and  clump of ash trees against the sky was a pretty ssight.
Presently there came along a waggon laden with timber;
the horses were straining their grand muscles, and the
driver having cracked his whip, ran along anxiously to
guide the leader's head, fearing  a swerve. Rex seemed
to be shaken into attention, rose and looked till the last quivering
trunk of the timber had disappeared, and then walked
once or twice along the room. Mrs Gascoigne was no longer
there, and when he came to sit down again, Anna, seeing a
return of speech in her brother's eyes, could not resist the
impulse to bring a little stool and seat herself against his
knee, looking up at him with an expression which seemed
to say, "Do speak to me". And he spoke.
  "I'll tell you what I am thinking of, Nannie. I will go to
Canada, or somewhere of that sort." (Rex had not studied
the character of our colonial possessions.)
  "Oh, Rex, not for always]"
  "Yes; to get my bread there. I should like to build a hut,
and work hard at clearing, and have everything wild about
me, and a great wide qiet."

*X118

  "And not take me with you?" said Anna, the big tears
coming fast.
  "How could I?"
  "Ishould like it better than enything; and settlers go
with their families. I would sooner go there than stay here
in England. I could make the fires, and mend the clothes,
and cook the food; and I could learn how to make the
bread before we went. It would be nicer than anything -
like playing a life over again, as we used to do when we
made our tent with the drugget, and had our little plates
and dishes."
  "Father and mother would not let you go."
  "Yes, I think they would, when I explained everything. It
would save money; and papa would have more to bring up
the boys with."
  There was further talk of the same practical kind at
intervals, and it ended in Rex's being obliged to consent
that Anna should go with him when he spoke to his father
on the subject.
  Of course it was when the Rector was alone in his study.
Their mother would become reconciled to whatever he
decided on; but mentioned to her first, the question
would have distressed her.
  "Well my children]" said Mr Gascoigne, cheerfully, as
they entered. It was a comfort to see Rex about again.
  "May we sit down with you a little,papa?" said Anna.
"Rex has something to say."
  "With all my heart."
  It was a noticeable group that these three creatures
made, each of them with a face of the same structural
type - the straight brow, the nose suddenly straightened from
an ibtention of being aquiline, the short upper lip, the
short but strong and wellhung chin: there was even the
same tone of complexion and set of the eye. The greyhaired father
was at aonce massive and keenlooking; there was a perpendicular
line in his brow which when he spoke with any force
of interest deepened; and the habit of ruling gave him an air
of reserved authoritativeness. Rex would have seemed
a vision of the father's youth, if it had been

*X119

possible ti imagine Mr Gascoigne without distinct plans
and without command, smitten with a heart sorrow, and
having no more notion of concealment than a sick animal;
and Anna was a tiny copy of Rex, with hair dran back
and knotted, her face following his in its changes of
expression, as if they had one soul between them.
  "You know all about what has upset me, father," Rex
began, and Mr Gascoigne nodded.
  "I am quite done up for life in this part of the world. I
am sure it will be no use my going back to Oxford. I
couldn't do any reading. I should fail, and cause you
expense for nothing. I want to have your consent to take
another course, sir."
  Mr Gascoigne nodded more slowly, the perpendicular
line on his brow deepened, and Anna's trembling increased.
  "If you would allow me a small outfit, I should like to go
to the colonies and work on the land there." Rex thought
the vagueness of the phrase prudential; "the colonies"
necessarily embracing more advantages, and being less
capable of being rebutted on a single ground than any
particular settlement.
  "Oh, and with me, papa," said Anna, not bearing to be
left out from the proposal even temporarily. "Rex would
want some  one to take care of him, you know - some one
to keep house. And we shall never, either of us, be married.
And I should cost nothing, and I should be so happy. I
know it would be hard to leave you and mamma; but there
are all the others to bring up, and we two should be no
trouble to you any more."
  Anna has risen from her seat, and used the feminine argument
of going closer to her papa as she spoke. He did not
amile, but he drew her on his knee and held her there, as if
to put her gently out of the question while he spoke to
Rex.
  "You will admit that my experience gives me some power
of judging for you, and that I can probably guide you in
practical matters better than you can guide yourself."
  Rex was obliged to say, "Yes, sir."
  "And perhaps you will admit - though I don't wish to

*X120

press that point - that you are bound in duty to consider
my judgment and wishes?"
  "I have never yet placed myself in opposition to you, sir."
Rex in his secret soul could not feel that he was bound not
to go to the colonies, but to go to Oxford again - whch was the
point in question.
  "But you will do so if you persist in setting your mind
towards a rash and foolish procedure, and deafening yourself
to considerations which my experience of life assures
me of. You think, I suppose, that you have had a shock
which has changed all your inclinations, stupefied you
brains, unfitted you for anything but manual labour, and
given you a dislike to society? Is that what you believe?"
  Something like that. I shall never be up to the sort of
work I must do to live in this part of the world. I have not
the spirit of it. I shall never be the same again. And
without any disrespect to you, father, I think a young
fellow should be allowed to choose his way of life, if he
does nobody any harm. There are plenty to stay at home,
and those who like might be allowed to go where there are
empty places."
  "But suppose I am convinced on good evidence - as I am
- that this state of mind od yours is transient,
and that if
you went off as you propose, you would byandby repent,
and feel that you had let yourself slip back from the point
you have been gaining by your education till now? Have
you not stregth of mind enough to see that you had
better act on my assurance for a time, and test it? In my
opinion, so far from agreeing with you that you should be
free to turn yourself into a colonist and work in your shirtsleeves
with spade and hatchet - in my opinion you have
no right whatever to expatriate yourself until you have
honestrly endeavoured to turn to account the education you
have received here. I say nothing of the grief to
your mother and me."
  "I'am very sorry; but what can I do? I can't study -
that's certain," said Rex.
  "Not just now, perhaps. You will have to miss a term. I
have made arrangements for you - how you are to spend

*X121

the next two months. But I confess I am disappointed in
you, Rex. I thought you had more sense than to take up
such ideas - to suppose that because you have fallen into a
very common trouble, such as most men have to go
through, you are loosened from all bond of duty - just as
if your brain had softened and you were no longer a
responsible being."
  What could Rex say? Inwardly he was in a state of
rebellion, but he had no arguments to meet his father's;
and while he was feeling, in spite of anything that might
be said, that he should like to go off to "the colonies" tomorrow,
it lay in a deep fold of his consciousness that he
ought to feel - if he had been a better fellow he would
have felt - more about his old ties. This is the sort of faith
we live by in our soulsicknesses.
  Rex got up frm his seat, as if he held the conference to
be at an end. "Your assent to my arrangment, then?" said
Mr Gascoigne, with that distinct resolution of tone which
seems to hold one in a vice.
  There was a little pause before Rex answered, I'll try
what I can do, sir. I can't promise." His thought was, that
trying would be of no use.
  Her father kept Anna, holding her fast, though she
wanted to follow Rex. "Oh papa," she said, the tears coming
with her words when the door was closed; "it is very hard
for him. Doesn't he look ill?"
  "Yes, but he will soon be better; i will all blow over. And
now, Anna, be as quiet as a mouse about it all. Never let it
be mentioned when he is gone."
  "No, papa. But I would not be like Gwendolen for anything
- to have people fall in love with me so. It is very dreadful."
  Anna dared not say that she was disappointed at not
being allowed to go to the colonies with Rex; but that was
her secret feeling, and she often aferwards went inwardly
over the whole affair, saying to herself, "I should have done
with going out, and gloves, and crinoline, and having to
talk when I am taken to dinner - and all that]"
  I like to mark the time, and connect the course of individual

*X122

lives with the historic stream, for all classes of
thinkers. This was the period when the broadening of
gauge in crinolines seemed to demand an agitation for the
general enlargment of churches, ballroom, and vehicles.
But Anna Gascoigne's figure would only allow the size of
skirt manufactured for young ladies of fourteen.

*C9

         I'll tell thee Berthold, what men's hopes are like:
         A silly child that, quivering with joy,
         Would cast its little mimic fishingline
         Baited with loadstone for a bowl of toys
         In the salt ocean.

Eight months after the arrival of the family at Offendene,
that is to say in the end of the following June, a rumour
was spread in the neighbourhood which too many persons
was matter of exciting interest. It had no reference to the
results of the American war, but it was one which touched
all classes within a certain circuit round Wancester: the
cornfactors, the brewers, the horsedealers, and saddlers,
all held it a laudable thing, and one which was to be
rejoiced in on abstract grounds, as showing the value of an
aristocracy in a free country like England; the blacksmith
in the hamlet of Diplow felt that a good time had come
round; the wives of labouring men hoped their
nimble boys
nimble boys of ten or twelve would be taken into employ  by
the gentlemen in livery; and the farmers about Diplow admitted,
with a tincture of bitterness and reserve, that a man might
now again perhaps have an easier market or exchange for a
rick of old hay or a waggonload of straw. If such were the
hopes of low persons not in society, it may be easily inferred
that their betters had better reasons for satisfaction,
probably connected with the pleasures of life rather than
its business. Marriage, however, must be considered as
coming under both heads; and just as when a visit of

*X123

Majesty is announced, the dream of knighhood or a
baronetcy is to be found under various municipal nightcaps,
so the news in question raised a floating indeterminate vision
of marriage in several wellbred imaginations.
  The news was that Diplow Hall, Sir Hugo Mallinger's
place, which had for a couple of years turned its white
windowshutters in a painfully walleyed manner on its fine
elms and beeches, its lilied pool and grassy acres specked
with deer, was being prepared for a tenant, and was for the
rest of the summer and through the hunting season to be
inhabited in a fitting style both as a house and
stable. But not by Sir Hugo himself: by his nephew Mr Mallinger
Grandcourt, who was presumptive heir to the baronetcy, his
uncle's marriage having produced nothing but girls. Nor
was this the only contingency with which fortune flattered
young Grandcourt, as he was pleasantly calle; for
while the chance of the baronetcy came through his father, his mother
had given a baronial streak to his blood, so that if certain
intervening persons slightly painted in the middle distance
died, he would become a baron and peer of this realm.
  It is the uneven allotment of the nature that the male bird
alone has the tuft, but we have not yet followed the advice
of hasty philosophers who would have us copy nature
entirely in these matters; and if Mr mallinger Grandcourt
bacame a baronet or a peer, his wife would share the title -
which in addition to his actual fortune was certainly a
reason why that wife, being at present unchosen, should be
thought of by more than one person with sympathetic
interest as a woman sure to be well provided for.
  Some readers of this history will doubtless regard it as
incredible that people should construct matrimonial prospects
on the mere report that a bachelor of good fortune
and possibilities was coming within reach, and will reject
the statement as a mere outflow of gall: they will aver that
neither they nor their first cousins have minds so unbridled;
and that in fact this is not human nature, which
would know that such speculations might turn out to be
fallacious, and would therefore not entertain them. But, let
it be observed, nothing is here narrated of human nature

*X124

generally: the history in its present stage concerns only a
few people in a corner of Wessex - whose reputation, however,
was unimpeached, and who, I am in the proud position
of being able to state, were all on visiting terms with
persons of rank.
  There were the Arrowpoints, for example, in their
beautiful place at Quetcham: no one could attribute sordid
views in relation to their daughter's marriage to parents
who could have her at least half a million; but having
affectionate anxieties about their Catherine's position (she
having resolutely refused Lord Slogan, an unexceptionable
Irish peer, whose estate wanted nothing but drainage and
population), they wondered, perhaps from something more
than a charitable impulse, whether Mr Grandcourt was
goodlooking, of sound constitution, virtuous or
at least reformed, and if liberalconservative, not too liberal
conservative; and without wishing anybody to die, thought
his succession to the title an event to be desired.
  If the Arrowpoints had such ruminations, it is the less
surprising that they were stimulated in Mr Gascoigne, who
for being a clergyman was not the less subject to the
anxieties of a parent and guardian; and we have seen how
both he and Mrs Gascoigne might by this time have come to
the feel that he was overcharged with the management og young
creatures who were hardly to be held in with bit or bridle, or
any sort of metaphor that would stand for judicious
advice.
  Naturally, people did not tell each other all they felt and
thought about young Grandcourt's advent: on no subject
in this openness found prudentially practicable - not even
on the generation of acids, or the destination of the fixed
stars; for either your contemporary with a mind turned
towards the same subjects may find your ideas ingenious
and forestall you in applying them, or he may have other
views on acids and fixed stars and think ill of you in
consequence. Mr Gascoigne did not ask Mr Arrowpoint if
he had any trustworthy source of information about
Grandcourt considered as a husband for a charming girl;
nor did Mrs Arrowpoint observe to Mrs Davilow that if the
possible peer sought a wife in the neighbourhood of Diplow,

*X125

the only reasonable expectation was that he would offer his
hand to Catherine, who, however, would not accept him
unless he were in all respects fitted to secure her happiness.
Indeed, even to his wife the Rector was silent as to the

contemplation of any matrimonial result, from the probability
that Mr Grandcourt would see Gwendolen at the
next Archery Meeting; though Mrs Gascoigne's mind was
very likely still more active in the same direction. She had said
interjectionally to her sister, "It would be a mercy,
Fanny, if that girl were well married]" to which Mrs Davilow,
discerning some criticism of her darling in the fervour of
that wish, had not chosen to make any audible reply,
though she has said inwardly, "You will get her to
though she had said inwardly, " you will not get her to
marry for your pleasure;" the mild mother becoming rather
saucy when she identified herself with her daughter.
  To her husband Mrs Gascoinge said, " I hear Mr Grandcourt
has two places of his own, but he comes to Diplow for
the hunting. It is to be hoped he will set a good example
in the neighbourhood. Have you heard what sort of young man
is he, Henry?"
  Mr Gascoigne had not heard; at least, if his male
acquaintances had gossiped in his hearing, he was not
disposed to repeat their gossip, or give it any emphasis in
his own mind. He held it futile, even if it had been becoming,
to show any curiosity  as to the past of a young
man whose birth, wealth, and consequent leisure made
many habits venial which under other circumstances would
have been inexcusable. Whatever Grandcourt had done, he
had not ruined himself; and if it is well known that in
gambling, for example, whether of the business or holiday
sort, a man who has the strength of mind to leave off when
he has only ruined others, is a reformed character. This is
an illustration merely: Mr Gascoigne had not heard that
Grandcourt had been a gambler; and we can hardly pronounce
himsingular in feeling that a landed proprietor
with a mixture of noble blood in his veins was not to be an
object of suspicious inquiry like a reformed character who
offers himself as your butler or footman.  Reformation,
where a man can afford to do without it, can hardly be

*X126

other than genuine. Moreover, it was not certain on any
showing hitherto that Mr  Grandcourt had needed
reformation more than other young men in the ripe youth
of fiveandthirty; and, at any rate, the significance of what he had
been must be determined by what he actually was.
  Mrs Davilow, too, although she would not respond to her
sister's pregnant remark, could not be inwardly indifferent
to an event that might promise a brilliant lot for Gwendolen.
A little speculation on "what may be" comes naturally,
without encouragement - comes inevitably in the
form of images, when unknown persons are mentioned;
and Mr Grandcourt's name raised in Mrs Davilow's mind
first of all the picture of a handsome, accomplished,
excellent young man whom she would be satisfied with as a
husband for her daughter; but then came the further
speculation - would Gwendolen be satisfied with him?
There was no knowing what would meet that girl's taste or
touch her affections - it might be something else than
excellence; and thus the image of the perfect suitor gave
way before a fluctuating combination of qualities that
might be imagined to win Gwendolen's heart. In the difficulty
of arriving at the particular combination which
would insure that result, the mother even said to herself, "It
would not signify about her being in love, if she would
only accept the right person." For whatever marriage had
been for herself, how could she the less desire it for her
daughter? The difference her own misfortunes made was,
that she never dared to dwel much to Gwendolen on the
desirableness of marriage, dreading an answer something
like that of the future Madame Roland, when her gentle
mother urging the acceptance of a suitor, said,  seras heureuse, ma chere." Oui, maman, comme toi."
  In relation to the problematic Mr Grandcourt least of all
would Mrs Davilow have willingly let fall a hint of the
aerial castlebuilding which she had the good taste to be
ashamed of; for much a hint was likely enough to give an
adverse poise to Gwendolen's own thought, and make her
detest the desirable husband beforehand. Since that scene
after poor Rex's farewell visit, the mother had felt a new

*X127

sense of peril in touching the mystery of her child's feeling,
and in rashly  determining what was her welfare: only she
could think of welfare in no other shape than marriage.
  The discussion of the dress that Gwendolen was to wear
at the Archery Meeting was a relevant topic, however; and
when it had been decided that as a touch of colour on her
white cashmere, nothing, for her complexion, was comparable
to pale green - a feather which she was trying in her
hat before the lookingglass having settled the question -
Mrs Davilow felt her ears tingle when Gwendolen, suddenly
throwing herself into the attitude of drawing her
bow, said with a look of comic enjoyment -
  "How I pity all the other girls at the Archery Meeting -
all thinking of Mr Grandcourt] And they have not a
shadow of a chance."
  Mrs Davilow had not the presence of mind to answer immediately,
and Gwendolen turned quickly round towards her,
saying, wickedly -
  "Now you know they have not mamma; mamma. You and my
uncle and aunt - you all intend him to fall in love with me."
  Mrs Davilow, piqued into a little stratagem, said, "Oh, my
dear, that is not so certain. Miss Arrowpoint has charms
which you have not."
  "I know; but they demand thought. My arrow will pierce
him before he has time for thought. He will declare himself
my slave - I shall send him round the world to bring
me back the weddingring of a happy woman - in the
meantime all the men who are between him and the title
will die of different diseases - he will come back Lord
Grandcourt - but without the ring - and fall at my feet. I
shall laugh at him - he will rise in resentment - I shall
laugh more - he will call for his steed and ride to Quetcham,
where he will find Miss Arrowpoint just married to a
needy musician, Mrs Arrowpoint tearing her cap off, and
Mr Arrowpoint standing by. Exit Lord Grandcourt, who
return to Diplow, and, like M.Jabot, ˛my˛change˛my˛
˛my˛de˛my˛ ˛my˛linge˛my˛."
  Was ever any young witch like this? You thought of
hiding things from her - sat upon your secret and looked
innocent, and all the while she knew by the corner of your

*X128

eye that it was exactly five pounds ten you were sitting on]
As well turn the key to keep out the damp] It was probable
that my dint of divination she already knew more than any one
else did of Mr Grandcourt. That idea in Mrs Davilow's mind
prompted the sort of question which often comes without any other  apparent reason than the faculty
]]] of speech and the not
knowing what we do with it.
  "Why, what kind of man do you imagine him to be,
Gwendolen?"

  "Let me see]" said the witch, putting her forefinger to her
lips with a little frown, and then stretching out the finger
with decision. "Short - just above  my shoulder - trying to
make himself tall by  turning up his mustache and keeping
his beard long - a glass in his right eye to give him
an air of distinction - a strong opinion about his waistcoat,
but uncertain and trimming about the weather, on
which he will try to draw me out. He will stare at me
all the while, and the glass in his eye will cause him
to make horrible faces, especially when he smiles in a flattering
way> I shall cast down my eyes in consequence, and
he will perceive that I am not indifferent to his attentions.
I shall dream that night that I am looking at the
extraordinary face of a magnified insect - and the next
morning he will make me an offer of his hand; the sequel
as before."
  "That is portrait of some one you have seen already,
Gwen. Mr Grandcourt may be a delightful young man for
what you know."
  "Oh yes," said Gwendolen, with a high note of careless
admission, taking off her best hat and turning it round on
her hand contemplatively. "I wonder what sort of behaviour
a delightful young man would have?" Then, with a merry
change of face, "I know he would have hunters and racers,
and a London house and two country houses, - one with
battlements and another with a veranda. And I feel sure
that with a little murdering he might get a title."
  The irony of this speech was of the doubtful sort that
has some genuine belief mixed up with it. Poor Mrs Davilow
felt uncomfortable under it. Her own meanings being

*X129


usually literal and in intention innocent; and she said, with
a distressed brow -
  "Don't talk in that way, child, for heaven's sake] you do
read such books - they give you such ideas of everything. I
declare when your aunt and I were your age we knew
nothing about wickedness. I think it was better so."
  "Why did you not bring me up in that way, mamma?"
said Gwendolen. But immediately perceiving in the crushed
look and rising sob that she had given a deep wound, she
tossed down her had and knelt at her mother's feet, crying
  "Mamma, mamma] I was only speaking in fun. I meant
nothing."
  "How could I, Gwendolen?" said poor Mrs Davilow, unable
to hear the retractation, and sobbing violently while she
made the effort to speak. "Your will was always too strong
for me - if everything else had been different."
  This disjoined logic was intelligible enough to the
daughter. "Dear mamma, I don't find faul with you - I
love you," said Gwendolen, really compunctious. "How can
you help what I am? Besides, I am very charming. Come,
now." Her Gwendolen with her handlerchief gently
rubbed away her mother's tears. "Really - I am contented
with myself. I like myself better than I should have liked my
aunt and you. How dreadfully dull you must have been]"
  Such tender cajolery served to quiet the mother, as it had
often done before after like collisions. Not that the collisions
had often been repeated at the same point; for in the
memory of both they left an association of dread with the
particular topics which had occasioned them: Gwendolen
dreaded the unpleasant sense of compunction towards her
mother, which was the nearest approach to selfcondemnation
and selfdistrust that she had known; and Mrs Davilow's
timid maternal conscience dreaded whatever had brought on the
slightest hint of reproach. Hence, after thislittle scene,
the two concurred in excluding Mr Grandcourt
from their conversation.
  When Mr Gascoigne once or twice referred to him, Mrs
Davilow feared lest Gwendolen should betray some of her
alarming keensightedness about what was probably in her

*X130

uncle's mind; but the fear was not justified. Gwendolen
knew certain differences in the characters with which she
was concerned as birds know climate and weather; and, for
the very reason that she was determined to evade her
uncle's control, she was determined not to clash with him.
The good understanding between them was much fostered
by their enjoyment of archery together: Mr Gascoigne, as
one of the best bowmen in Wessex, was gratified to find the
elements of like skill in his niece; and Gwendolen was the
more careful not to  lose the shelter of his fatherly
indulgence, because since the trouble with Rex both Mrs
 Gascoigne and Anna had been unable to hide what she felt to
be a very  unreasonable alienation from her. Towards Anna
she took some pains to behave with a grateful affectionateness
but neither of them deared to mention Rex's name,
and Anna, to whom the thought of him was part of the air
she breathed, was ill at ease with the lively cousin who had
ruined his happiness. She tried dutifully to repress any sign
of her changed feeling; but who in pain can imitate the
glance and hand touch of pleasure?
  This unfair resentment had rather a hardening effect on
Gwendole, and trew her into a more defiant temper. Her
uncle too might be offended if she  refused the next person
who fell in love with her; and one day when that idea was
in her mind she said -
  "Mamma, I see now why girls are glad to be married - to
escape being expected to please everybody but themselves."
  Happily, Mr Middleton  was gone without having made
any avowal; and
notwithstanding the admiration for the
handsome Miss Harleth, extending perhaps over thirty
square  miles in a part of Wessex well studded with families
whose members included several disengaged young men,
each glad to seat himself by the lively girl with whom it
was so easy to get on in conversation, - notwithstanding
these grounds for arguing that Gwendolen was likely to
have other suitor more explicit than the cautious curate,
the fact was not so.
  Care has been taken not only  that the trees should not
sweep the stars down, but also that every man who admires a

*X131

fair girl shoul not be enamoured of her, and even that every
man who is enamoured should not necessarily declare himself.
There are various refined shapes in which the price
of corn, known to be  a potent cause in this relation, might, if
inquired into, show why a young lady, perfect in person,
accomplishments, and costume, has not the trouble of rejecting
many offers; and nature's order is certainly benignant
in not obliging us one and all to be desperately in love with
the most admirable mortal we have ever seen. Gwendolen,
we know, far from holding that supremacy in the minds
we know, was far from holding that supremacy in the minds
of all observers. Besides, it was a poor eight months
since she had come to Offendene, and some inclinations become
manifest slowly, like the sunward creeping of plants.
  In the face of this fact that no one of the eligible young
men already in the neighbourhood had made Gwendolen
an offer, why should Mr Grandcourt be thought of as
likely to do what they had left undone?
  Perhaps because he was thought of as still more eligible;
since a grat deal of what passes for likelihood in the world
is simply the reflex of a wish. Mr and Mrs Arrowpoint, for
example, having no anxiety that Miss Harleth should make
a brilliant marriage, had quite a different likelihood in
their minds.

*C10


˛my˛1st ˛my˛ ˛my˛Gent.˛my˛ What woman should be? Sir, consult the taste
˛1st˛ ˛Gent˛ ˛.˛ What woman should be? Sir, consult the taste
                 Of marriageable me. This planet's store
                 In iron, cotto, wool, or chemicals -
                 All matter rendered to our plastic skill,
                 is wrought in shapes responsive to demand:
                 Is wrought in shapes responsive to demand:
                 The market's pulse makes index high or low,
                 By rule sublime. Our daughters must be wives,
                 And to be wives must be what men will choose:
                 Men's taste is woman's test. You mark the phrase?
                 "Tis good, I think? - sense well winged and poised
                 With t's and s's.
˛2ns˛ ˛Gent˛ ˛.˛                   Nay, but turn it round:
                 Give us the test of taste. A fine ˛menu˛ -
                 It is today what Roman epicures
                 Insisted that a gentleman must eat
                 To earn the dignity of dining well?

Brackenshaw Park, where the Archery Meeting was
held, looked out from its gentle heights far over the
neighbouring valley to the outlying eastern downs and the broad
slow rise of cultivated contry hanging like a vast curtain
towards the west. The castle, which stood on the highest
platform of the clustered hills, was built of roughhewn
limestone, full of lights and shadows made by the dark
dust of lichens and the  washings of the rain. Masses of
beech and fir sheltered it on the notRth, and spread down
here and there along the green slopes like flocks seeking
the water which gleamed below. The archeryground was a
 carefullykept enclosure on a bit of tableland at the
farthest end of the park, protected towards the southwest
by tall elms and thick screen of hollies, which kept the
gravel walk and the bit of newlymown turf where the
targets were placed in agreeable afternoon shade. The
Archery hall with an archade in front showed like a white
temple against the greenery on the northen side.
  What could make a better background for the flowergroups
of ladies, moving and bowing and turning their
necks as it qould become the leisurely lilies to do if they

*X133

took the locomotion? The sounds too were very pleasant to
hear, even when the military band from Wancester ceased
to play: musical laughs in all the registers and a harmony
of happy friendly speeches, now rising towards mild excitement,
now sinking to an agreeable murmur.
  No openair amusement could be much freer from those
noisy, crowding condisions which spoil most modern
pleasures; no Archery Meeting could be more select, the
number of friends accompanying the members being
restricted by an award of tickets, so as to keep the maximum
within the limits of convenience for the dinner and
ball to be held in the castle. Within the enclosure no
plebeian spectators were admitted except Lord Brackenshaw's
tenants and their families, and of these it was
chiefly the feminine members who used the privilege,
bringing their little boys and girls or younger brothers and
sisters. The males among them relieved the insipidity of
the entertainment by imaginative betting, in ehich the
stake was "anything you like," on their favourite archers;
but the young maidens, having a different principle of
discrimination, were considering which of those sweetlydressed ladies
they would choose to be, if the choice were
allowed them. Probably the form these rural souls would
most have striven for as a tabernacle was some other than
Gwendolen's - one with more pink in her cheeks and hair
of the most fashionable yellow; but among the male judges
in the ranks immediately surrounding her there was unusual
unanimity  in pronouncing her the finest girl present.
  No wonder she enjoyed her existence on that July day.
Preeminence is sweet to those who love it, even under
mediocre circumstances: perhaps it is not quite mythical
that a slave has been proud to be bought first; and probably
a barndoor fowl on sale, though he may not have
understood himself to be  called the best of a bad lot, may
have a selfinformed consciousness of his relative importance, and
strut consoled. But for complete enjoyment the
outward must concur. And that concurrence was
happening to Gwendolen.
  Who can deny that bows and arrows are among the

*X134

priettiest weapons in the world for feminine forms to play
with? They prompt attitudes full of grace and power,
where that fine concentration of energy seen in all markmanship,
is freed from associations of bloodshed. The time honoured
British resource of "killing something" is no
longer carried on with bow and quiver; bands defending
their passes against an invading nation fight under another
sort of shade than a cloud of arrows; and poisoned darts
are harmless survivals  either in rhetoric or in regions
comfortably remote. Archery has no ugly smell of brimstone;
 breaks nobody's shins, breeds no athletic monsters; its only
danger is that of failing, which for generous blood is
enough to mould skilful action. And among the Brackenshaw
archers the prizes were all of the nobler symbolic
kind: no property to be carried off in a parcel, degrading
honour into  gain; but the gold arrow and the silver, the
gold star and the silver, to be  worn for a time in sign of
achievement and then transferred to the next who did
excellently. These signs of preeminence had the virtue of
wreths without their inconveniences, which might have
produced a melancholy effect in the heat of the ballroom.
Altogether the Brackenshaw Archery Club was an institution
framed with good taste, so as not to have by necessity
any ridiculous incidents.
  And today alla  incalculable elements were in its favour.
There was mild warmth, and no wind to disturb either hair
or drapery or the course of the arrow; all skilful preparation
had fair play, and when there was a general march to
extract the arrows the promenade of joyous young
creatures in light speech and laughter, the graceful movement
in common towards a common object, was a show
 worth looking at. Here Gwendolen seemed a Calypso
among her nymphs. It was in her attitudes and movements
that everyone was obliged to admit her surpassing charm.
  "That girl is like a highmettled racer," said Lord Brackenshaw
to young Clintock, one of the invited spectators.
  "First chop] tremendously pretty tto," said the elegant
Grecian, who had been paying her assiduous attention;
"I never saw her look better."

*X135

Perhaps she had never looked so well. Her face was
beaming with young pleasure in which there were no
malign rays of discontent; for being satisfied with her own
chances, she felt kindly towards everybody and was satisfied
with the universe. Not to have the highest distinction in
rank, not to be market out as an heiress, like Miss Arrowpoint,
gave an added triumph in eclipsing those advantages.
For personal recommedation she would not have
cared to change the family group accompanying her for
any other; her mamma's appearance would have suited an
amiable duchess; her uncle and aunt Gascoigne with Anna
made equally gratifying figures in their way; and Gwendolen
was too full of joyous belief  in herself to feel in the
least jealous though Miss Arrowpoint was one of the best
archeresses.
  Even the reappearence of the formidable Herr Klesmer,
which caused some surprise in the rest of the company,
seemed only to fall in with Gwendolen's inclination to be
amused. Short of Apollo himself, what great
musical ˛maestro˛ could make a good figure at an archery meeting?
There was a very satirical light in Gwendolen's eyes as she
lokked towards the Arrowpoint party on their first entrance,
when the contrast between Klesmer and the average
group of English county people seemed at its utmost intensity
in the close neighbourhood of his hosts - patrons,
as Mrs Arrowpoint would have liked to hear them called,
that she might deny the possibility of any longer patronising
 genius, its royalty being universally acknowledged. The
contrast might have amused  a graver personage than
Gwendolen. We English are a miscellaneous people, and
any chance fifty of us will present many varieties of animal
architecture or facial ornament; but it must be admitted
taht out prevailing expression is not that of a lively , impassioned
race, preoccupied with the ideal and carrying the
real as a mere makeweight. The strong point of the English
gentleman pure is the easy style of his fugure and
clothing; he objects to marked ins and outs in his costume,
and he also objects to looking inspired.
  Fancy an assemblage where the men had all that

*X136


ordinary stamp of the wellbred Englishman, watching the
entrance of Herr Klesmer - his mane of hair floating
backwards in massive inconsistency with the chimneypot
hat, which had the look of having been  put on for a joke
above his pronounced but well modelled features and
powerful clearshaven mouth and chin; his tall thin figure
clad in a way which, not being strictly English, was all the
worse for its apparent emphasis of intention. Draped in a
loose garnment with a Florentine ˛berretta˛ on his head, he
would have been fit to stand by the side of Leonardo da
Vinci; but  how when he presented himself in trousers
which were not what English feeling demanded about the
knees? - and when that fire that showed itself in his glances
at the movements of his head, as he looked round him
with curiosity, was turned into comedy by a hat which
ruled that mankind should have wellcropped hair and a
staid demeanour, such, for example, as Mr Arrowpoint's,
whose nullity of face and perfect tailoring might pass
everywhere without ridicule? One see why it is often
better for gratness to be dead, and to have got rid of the
outward man.
  Many present knew Klesmer, or knew of him: but they
had only seen him on candlelight occasions when he
appeared simply as a musician, and he had not yet that
supreme, worldwide celebrity which makes an artist great
to the most ordinary people by their knowledge of his great
expensiveness. It was literally a new light for them to see
him in - presented unexpectedly on this July afternoon in
an exclusive society: some were inclined to laugh, others
felt a little disgust at the want of judgment shown by the
Arrowpoints in  this use of t an introductory card.
  "What extreme guys those artistic fellows  usually are]"
said young Clintock to Gwendolen. "Do look at the figure
he cuts, bowing with his hand on his heart to Lady
Brackenshaw - and Mrs Arrowpoint's feather just reaching
his shoulder."
  "YOu are one of the profane, " said Gwendolen. "You are
blind to the majesty of genius. Herr Klesmer smites me

*X137

with awe; I feel crushed in his presence; my courage all
oozes from me."
  "Ah, you understand all about his music."
  "No, indeed," said Gwendolen, with a light laugh; "it is he
who understands all about mine and thinks it pitiable."
Klesmer's verdict on her singing had been an easier  joke to
her since he had been struck by her ˛plastik˛ ˛.˛
  "It is not addressed to the ears of the future, I suppose.
I'm glad of that: it suits mine."
  "Oh, you are very kind. But how remarkably well Miss
Arrowpoint looks today] She would make quite a fine
picture in that goldcoloured dress."
 "Too splendid, don't  you think?"
  "Well, perhaps a little too symbolical - too much like the
figure of Wealth in an allegory."
  This speech of Gwendolen had rather a malicious
sound, but it was not really more than a bubble of fun. She
did not wish Miss Arrowpoint or any one else to be out of
the way, believing in her own good fortune even more than
in her skill. The belief in both naturally grew stronger as
the shooting went on, for she promised to achieve one of
the best scores - a success which astonished  one in a
new member; and to Gwendolen's temperament one success
determined another. She drod on air , and all things
pleasant seemed possible. The hour was enugh for her,
and she was not obliged to think that she  should
do next to keep her life at the due pitch.
  "How does the scoring stand, I wonder?" said Lady
Brackenshaw, a gracious personage who, adorned with two
fair little girls and a boy of stout make, sat as Lady paramount.
Her lord had come up to her in one of the intervals
of shooting. "It seems to me that Miss Harleth is likely to
win the gold arrow."
  "Gad, I think she will, if she carries it on] she is running
Juliet Fenn hard. It is wonderful for one in her first year.
Catherine is not up to her usual mark," continued his
lordship, turning to the heiress's mother who sat near. "But
she got the gold arrow last time. And there's a luck even in

*X138

these games of skill. Tha's better. It gives the hinder ones
a chance."
  "Catherine will be very glad for other to win," said Mrs
Arrowpoint, "she is so magnanimous. It was entirely for
er considerateness that made us bring Herr Klesmer instead
of Canon Stopley, who had expressed a wish to come. For
her own pleasure, I am sure she would rather have brought
the Canon; but she is always thinking of others. I told her
it was not quite ˛en˛ ˛regle˛ to bring one so far out of our own
set; but she said, " Genius itself is not ˛en˛ ˛regle˛ ˛;˛ it comes
into
into the world to make new rules." And one must admit that."
  "Ay, to be sure," said Lord Brackenshaw, in a tone of
careless dismissal, adding quickly, "For my part, I am not
magnanimous; I should like to win. But, confound it] I
never have the chance now. I'm getting old and idle. The
young ones beat me. As old Nestor says - the gods don't
give us everything at one time: I was a young fellow once,
and now I am getting an old and wise one. Old, at any rate;
which is a gift that comes to everybody if they live long
enough, so it raises no jalousy." The earl smiled comfortably
at his wife.
  "Oh my lord, people who have been neighbours twenty
years must  not talk to each other about age," said Mrs
Arrowpoint. "Years, as the Tuscans say, are made for the
letting of houses. But where is our new neighbour? I
thought Mr Grandcourt was to be here today."
  Ah, by the way, so he was. The time's getting on too,"
said his lordship, looking at his watch. "But he only
got to Diplow the other day. He came to us on  Tusday and
said he had been a little bothered. He may have been pulled in
another direction. Why, Gascoigne]" - the Rector was just
then crossing at a little distance with Gwendolen on his
arm, and turned in compliance with the call - "this is a
little too bad; you not only beat us yourself, but you bring
up your niece to beat all the archeresses."
  "It ˛is˛ rather scandalous in her to get the better of elder
members," said Mr Gascoigne, with much inward satisfaction
curling his short upper lip. But it is not my doing, my

*X139

lord. I only meant her to make a tolerable figure, without
surpassing any one."
  "It is not my faul either," said Gwendolen, with pretty
archness. "If I am to aim, I can't help hitting."
  "Ay, ay, that may be a fatal business for some people,"
said Lord Brackenshaw, goodhumoured; then taking out
his watch and looking art Mrs Arrowpoint again - "The
time's getting on, as you say. But Grandcourt is always late.
I notice in town he's always late, and he 's no bowman -
understand nothing about it. But I told him he must
come; he would see the flower of the neighbourhood here.
He asked about you - had seen Arrowpoint 's card. I think
you had not made his acquaintance in town. He has been a
good deal abroad. People, don't know him much."
  "No; we are strangers," said Mrs Arrowpoint. "But that is
not what might have been expected. For his uncle Sir
Hugo Mallinger and I are great friends when we meet."
  "I don't know; uncles and nephews are not so likely to be
seen together as uncles and nieces," said his lordship,
smiling towards the Rector.  "But just come with me one
instant, Gascoigne, will you? I want to speak a word about
the cloutshooting."
  Gwendolen chose to go too and be deposited in the same
group with her mamma and aunt until she had to shoot
again. That Mr Grandcourt might after  all not appear on
the archeryground, had begun to enter into Gwendolen's
thought as a possible deduction from the completeness of
her pleasure. Under all her saucy satire, provoked chiefly
by her divination that her friends thought of him as a
desirable match for her, she felt something very far from
indiferrence as to the impression she would make on him.
True, he was not to have the slightest power over her (for
Gwendolen had not considered that the desire to conquer is
itself a sort of subjection); she had made up her mind that
he was to be one of those complimentary and assiduously
admiring men of ehom even her narrow  experience had
shown her several with variouscoloured beards and various
styles of bearing; and the sense that her friends would

*X140

want her to think him delightful, gave her a resistant
inclination to presuppose him ridiculous. But that was no
reason why she could spare his presence: and even a passing
prevision of trouble in case she despised and refused
him, raised not the shadow of a wish that he should save
her that trouble by showing no disposition to make her an
offer, Mr Grandcourt taking hardly any notice of her, and
becoming shortly engaged to Miss Arrowpoint, was not a
picture which flattered her imagination.
  Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw's
mode of accounting for Grandcourt's nonappearance; and when he did
arrive, no consciousness - not even Mrs Arrowpoint's or
Mr Gascoigne's - was more awake to the fact
than hers, although she steadily avoided looking
tpwards any point where he was likely to be. There should
be no slightest shifting of angels to betray that it was of
any consequence to her whether the muchtalkedof Mr
Mallinger Grandcourt presented himself or not. She became
again absorbed in the shooting, and so resolutely
abstained from looking round observantly that, even supposing
him to have taken a conspicous place among the
spectators, it might be clear she was not aware of him. And
all the while the certainty that he was there made a distinct
thread in her consciousness. Perhaps her shooting was the
better for it: at any rate, it gained in precision, and she at
last raised a delightful storm of clapping and applause by
three hits running in the gold - a feat which among the
Brackenshaw archers had not the vulgar reward of a
shilling polltax, but that of a special gold star to be worn
on the breast. That moment was not only a happy one to
herself - it  was just what her mamma and her uncle would
have chosen for her. There was a general falling into ranks
to give her space that she might advance conspicuously to
receive the gold star from the hands of Lady Brackenshaw;
and the perfect movement of her fine form was certainly a
pleasant thing to behold in the clear afternoon light when
the shadows were long and still. She was the central object
of that pretty picture, and every one present must gaze at
her. That was enough: she herself was determined to see

*X141

nobody in particular, or to turn her eyes any way except
towards Lady Brackenshaw, but her thoughts undeniably
turned in other ways. It entered a little into her pleasure
that Herr Klesmer must be observing her at a moment
when music was out of the question, and his superiority
very far in the background; for vanity is as ill at ease under
indifference as tenderness is under love which it
cannot
cannot return, and the unconquered Klesmer threw a trace of his
malign power even across her pleasant consciousness that
Mr Grandcourt was seeing her to the utmost advantage,
and was probably giving her an admiration unmixed with
criticism. She did not expect to admire ˛him˛ ˛,˛ but that was
not necessary to her peace of mind.
  Gwendolen met Lady Brackenshaw's gracious smile
without blushing (which only came to her when she was
taken by surprise), but with a charming gladness of expression, and then bent with easy grace to
]]] have the star fixed
near her shoulder. That little ceremony had been over long
enough for her to have exchanged playful speeches and
received congratulations as she moved among the groups
who were now interesting themselves in the results of the
scoring; but it happened that she stood outside examining
the point of an arrow with rather an absent air when Lord
Brackenshaw came up to her and said-
  "Miss Harleth, her is a gentleman who is not willing to
wait any longer for an introduction. He has been getting
Mrs Davilow to send me with him. Will you allow me to
introduce Mr Mallinger Grandcourt?"

*B2

*C11

*X145

The beginning of an acquaintance whether with persons or
things is to get a definite outline for our ignorance.


Mr Grandcourt's wish to be introduced had no suddenness
for Gwendolen; but when Lord Brackenshaw moved aside
a little for the prefigured stranger to come forward
and sPe felt herself face to face with the real man, there
was a little shock which flushed her cheeks and vexatiously
deepened with her consciousness of it. The shock came
from the reversal of her expectations: Grandcourt could
hardly have been more unlike all her imaginary protraits
of him. He was slightly taller than herself, and their eyes
seemed to be on a level; there was not the faintest smile on
his face as he looked at her, not a trace of selfconsciousness
of anxiety in his bearing; when he raised his hat he showed
an extensive baldness surrounded with a mere fringe of
reddishblond hair, but he also showed a p
perfect hand; the line of feature from brow to chin undisguised by
beard was decidedly handsome, with only moderate departures
from the perpendicular, and the slight whisker too
was perpendicular. It was not possible for a human aspect
to be freer from grimace or solicitous wrigglings; also it
was perhaps not possible for a breathing man wide awake
to look less animated. The correct Englishman, drawing
himself up from his bow into rigidity, assenting severely,
and seeming to be in a state of internal drill, suggests a
suppressed vivacity, and may be suspected of letting go
with some violence when he is  released from parade; but
Grandcourt's bearing had no rigidity, it inclined rather to
the flaccid. His complexion had a faded fairness resembling
that of an actress when bare of the artificial white and red;
his long narrow grey eyes expressed nothing but indifference.
Attempts at description are stupid: who can all
at once describe a human being? even when he is presented
to us we only begin that knowledge of his appearance
which must be completed by innumerable impressions
under differing circumstances. We recognise the alphabet;

*X146

we are not sure of the language. I am only mentioning the
points that Gwendolen saw by the light of a prepared
contrast in the first minutes of her meeting with Grandcourt:
they were summed up in the words, "He is not
ridiculous." But forthwith Lord Brackenshaw was gone, and
what is called conversation had begun, the first and
constant element in it being that Grandcourt looked at
Gwendolen persistently with a slightly exploring gaze, but
without change of expression, while she only occasionally
looked at him with a flash of observation a little softened
by coquery. Also, after her answers there was a longer or
shorter pause before he spoke again.
  "I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt
began. He spoke with a fine accent, but with a certain
broken drawl, as of a distinguished personage with a distinguished
cold on his chest.
  "Are you converted today?" said Gwendolen.
  (Pause during which she imagined various degrees and
modes of opinion about herself that might be entertained
by Grandcourt.)
  "Yes, since I saw you shooting. In things of this sort one
generally sees people missing and simpering."
  "I suppose you are a firstrate shot with a rifle."
  (Pause, during which Gwendolen, having taken a rapid
observation of Grandcourt, made a brief graphic description
of him to an indefinite hearer.)
  "I have left off shooting."
  "Oh, then you are a formidable person. People who have
done things once and left them off make one feel very
 contemptible, as if one were using castoff fashions. I hope
you have not left off all follies, because I practise a great many."
  (Pause, during which Gwendolen made several interpretations
of her own speech.)
  "What do you call follies?"
  "Well, in general, I think whatever is agreeable is called a
folly. But you have not left off hunting, I hear."
  (Pause, wherein Gwendolen recalled what she had heard
about Grandcourt's position, and decided that he was the
most aristocraticlooking man she had ever seen.)

*147

  "One must do something."
  "And do you care about the turf? - or is that among the
things you have left off?"
  (Pause, during which Gwendolen thought that a aman of
extremely calm, cold manners might be less disagreeable as
a husband than other men, and not likely to interfere with
his wife's preferences.)
  "I run a horse now and then; but I don't go in for the

LOGON thing as some men do. Are you fond of horses?"
  "Yes, indeed: I never like my life so well as when I am on
horseback, having a great gallop. I think of nothing. I only
feel myself strong and happy."
  (Pause, wherein Gwendolen wondered whether Grandcourt
would like what she said, but assured herself that she
was not going to disguise her tastes.)
  "Do you like danger?"
  "I don't know. When I am on borseback I never think of
danger. It seems to me that if I broke my bones I should

not feel it. I should go at anything that came in my way."
  (Pause, during which Gwendolen had run through a
whole hunting season with two chosen hunters to ride at
will.)
  "You would perhaps like tigerhunting or pigsticking. I
saw some of that for a season or two in the East. Everything
here is poor stuff after that."
  "˛You˛ are fond of danger, then?"
  (Pause, wherein Gwendolen speculated on the probability
that the men of coldest manners were the most adventurous,
and felt the stregth of her own insight, supposing the
question had to be decided.)
  "One must have something or other. But one gets used to it."
  "I begin to think I am very fortunate, because everything
is new to me: it is only that I can't get enough of it. I am
not used to anything except being dull, which I should like
to leave off as you have left off shooting."
  (Pause, during which it occured to Gwendolen that a
man od cold and distinguished manners might possibly be a
dull companion; but on the other hand she thought that
most persons were dull, that she had not observed

*X148

husbands to be companions - and that after all she was not
going to accept Grandcourt.)
  "Why are you dull?"
  "This is a dreadful neighbourhood. There is nothing to
be done in it. That is why I practised my archery."
  (Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of
an unmarried woman who could not go about and had no
command of anything must necessarily be dull through all
the degrees of comparison as time went on.)
  "You have made youself queen of it. I imagine you will
carry the first prize."
  "I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not
observe how well Miss Arrowpoint shot?"
  (Pause, whwrein Gwendolen was thinking that men had
been known to choose some one else than the woman they
most admired, and recalled several experiences of that kind
in novels.)
  "Miss Arrowpoint? No - that is, yes."
  "Shall we go and hear what the scoring says? Every
one is going to the other end now - shall we join them? I
think my uncle is looking towards me. He perhaps wants me."
  Gwendolen found a relief for herself by thus  changing
the situation: not that the ˛tete˛ ˛a˛ ˛tete˛ was quite disagreeable
to her; but while it lasted she apparently could not get
rid of unwonted flush in her cheeks and the sense
surprise which made her feel less mistress of herself than
usual. And this Mr Grandcourt, who seemed to feel his
own importance more than he did hers - must not take for
own importance more than he did hers - a sort of unreasonableness
few of us can tolerate - must not take for
granted that he was of great moment to her, or that because
others speculated on him as a disirable match she held
herself altogether at his beck. How Grandcourt had
filled up the pauses will be more evident hereafter.
  "You have just missed the gold arrow, Gwendolen," said
Mr Gascoigne. "Miss Juliet Fenn scores eight above you."
  "I am very glad to hear it. I should felt that I was
making myself too disagreeable - taking the best of everything,"
said Gwendolen, quite easily.
  It was impossible to be jalous of Juliet Fenn, a girl as

*X149

middling as midday market in everything but her archery
and her plainness, in which last she was noticeably like her
father: underhung and with recedeing brow resembling
that of the more intelligent fishes. (Surely, considering the
importance which is given to such an accident in female
offspring, marriageable men, or what the new English calls
"intending bridegrooms", should look at themselves dispassionately
in the glass, since their natural selection of a mate
prettier than themselves is not certain to bar the effect of
their own ugliness.)
  There was now a lively movement in the mingling
groups, which carried the talk along with it. Every one
spoke every one else by turns, and Gwendolen, who chose
to see what was going on around her now, abserved that
Grandcourt was having Klesmer presented to him by some
one unknown to her - a middleaged man with dark full
face  and fat hands, who seemed to be on the easiest terms
with both, and presently led the way in joining the Arrowpoints,
whose acquaintance had already been made by both
him and Grandcourt. Who this stranger was she did not
care much to know; but she wished to observe what was
Grandcourt's manner towards others than herself. Precisely
the same; except that he did not look much at Miss
Arrowpoint, but rather at Klesmer, who was speaking with
animation - now stretching out his long fingers horizontally,
now pointing his arms and tossing his mane, while he addressed
himself first to one and then the other, including
Grandcourt, who listened with an  impassive face and narrow eyes,
his left forefinger in his waistcoat pocket, and his right
slightly touching his thin  whisker.
  "I wonder which style Miss Arrowpoint admires most,"
was a thought that glanced through Gwendolen's mind
while her eyes and lips gathered rather a mocking expression.
But she would not indulge her sense of amusement by
watching as if she were  curious, and she gave all her
animation to those immediately around her, determined not to
care whwther Mr Grandcourt came  near her again or not.
  He did come, however, and at a moment when he could

*X150

propose to conduct Mrs Davilow to her carriage. "Shall we
meet again in the ballroom?" she said, as he raised his hat
at parting. The "yes" in reply had the usual slight drawl and
perfect gravity.
  ""you were wrong for once, Gwendolen," said Mrs
Davilow, during their few minutes' drive to the castle.
  "In what, mamma?"
  About Mr Grandcourt's appearance and manners. You
can't find anything ridiculous in him."
  "I suppose I could if I tried, but I don't want to do it,"
said Gwendolen, rather pettishly; and her mamma was
afraid  to say more.
  It was the rule on these occasions for the ladies and
gentlemen to dine apart, so that the dinner might take a
time of comparative ease and rest for both. Indeed the
gentlemen had a set of archery stories about the epicurism
of the ladies, who had somehow been reported to show a
revoltingly masculine judgment in venison, even asking for
a fat - a proof of the frightful rate at which corruption
might go on in women, but for severe social restraint. And
every year the amiable Lord Brackenshaw, who was something
of a ˛gourmet˛ ˛,˛ mentioned Byron's opinion that a woman
should never be seen eating,-introdicing it with a confidential
- "The fact is" as if he were for the first time admitting
his concurrence in that sentiment of the refined poet.

  In the ladies' diningroom it was evident that Gwendolen
was not a general favourite with her own sex; there were
no biginnings of intimacy between her and other girls,
and in conversation they rather noticed what she said than
spoke to her in free exchange. Perhaps it was that she was
not much interested in them, and when left alone in their
company had a sense of empty benches. Mrs Vulcany one
remarked that Miss Harleth was too fond of the gentlemen;
but we know that she was not in the least fond of
them - she was only fond of their homage - and women
did not give her homage. The exception to this willing
aloofness from her was Miss Arrowpoint, who often
manage unostentatiously to be by her side, and talked to
her with quiet friendliness.

*X151

  She knows, as I do, that our friends are ready to quarrel
over a husband for us," thought Gwendolen, "and she is
determined not to enter into the quarrel."
  "I think Miss Arrowpoint has the best manners I ever
saw," said Mrs Davilow, when she and Gwendolen were in a
dressingroom with Mrs Gascoigne and Anna, but at a
distance where they could have their talk apart.
  "I wish I were like her," said Gwendolen.
  Why? are you getting discontented with yourself,
Gwen?"
  "No; but I am discontented with things. She seems
contented."
  "I am sure you ought to be satisfied today. You must
have enjoyed the shooting. I saw you did."
  "Oh, that is over now, and I don't know what will come
next," said Gwendolen, stretching herself with a sort of
moan and throwing up her arms. They wre bare now:
it was the fashion to dance in the archery dress, throwing off
the jacket; and the simplicity of her white cashmere with
its border of pale green set off her form to the utmost. A thin
line of gold round her neck, and the gold star on her breast,
were her only ornaments. Her smooth soft hair piled up
into a grand crown made a clear line about her brow. Sir
Joshua would have been glad to take her portrait; and he
would have had an easier task than the historian at least in
this, that he would not have had to represent the truth of
change - only to give stability to one beautiful moment.
  "The dancing will come next," said Mrs Davilow. "You are
sure to enjoy that."
  "I shall only dance in the quadrille. I told Mr Clintock so.
I shall not waltz or polk with any one."
  "Why inthe world do you say that all on a sudden?"
  "I can't bear having ugly people so near me."
  "Whom do you mean by ugly people?"
  "Oh, plenty."
  "Mr Clintock, for example, is not ugly." Mrs Davilow
dared not mention Grandcourt.
  "Well, I hate wollen cloth touching me."
  "fancy]" said Mrs Davilow to her sister who now came up

*X152

from the other end of the room. "Gwendolen says she will
not waltz or polk."
  "She is rather given to whims,I think," said Mrs
Gascoigne, gravely. "It would be more becoming in her to
behave as other young ladies do on such an occasion as
this; especially when she has had the advantage of firstrate
dancing lessons."
  "Why should I waltz if I don't like it, aunt? It is not
in the Catechism."
  "My ˛dear˛ ˛]˛ ˛"˛ said Mrs Gascoigne, in a tone of severe check,
and Anna looked frightened at Gwendolen's daring. But
they all passed on without saying more.
  Apparently something had changed Gwendolen's mood
sice the hour of exulting enjoyment in the archeryground. B
But she did not look the worse under the chandeliers in
the ballroom, where the soft splendour of the scene
and the pleasant odours from the conservatory could not
but be soothing to the temper, when accompanied with the
consciousness of being preeminently sought for. Hardly a
dancing man but was anxious to have her for a partner,
and each whom she accepted was in a state of melancholy
remonstrance that she would not waltz or polk.
  "Are you under a vow, Miss Harleth?" - "why are you so
cruel to us all?" - "You waltzed with me in February." -
"And you who waltz so perfectly]" were exclamations not
without piquancy for her. The ladies who waltzed,
naturally thought that Miss Harleth only wanted to make
herself particular; but her uncle when he overheard her
refusal supported her by saying-
  "Gwendolen has usually good reasons." He thought
she was certainly more distinguished in not waltzing, and he
wished her to be distinguished. The archery ball was
intended to be kept at the subdued pitch  that suited all
dignities clerical secular: it was not an  escapement for
youthful high spirits, and he himself was of opinion that
the fashionable dances were too much of a romp.
  Among the remonstrant dancing men, however, Mr
Grandcourt was not numbered. After standing up for a
quadrille with Miss Arrowpoint, it seemed that he meant to

*X153

ask for no other partner. Gwendolen observed him
frequently with the Arrowpoints, but he never took an
opportunity of approaching her. Mr Gascoigne was
sometimes speaking to him; but Mr Gascoigne was everywhere.
It was in her mind now that she would probably after all
not have the least trouble about him: perhaps he had
looked at her without any particular admiration, and was
too much used to everything in the world to think of her as
more than one of the girls who were invited in that part of
the country. Of course] It was ridiculous of elders to entertain
notions about what a man would do, without having
seen him even through a telescope. Probably he meant to
marry Miss Arrowpoint> Whatever might come, she,
Gwendolen, was not going to be disappointed: the affair
was a joke whichever way it turned, for she had never
committed herself even by silent confidence in anything
Mr Grandcourt would do. Still, she noticed that he did
sometimes quietly and gradually change his position
according to hers, so that he could see her whenever she
was dancing, and if he did not admire her - so much the
worse for him.
  This movement for the sake of being in sight of her was
more direct than usual rather late in the evening, when
Gwendolen had accepted Klesmer as a partmner; and that
wideglancing personage, who saw evr]rything and nothing
by turns, said to her when they were walking, "Mr Grandcourt
is a man of taste. He likes to see you dancing."
  "Perhaps he likes to look at what is against his taste," said
Gwendolen, with a light laugh: she was quite courageous
with Klesmer now. "He may be so tired of admiring that he
likes disgust for a variaty."
  "Those words are not suitable to your lips," said Klesmer,
quickly, with one of his grand frowns, while he shook his
hand as if to banish the discordant sounds.
  "Are you as critical of words as of music?"
  "Certainly I am. I should require your words to be what
your face and form are - always among the meanings of
a noble music."
  "That is a compliment as well as a correction. I am

*X154

obliged for both. But do you know I am bold enough to
wish to correct ˛you˛ ˛,˛ and require you to understand a joke?"
  "One may understand jokes without liking them," said the
terrible Klesmer. "I have had opera books sent me full of
jokes; it was just because I understood them that I did not
like them. The comic people are ready to challenge a man
because he lookes grave. "You don't see the witticism, sir?"
  "No, sir, but I see what you meant."  Then I am what we
call ticketed as a fellow without ˛esprit˛ ˛.˛ But, in fact, said
Klesmer, suddenly dropping from his quick narrative to a
reflective tone, with an impressive frown, "I am very
sensible to wit and humour."
  "I am glad you tell me that," said Gwendolen, not without
some wickedness of intention. But Klesmer's thoughts had
flown off  on the wings of his own statement, as their habit
was, and she had the wickedness all to herself. "Pray, who is
that standing near the cardroom dorr?" she went on,
seeing there the same stranger with whom Klesmer had
been in animated talk on the archeryground. "He is a
friend of yours, I think."
  "No, no; an amateur I have seen in town: Lush, a Mr
Lush - too fond of Meyerbeer and Scribe - too fond of the
mechanicaldramatic."
  "Thanks. I wanted to know whether you thought his face
and form required that his words should be among the meanings
of noble music?" Klesmer was conquered, and flashed at her a
delightful smile which made them quite friendly
until she begged to be deposited by the side of her mamma.
  Threee minutes afterwards her preparations for Grandcourt's
indifference where all cancelled. Turning her head
after some remark to her mother, she found that he had
made his way up to her.
  "May I ask if you are tired of dancing, Miss Harleth?" he
began, looking down with his former unperturbed
expression.
  "Not in the least."
  "Will you do my the honour - the next - or another
quadrille?"
  "I should have been very happy," said Gwendolen, looking

*X155

at her card, "but I am engaged for the next to Mr Clintock
- and indeed I perceive that I am doomed for every
quadrille: I have not one to dispose of." She was not sorry
to punish Mr Grandcourt's tardiness, yet at the same time
she would have liked to dance withhim. She gave him a
charming smile as she looked up to deliver her answer, and
he stood still looking down at her with no smile at all.
  "I am unfortunate in being  too late," he said, after a
moment's pause.
  "It semmed to me  that you did not care for dancing," said
Gwendolen. "I  thought it might be one of the things you
had left off."
  "Yes, but I have not begun to dance with you," said
Grandcourt. Always there  the same pause before he
took up his cue. "You make dancing a new thing, as you
make archery."
  "Is novelty always agreeable?"
  "No, no - not always."
  "Then I don't know whether to feel  flattered or not.
When you had once danced with me there would be no
more novelty in it."
  "On the contrary; there would  probably be much more."
  "That is deep. I don't understand."
  "Is it difficult to make Miss Harleth understand her
power?" Here Grandcourt had turned to Mrs Davilow, who,
smiling gently at her daughter, said-
  "I think she does not generally stike people as slow to
understand."
  "Mamma," said Gwendolen, in a deprecating tone, "I am
adorably stupid, and want everything explained to me -
when the meaning is pleasant."
  "If you are stupid, I admit that stupidity is adorable,"
returned Grandcourt, after the usual pause, and without
change of tone. But clearly he knew what to say.
  "I begin to think that my cavalier has forgotten me,"
Gwendolen observed after a little while. "I see the quadrille
is being formed."
  "He deserves to be renounced," said Grandcourt.
  "I think he is very pardonable," said Gwendolen.

*X156

  "There must have been some misunderstanding," said
Mrs Davilow, "Mr Clintock was too anxious about the
engagement to have forgotten it."
  But now Lady Brackenshaw came up and said, "Miss
Harleth, Mr Clintock has charged me to express to you his
deep regret that he was obliged to leave without having the
pleasure of dancing with you again. An express came from
his father the archdeacon: something important: he was
obliged to go. He was ˛au˛ ˛desespoir˛ ˛.˛ ˛"˛
  "Oh, he was very good to remember the engagement
under the circumstances," said Gwendolen. "I am sorry he
was called away." It was easy to be politely sorrowful on so
felicitous an occasion.
  "Then I can profit by Mr Clintock's misfortune?" said
Grandcourt. "May I hope that you will let me take his
place?"
  "I shall be very happy to dance the next quadrille with you."
  The appropriateness of the event seemed an augury, and
as Gwendolen stood up for the quadrille with Grandcourt,
there was a rivival in her of the exultation - the sense of
carrying everything before her, which she felt earlier
in the day. No man could have walked through the
quadrille with more irreproachable ease than Grandcourt;
and the absence of all eagerness in his attention to her
suited his  partner's taste. She was now convinced that he
meant to distinguished her, to mark his admiration of her in
a noticeable way; and it began to appear probable that she
would have it in her power to reject him, whence there was
a pleasure in reckoning up the advantages which would
male her rejection splendid, and in giving Mr Grandcourt
his utmost value. It was also agreeable  to divine that his
exclusive selection of her to dance with, from among all
the unmarried ladies present, would attract observation;
though she studiously avoided seeing this, and at the end
of the quadrille walked away on Grandcourt's arm as if he
she had been one of the shortest sighted instead of the longest
and widest sighted of mortals. They encountered Miss
Arrowpoint, who was standing with Lady Brackenshaw and
a group of gentlemen. The heiress looked at Gwendolen

*X157

invitingly and said, "I hope you will vote with us, Miss
Harleth, and Mr Grandcourt too, though he is not an
archer." Gwendolen and Grandcourt paused to join the
group, and found that the voting turned on the project of a
pinic archery meeting to be held in Cardell Chase, where
the evening entertainment would be more poetic than a ball
under chandeliers - a feast of sunset lights along the glades
and through the branches and over the solemn treetops.
  Gwendolen thought the scheme delightful - equal to
playing Robin Hood and Maid Marian; and Mr Grandcourt,
when appealed to a second time, said it was a thing to
be done; whereupon Mr Lush, who stood behind Lady
Brackenshaw's elbow, drew Gwendolen notice by saying,
with a familiar look and tone, to Grandcourt, "Diplow would
be a good place for the meeting, and more convenient:
there's a fine bit between the oaks towards the north gate."
  Impossible to look more unconscious of being addressed
than Grandcourt; but Gwendolen took a new survey of the
speaker, deciding, first, that he must be in terms of intimacy
with the tenant of Diplow, and, secondly, that he would
never, if she could help it, let him come within a yard of
her. She was subject to physical antiphaties, and Mr Lush's
prominent eyes, fat though not clumsy figure, and strong
black greybesprinkled hair of frizzy thickness, which, with
the rest of  his prosperous person, was enviable to many,
created one of the strongest of her antipathies. To be safe
from his looking at her, she murmured to Grandcourt, "I
should like to continue walking."
  He obeyed immediately; but when they were thus away
from any audience, he spoke no word for several minutes,
and she, out of a halfamused, halfserious inclination for
experiment, would not speak first. They turned into the
large conservatory, beautifully lit up with Chinese lamps.
The other couples there were at  a distance
which would not have interfered with any dialogue, but still they
walked in silence until they reached the farther end where there
was a flush of pink light, and the second wide opening into
the ballroom. Grandcourt, when they had half turned
round, paused and said languidly-

*X158

  "Do you like this kind of things?"
  If the situation had been described to Gwendolen half an
hour before, she would have laughed heartily at it, and
could only have imagined herself returning a playful,
sattirical answer. But for some mysterious reason - it was a
mystery of which she had a faint wondering consciousness
- she dared not be satirical: she had begun to feel a wand
over her that mede her afraid of offending Grandcourt.
  "Yes," she said, quietly, without considering what "kind of
thing" was meant - whether the flowers, the scents, the ball
in general, or this episode of walking with Mr Grandcourt
in particular. And they returned along the conservatory
without farther interpretation. She then proposed to go
and sit down in her old place, and they walked among
scattered couples preparing for the waltz to the spot where
Mrs Davilow had been seated all the evening. As they
approached it her seat was vacant, but she was coming
towards it again, and, to Gwendolen's shuddering annoyance,
with Mr Lush at her elbow. There was no avoiding
the confrontation: her mamma came close to her before
they had reached the seats, and, after a quiet greeting
smile, said innocently, "Gwendolen, dear, let me present Mr
Lush to you." Having just made the acquaintance of this
personage, as an intimate and constant companion of Mr
Grandcourt's, Mrs Davilow imagined it altogether desirable
that her daughter also should make the acquaintance.
  It was hardly a bow that Gwendolen gave - rather, it was
the slightest forward sweep of the head away from the
physiognomy that inclined itself towards her, and she
immediately moved towards her seat, saying "I want to put
on my burnous." No sooner had she reached it, than Mr
Lush was there, and had the burnous in his hand: to
annoy this supercilious young lady, he would incur the
offence of forestalling Grandcourt; and, holding up the
garment close to Gwendolen, he said, "Pray, permit me?"
But she, wheeling away from him as if he had been a
muddy hound, glided on to the ottoman, saying, "No,
thank you."
  A man who forgave this would have much Cristian

*X159

feeling, supposing he had intended to be agreeable to the
young lady; but before he seized the burnous Mr Lush had
ceased to have that intention. Grandcourt quietly took the
drapery from him, and Mr Lush, with a slight bow moved
away.
  "You had perhaps better put it on," said Mr Grandcourt,
looking down on her without change of expression.
  Thanks; perhaps it would be wise," said Gwendolen,
rising and submitting very gracefully to take the burnous
on her shoulders.
  After that, Mr Grandcourt exchanged a few polite
speeches with Mrs Davilow, and in taking leave, asked
permission to call at Offendene the next day. He was
evidently not offended by the insult directed towards his
friend. Certainly, Gwendolen's refusal of the burnous from
Mr Lush was open to the interpretation that she wished to
receive it from Mr Grandcourt. But she, poor child, had
had no design in this action, and was simply following her
antipathy and inclination, confiding in them as she did in
the more reflective judgments into which they entered as
sap into leafage. Gwendolen had no sense that these men
were dark enigmas to her, or that she needed any help in
drawing conclusions about them - Mr Grandcourt at least.
The chief question was, how far his character and ways might answer her wiwishes; and unless she
]]] were satisfied about that,
she had said to herself that she would not accept his offer.


  Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in
human history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with
her small inferences on the way in which she could make
her life pleasant? - in a time, too, when ideas were with
fresh vigour making armies of themselves, and the
universal kinship was declaring itself fiercely: when women
on the other side of the world would not mourn for the
husbands and sons who died bravely in a common cause,
and men stinted of bread on our side of the world heard of
that willing loss and were patient: a time when the soul
of man was waking to pulses which had for centuries been


*X160

beating in him unheard, until their full sum made a new life
of terror or of joy.
  What in the midst of that mighty drama are girls and
their blind visions? They are the Yea or Nay of that good
for which men are enduring and fighting. In these delicate
vessels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of
human affections.

*C12

          "O genglemen, the time of life is short;
           To spend that shortness basely were too long,
           If life did ride upon a dial's point,
           Still endind at the arrival of an hour."
                                 - Shakespeare: ˛Henry˛ ˛IV˛ ˛.˛

On the second day after the Archery Meeting, Mr
Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt was at his breakfasttable
with Mr Lush. Everything around them was agreeable:
the summer air through the open windows, at which the
dogs could walk in from the old green turf on the lawn; the
soft, purplish colouring of the park beyond, stretching
towards a mass of bordering wood; the still life in the
room, which seemed the stiller for its sober antiquatedelegance, as if it kept a conscious,
]]] wellbred silence, unlike
the restlesness of vulgar furniture.
  Whether the gentlemen were agreeable to each other was
less evident. Mr Grandcourt had drawn his chair asideas
to face the lawn, and, with his left leg over another chair,
and his right elbow on the table, was smoking a large cigar,
while his companion was still eating. The dogs - halfa
dozen of various kinds were moving lazily in and out, or
taking attidutes of brief attention - gave a vacillating
preference first to one gentleman, then to the other; being
dogs in such good circumstances that they could play at
hunger, and liked to be served with delicacies which they
declined to put into their mouths; all except Fetch, the

*X161

beautiful livercoloured waterpasniel, which sat with its
forepaws firmly planted and its expressive brown face
turned upward, watching Grandcourt with unshaken
constancy. He held in his lap a tiny Maltese dog with a
tiny silver collar and bell, and when he had a hand unused
by cigar or coffeecup, it rested on this small parcel of
animal warmth. I fear that Fetch was jalous, and wounded
that her master gave her no word or look; at last it seemed
that she could bear this neglect no longer, and she gently
put her large silky paw on her master's leg. Grandcourt
looked at her with unchanged face for half a minute, and
then took the trouble to lay down his cigar while he lifted
the unimpassioned Fluff close to his chin and gave it caressing
pats, all the while gravely watching Fetch who, poor
thing, whimpered interruptedly, as if trying to repress that
sign of discontent, and at last rested her head beside the
appealing paw, looking up with piteous beseeching. So, at
least, a lover of dogs must have interpreted Fetch, and
Grandcourt kept so many dogs that he was reputed to love
them; at any rate, his impulse to act just in this way started
from such an interpretation. But when the amusing anguish
burst forthh iin a howling bark, Grandcourt pushed Fetch
down without speaking, and, depositing Fluff carelessly on
the table (Where his black nose predominated over a saltcellar),
began to look to his cigar, and found, with some annoyance
against Fetch as the cause, that the brute of a cigar
required relighting. Fetch, having begun to wail, found, like
others of her sex, that it was not easy to leave off; indeed, the
second howl was a louder one, and the third was like unto it.
  "Turn out that brute, will you?" said Grandcourt to Lush,
without raising his voice or looking at him - as if he
counted on attention to the smallest sign.
  And Lush immediately rose, lifted Fetch, though she was
rather heavy and he was not fond of stooping, and carried
her out, disposing of her in some way that took him a
couple of minutes before he returned. He then lit a cigar
placed himself at an angle where he could see Grandcourt's
face without turning, and presently said -
  "Shall you ride or drive to Quetcham today?"

*X162

  "Iam not going to Quetcham."
  "You did not go yesterday."
  Grandcourt smoked in silence for half a minute, and
then said -
  "I suppose you sent my card and inquiries."
  "I went myself at four, and said you were sure to be there
shortly. They would suppose some accident prevented you
from fulfilling the intention. Especially if you go today."
  Silence for a couple of minutes. Then Grandcourt said,
"What men are invited here with their wives?"
  Lush drew out a notebook. "The Captain and Mrs
Torrington come next week. Then there are  Mr Hollis, and
Lady Flora, and the Cushats, and the Gogoffs."
  "Rather a rugged lot," remarked Grandcourt after a while.
"Why did you ask the Gogoffs? When you write invitations
in my name, be good enough to give me a list, instead of
bringing  down a giantess on me without my knowledge.
She spoils the look of the room."
  "You invited the Gogoffs yourself, when you met them iin
Paris."
  "what has my meeting in Paris to do with it? I told
you to give a list."
  Grandcourt like many others, had two remarkably
different voices. Hitherto we have heard hinm speaking in a
superficial interrupted drawl suggestive chiefly of languor
and ˛ennui˛ ˛.˛ But this last brief speech was uttered in subdued,
inward, yet distinct tones, which Lush had long been used
to recognise as the expression of a peremptory will.
  "Are there any other couples you would like to invite?"
  "Yes; think of some decent people, with a daughter or two.
And one of your damned musicians. But not a comic fellow."
  "I wonder if Klesmer would consent to come to us when
he leaves Quetcham. Nothing but firstrate music will go
down with Miss Arrowpoint."
  Lush spoke carelessly, but he was really seasing an opportunity
and fixing an abservant look on Grandcourt, who
now for the first time turned his eyes towards his companion,
but slowly, and without speaking until he had given
two long luxurious puffs, when he said perhaps in a lower

*X163

tonethan ever, but with a perceptible edge of contempt -
  "What in the name of nonsense have I to do with Miss
Arrowpoint and her music?"
  "Well, something," said Lush, jocosely. "You need not give
yourself much trouble, perhaps. But some forms must be
gone through before a man can marry a million."
  "Very likely. But I am not going to marry a million."
  "That's a pity - to fling away an opportunity of this sort,
and knock down your own plans."
  "˛Your˛ plans, I suppose you mean."
  "You have some debts, you know, and things may turn
out inconveniently after all. The heirship is not ˛absolutely˛
certain."
  Grandcourt did not answer, and Lush went on.
  "It really is a fine opportunity. The father and mother ask
for nothing better, I can see, and the daughter's look and
manners require no allowances, any more than isf she
hadn't a sixpence. She is not beautiful; but equal to carrying
any rank. And she is not likely to refuse such prospects
as you can offer her."
  "Perhaps not."
  "The father and mother would let you do anything you
liked with them."
  "But I should not like to do anything with them."
  Here it was Lush who made a little pause before speaking
again, and then said in a deep voice of remonstrance,
"Good God, Grandcourt] after your experience, will you let a
whim interfere with your comfortable settlement in life?"
  "Spare your oratory. I know what I am going to do."
  "What?" Lush put down his cigar and thrust his hands
into his side pockets, as if he had to face something
exasperating, but meant to keep his temper.
  "I am going to marry the other girl."
  "Have you  in love?" This question carried a strong
sneer.
  "I am going to marry her."
  "You have made her an offer already, then?"
  "No."
  "She is a young lady with a will of her own, I fancy.

*X164

Extremely well fitted to make a rumpus. She would know
what she liked."
  "She doesn't like you," said Grandcourt, with the ghost of
a smile.
  "Perfectly true," said Lush, adding again in a markedly
sneering tone "However, if you and she are devoted to each other
that will be enough."
  Grandcourt took no notice of this speech, but sipped his
coffee, rose, and strolled out in the lawn, all the dogs
following him.
  Lush glanced after him a moment, then resumed his
cigar and lit it, but smoked slowly, consulting his beard
with inspecting eyes and fingers, till he finally stroked it
with an air of having arrived at some conclusion, and said,
in a subdued voice -
  "Check, old boy]"
  Lush, being a man of some ability, had not known
Grandcourt for fifteen years without learning what sort of
measures were useless with him, though what sort might be
useful remained often dubious. In the beginning of his
career he held a fellowship, and was near taking orders for
the sake of a college living, but not being fond of that
prospect accepted instead the office of travelling companion
to a marquess, and afterwards to young Grandcourt, who
had lost his father early, and who found Lush so convenient
that he had allowed him to become prime minister
in all his more personal affairs. The habit of fifteen years
had made Grandcourt more and more in need of the lazy
luxury to ehich his transactions on behalf of Grandcourt
made no interruption worth reckoning. I cannot say that
the same lenthened habit had intensified Grandcourt's
want of respect for his companion since that want had been
absolute from the beginning, but it had confirmed his sense
that he might kick Lush if he chose - only he never did
choose to kick any animal, because the act of kicking is a
compromising attitude, and a gentleman's dogs should be
kicked for him. He only said things which might have
expose himself to be kicked if his confidant had been a

*X165

man of indipendent spirit. But what son of a vicar who has
stinted his wife and daughters of calico in order to send his
male offspring to Oxford, can keep an indipendent spirit
when he is bent on dining with high discrimination, riding
good horses, living generally in the most luxuriant honeyblossomed
clover - and all without working? Mr Lush had
passed for a scholar once, and still a sense of scholarship
when he was not trying to remember much of it; but
the bachelors' and other arts which soften manners are a
timehonoured prparation for sinecures; and Lush's present
comfortable provision was as good as a sinecure in not requiring
more than the odour of departed learning. He was
not unconscious of being held kickable, but he preferred
counting that estimate among the peculiarities of Grandcourt's
character, which made one of his incalculable moods
or judgments as good as another. Since his own opinion
or judgments as good as another. Since in his own opinion
he had never done a bad action, it did not seem necessary to
consider whether he should be likely to commit one of his
love of ease required it. Lush's love of ease was well satisfied
at present, and if his puddings were rolled towards him in the
dust, he took the inside bits and found them relishing.
  This morning, for example, though he had encountered
more annoyance than usual, he went to his private sittingroom
and played a good hour on the violoncello.

*C13

                     "Philistia, be thou glad of me]"

Grandcourt having made up his mind to marry Miss
Harleth showed a power of adapting means to ends.
During the next fortnight there was hardly a day on which
by some arrangment or other he did not see her, or prove
by emphatic attentions that she  occupied his thoughts. His
cousin Mrs Torrington was now doing the honours of his
house, so that Mrs Davilow and Gwendolen could be invited

*X166

to a large party at Diplow in which there were many
witnesses how the ghost distinguished the dowerless beauty,
and showed no  solecitude about the heiress. The world -
 I mean Mr Gascoigne and all the families worth speaking of
within visit distance of Pennicote - felt an assurance on
the subject which in the Rector's mind converted itself into
a resolution to do his duty by his niece and see that the
settlements were adequate. Indeed the wonder to him and
Mrs Davilow was that the offer for which so many suitable
occasions presented themselves had not been already made;
and in this wonder Grandcourt himself was not without a
share. When he had told his resolution to Lush he had
thought that the affair would be concluded more quickly,
and to his own surprise he had repeatedly promised himself
in a morning that he would today give Gwendolen the
opportunity of accepting him, and had found in the evening
that the necessary formality was still unaccomplished.
This remarkable fact served to heighten his
determination on another day. He had never admitted to himself that
Gendolen might refuse him, but - heaven help us all] -
we were often unable to act on our certainties; our objection
to a contrary issue (were it possible) is so wrong that it
rises like a spectral illusion between us and our certainty: we
are rationally sure that the blindworm cannot bite us
mortally, but it would be so intolerable to be bitten,
and the creature has a biting look - we decline to handle it.
  He had asked leave to have a beautiful horse of his
brought for Gwendolen to ride. Mrs Davilow was to
accompany her in the carriage, and they were to go to
Diplow  to lunch, Grandcourt conducting them. It was a
fine midharvest time, not too warm for a noonday ride of
five miles to be delightful: the poppies glowed on the
borders of the fields, there was enough breeze to move
gently like a social spirit among the ears of uncut corn, and
to wing the shadow of a cloud across the soft grey downs;
here the sheaves were standing, there the horses were
straining their muscles under the last load from a wide
space of stubble, but everywhere the green pastures made a
broader setting for the cornfields, and the cattle tokk their

*X167

rest under wide branches. The road lay throgh a bit of
country where the dairyfarms looked much as they did in
the days of our forefathers - where peace and permanence
seemed to find a home away from the busy change that
sent the railway train flying in the distnace.
  But the spirit of peace and permanence did not penetrate
poor Mrs Davilow 's mind so as to overcome her habit of
uneasy foreboding. Gwendolen and Grandcourt cantering
in fron of her, and then slackening their pace to a conversational
walk till the carriage came up with them again,
made a gratifying sight; but it served chiefly to keep up the
conflict of hopes and fears about her daughter's lot. Here
was an irresistible opportunity for a lover to speak and put
an end to all uncertainties, and Mrs Davilow could only
hope with trembling that Gwendolen's decision would be
favourable. Certainly Rex's love had been repugnant to
her, Mr Grandcourt had the advantage of being in complete
contrast with Rex; and that he had produced some
quite novel impression on her seemed evident in her marked
abstinence from satirical observations, nay, her total silence
about his characteristics, a silence which Mrs Davilow did
not dare break. "Is he a man she would be happy with?" -
was a question that inevitably arose in the mother's mind.
"Well, perhaps as happy as she would be with any one else  -
or as most other women are" - was the answer with which she
tried to quiet herself; for she could not imagine Gwendolen
under the influence of any feeling which would make her
satisfied in what we traditionally call "mean circumstances."
  Grandcourt's own thought was looking in the same
direction: he wanted to have done with the uncertainty
that belonged to his not having spoken. As to any further
uncertainty - well, it was something without any reasonable
basis, some quality in the air which acted as an irritant
to his wishes.
  Gwendolen enjoyed the riding, but her pleasure did not
break forth in girlish unpremeditated chat and laughter as
it did on that morning with Rex. She spoke a little, and
even laughed, but with a lightness as of a faroff echo: for
her too there was some peculiar quality in the air - not, she

*X168

was sure, ay subjugation of her will by Grandcourt,
and the splendid prospects he meant to offer her; for
Gwendolen desired every one, that dignified gentleman
himself included, to understand that she was going to do
just as she liked, and that they had better not calculate on
her pleasing them. If she chose to take this husband, she
would have him know that she was not going to renounce
her freedom, or according to her favourite formula, "not
going to do as other women did."
  Grandcourt's speeches this morning were, as usual, all of
that brief sort which never fails to make a conversational
figure when the speaker is held important in his circle.
Stopping so soon, they gave signs of a  suppressed and
formidable ability to say more, and have also the meritorious
quality of allowing lengthiness to others.
  "How do you like Criterion's paces?" he said, after they had
entered the park and were slackening from a canter to a walk.
  "He is delightful to ride. I should like to have a leap with
him, if it would not frighten mamma. There was a good wide
channel we passed five minutes ago. I should like to
have a gallop back and take it."
  "Pray do. We can take it together."
  "no, thaks. Mamma is so timid - idf she saw me it might
make her ill."
  "Let me go and explain. Criterion would take it without fail."
  "No - indeed - you are very kind - but it would alarm
her  too much. I dare take any leap when she is not by; but
I do it and don't tell her about it."
  "We can let the carriage pass and then set off."
  "No, no, pray don't think of it more; I spoke quite
randomly," said Gwendolen; she began to feel a new objection
to carrying out her own proposition.
  "But Mrs Davilow knows I shall take care of you."
  "Yes, but she would think of you as having to take care
of my broken neck."
  There was a considerable pause before Grandcourt said,
looking towards her, "I should like to have the right always
to take care of you."
  Gwendolen did not turn her eyes on him: it seemed to

*X 169

her a long while that she was first blushing, and then
turning pale, but to Grandcourt's rate of judgment she
answer soon enough, with the lightest flutetone and a
careless movement of the head, "Oh, I am not sure that I
want to be taken care of: if I chose to risk breaking my
neck, I should like to be at liberty to do it."
  She checked her horse as she spoke, and turned in her
saddle, looking towards the advancing carriage. Her eyes
swept across Grandcourt as she made this movement, but
there was no language in them to correct the carelessness
of her reply. At that very moment she was aware that she
was risking something - not her neck, but the possibility of
finally checking Grandcourt's advances, and she did not
feel contented with the possibility.
  "Damn her] thought Grandcourt, as he too checked his
horse. He was not a wordy thinker, and this explosive
phrase stood for mixed impressions which eloquent
 interpreters might have expanded into some sentences
full of an irritated sense that he was being mystified, and a
determination that this girl should not make a fool of him. Did
she want him to throw himself at her feet and declare that
he was dying for her? It was not by that gate that she
would enter on the priviles he could give her. Or did she
expect him to write his proposals? Equalyy a delusion. He
would not make his offer in any way that could palce him
definetly in the possition of being rejected. But as to her
accepting him, she had done it already in accepting his
marked attentions; and anything which happened to break
them off would be understood to her disadcantage. She was
merely coquetting, then?
  However, the carriage came up, and no further ˛tete˛ ˛a˛
˛tete˛ could well occur before their arrival at the house,
where there was abundant company, to whom Gwendolen,
clad in ridingdress, with her hat laid aside, clad also in the
repute of being chosen by Mr Grandcourt, was naturally a
centre of observation; and since the objectionable Mr Lush
was not there to look at her, this stimulus of admiring
attention heightened her spirits, and dispersed, for the
time, the uneasy consciousness of divided impulses which

*X170

threatened her with repentance of her own acts. Whether
Grandcourt had been offended or not there was no
judging: his manners were unchanged, but Gwendolen's
acuteness had not gone deeper than to discern that his
manners were no clue for her, and because there were
unchanged she was not the less afraid of him.
  She had not been at Diplow before except to dine; and
since certain points of view from the windows and the
garden were worth showing, Lady Flora Hollis proposed
after launcheon, when some of the guests had dispersed, and
the sun was sloping towards four o'clock, that the remaining
party should make a little exploration. Here came
frequent opportunities when Grandcourt might have
retained Gwendolen apart, and have spoken to her unheard.
But no] He indeed spoke to no one else, but what he
said was nothing more eager or intimate than it had been
in their first interview. He looked at her not less than
usual; and some of her defiant spirit having come back, she
looked full at him in return, not caring - rather preferring
- that his eyes had no expression in them.
  But at last it seemed as if he entertained some contrivance
After they had nearly made the tour of the
grounds, the whole party paused by the pool to be amused
with Fetch's accomplishment of bringing a waterlily to the
bank like Cowper's spaniel Beau, and having been disappointed
in his first attempt insisted  on his trying again.
  Her Grandcourt, who stood with Gwendolen outside the
group, turned deliberately, and fixing his eyes on a knoll
plated with American shrubs, and having a winding path
up it, said languidly-
  "This ia a bore. Shall we go up there?"
  "Oh, certainly - since we are exploring," said Gwendolen.
She was rather pleased, and yet afraid.
  The path was too narrow for him to offer his arm, and
they walked up in silence. When they were on a bit of
platform at the summit, Grandcourt said-
  "There is nothing to be seen here: the thing was not
worth climbing."
  How was it that Gwendolen did not laugh?She was

*X171

perfectly silent, holding up the folds of her robe like a
statue, and giving a harder grasp to the handle of her whip,
which she had snatched up automatically with her hat
when they had first set off.
  "What sort of place do you like?" said Grandcourt/
  "Different places are agreeable in their way. On the
whole, I think, I prefer places that are open and cheerful. I
am not fond of anything sombre.
am not fond of anything sombre."
  "Your place at Offendene is too sombre."
  "It is, rather."
  "You will not remain there long, I hope."
  Oh yes, I think so. Mamma likes to be near her sister."
  Silence for a short space.
  "It is not to be supposed that ˛you˛ will always live there,
though Mrs Davilow may."
  "I don't know. We women can't go in search of
advantures - to find out the NorthWest Passage or the
source of the Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must
stay where we grow, or where the gardners like to transplant
us. We are brought up like the flowers, to look as
pretty as we can, and be dull without complaining. That is
my notions about the plants: they are often bored, and that
is the reason why some of them got poisonous. What
do you think?" Gwendolen had run on rather nervously,
lightly whipping the rhododendron bush in front of her.
  "I quite agree. Most things are bores," said Grandcourt,
his mind having been pushed into an easy current, away
from its intended track. But after a moment's pause he
continued in his broken, refined drawl -
  "But a woman can be married."
  "Some women can."
  "You certainly, unless you are obstinately cruel."
  "I am not sure that I am both cruel and obstinate."
Here Gwendolen suddenly turned her head and looked full
at Grandcourt, whose eyes she had felt to be upon her
throughout their conversation. She was wondering what
the effect of looking at him would be on herself rather than
on him.
  He stood perfectly still, half a yard or more away from

*X172

her; and it flashed through her thought that a sort of lotoseater's
stupor had begun in him and was taking possession
of her. Then he said -
  "Are you as uncertain about yourself as you make others
about you?"
  "I am quite uncertain about myself; I don't know how
uncertain others may be."
  "And you wish them to understand that you don't care?"
said Grandcourt, with a touch of new hardness in his tone.
  "I did not say that," Gwendolen replied, hesitatingly, and
turning her eyes away whipped the rhododendron bush
again. She wished she were on horseback that she might
set off on a canter. It was impossible to set off running down
the knoll.
  "You do care, then," said Grandcourt, not more quickly,
but with a softened drawl.
  "Ha] my whip]" said Gwendolen, in a little scream of
distress. She had let it go - what could be more natural in
a slight agitation? - and - but this seemed less natural
in a goldhandled whip which had been left altogether to
itself - it had gone with some force over the immediate
shrubs, and had lodged itself in the branches of an azalea
halfway down the knoll. She could run down now, laughing
prettily, and Grandcourt was obliged to follow; but she was
beforehand with him in rescuing the whip, and continued
on her way to the level ground, when she paused and
looked at Grandcourt with an exasperating brightness in
her glance and a heightened colour, as if she had carried a
triumph, and these indications were still noticeable to Mrs
Davilow when Gwendolen and Grandcourt joined the rest of
the party.
  "It is all coquetting," thought Grandcourt; "the next time
I beckon she will come down."
  It seemed to him likely that the final beckoning might
happen the very next day, when there was to be a picnic
archery meeting in Cardell Chase, according to the plan
projected on the evening of the ball.
  Even in Gwendolen 's mind that result was one of two
likelihoods that presented themselves alternately,
likelihoods that presented themselves alternately, one of

*173

two decisions towards which she was being precipitated, as
if they were two sides of a boundaryline, and she did not
know on which she should fall. This subjection to a possible
self, a self not to be absolutely predicted about, caused
her some astonishment and terror: her favourite key of life
- doing as she liked - seemed to fail her, and she could not
foresee what at a given moment she might like to do. The
prospect of marrying Grandcourt really seemed more
attractive to her than she had believed beforehand that
any marriage could be: the dignities, the luxuries, the
power of  doing a great deal of what she liked to do, which
had now come close to her, and within her choice to secure
or to lose, took hold of the nature as if it had been the
strong odour of what she had only imagined and longed
for before. And Grandcourt himself? He seemed as little of
a flaw in his fortunes as a lover and husband could possibly
be. Gwendolen wished to mount the chariot and drive the
plunging horses herself, with a spouse by her side who
would fold his arms and give her his countenance without
looking ridiculous. Certainly, with all her perspicacity, and
all the reading which seemed to her mamma dangerously
instructive, her judgment was consciously a little at faul
before Grandcourt. He was adorably quiet and free from
absurdities - he would be a husband to suit with the best
appearance a woman could make. But what else was he?
He had been everywhere, and seen everything. ˛That˛ was
desirable, and especially gratifying as a preamble to his
supreme preference for Gwendolen Harleth. He did not
appear to enjoy anything much. That was not necessary: and
the lesshe had of particular tastes or desires, the more freedom
his wife was likely to have in following hers. Gwendolen
conceived that after marriage she would most probably be
able to manage him thoroughly.
  How was it that he caused her unusual constraint now? -
that she was less daring and playful in her talk with him
than with any other admirer she had known? That absence
of demonstrativeness which she was glad of, acted as a
charm in more senses than one, and was slightly benumbing.
Grandcourt after all was formidable - a handsome

*174

lizard of a hitherto unknown species, not of the lively,
darting kind. But Gwendolen knew hardly anything about
lizards, and ignorance gives one a large range of probabilities.
This splendid specimen was probably gentle, suitable as a boudoir
pet: what may not a lizard be, if you
know nothing to the contrary? Her acquaintance with
Grandcourt was such that no accomplishment suddenly
revealed in him would have surprised her. And he was so
little suggestive of drama, that it hardly occured to her to
think with any detail how his life of thirtysix years had
been passed: in general, she imagined him always cold
and dignified, not likely ever to have committed himself
He had hunted the tiger - had he ever been in love, or
made love? The one experience and the other seemed alike
remote in Gwendolen's fancy from the Mr Grandcourt who
had come to Diplow in order apparently to make a chief
epoch in her destiny - perhaps by introducing her to that
state of marriage which she had resolved to make a state  of
greater freedom than her girlhood. And on the whole she
wished to marry him; he suited her purpose; her prevailing,
deliberate intention was, to accept him.
  But was she going to fulfil her deliberate intention? She
began to be afraid of herself, and to find out a certain
difficulty in doing as she liked. Already her assertion of
indipendence in evading his advances had been carried
farther than was necessary, and she was thinking with
some anxiety what she might do on the next occasion.
  Seated according to her habit with her back to the horses
on their drive homewards, she was completely under the
observation of her mamma, who took the excitement and
changefulness in the expression of her eyes, her unwonted
absence of mind and total silence, as unmistakable signs
that something unprecedented had occured between her
and Grandcourt. Mrs Davilow's uneasiness determined her to
risk some speech on the subject: the Gacoignes were to dine
at Offendene, and in what had occured this morning there
might be some reason for consulting the Rector; not that she
expected him any more than herself to influence Gwendolen,
but that her anxious mind wanted to be disburthened.

*X175

  "Something has happened, dear? she began, in a tender
tone of question.
  Gwendolen looked around, and seeming to be roused to
the consciousness of her physical self, took off her gloves
and then her hat, that the soft breeze might blow on her
head. They were in a retired bit of the road, where the long
afternoon shadows from the bordering trees fell across it.
and no observers were within sight. Her eyes continued to
meet her mother's but did not speak.
  "Mr Grandcourt has been saying something? - Tell me,
dear." The last words were uttered beseechingly.
  "What am I to tell you, mamma?" was the perverse
answer.
  "I am sure something has agitated you. You ought to
confide in me Gwen. You ought not to leave me in doubt
and anxiety." Mrs Davilow's eyes filled with tears.
  "Mamma, dear, please don't be miserable," said
Gwendolen, with pettish remonstrance. "It only makes me
more so. I am in doubt myself."
  "About Mr Grandcourt intentions?" said Mrs Davilow,
gathering determination from her alarms.
  "No; not al all," said Gwendolen, with some curtness, and
a pretty little toss of the head as she put on her hat again.
  "About whether you will accept him, then?"
  "Precisely."
  "Have you given him a doubtful answer?"
  "I have given him no answer at all."
  "He ˛has˛ spoken so that you could not misunderstand him?"
  "As far as I would let him speak."
  "You expect him to persevere?" Mrs Davilow put this
question rather anxiously, and receiving no answer, asked
another. ""You don't consider that you have discouraged
him?"
  "I daresay not."
  "I thought you liked him, dear," said Mrs Davilo,
timidly.
  "So I do, mamma, as liking goes. There is less to dislike
about him than about most men. He is quiet and ˛distingue˛ ˛.˛ ˛"˛
Gwen dolen so far spoke with a  pouting sort of gravity; but

*X 176

suddenly she recovered some of her mischievousness, and her
face broke into a smile as she added - "Indeed he has all
the qualities that would make a husband tolerable - battlement,
veranda, stable, etc., no grins and no glass in his eye."
  "Do be serious with me for a moment, dear. Am I to
understand that you mean to accept him."
  "Oh pray, mamma, leave me to myself," said Gwendolen
with a pettish distress in her voice.
  And Mrs Davilo said no more.
  When they got home Gwendolen declared that she
would not dine. She was tired, and would come down in the
evening after she had taken some rest. The probability that
her uncle would hear what had passed did not trouble her.
She was convinced that whatever he might say would be on
the side of her accepting Grandcourt, and she wished to
accept him if she could. At this moment she would willingly
have had weights hung on her own caprice.
  Mr Gascoigne did hear - not Gwendolen's answers repeated
verbatim, but a softened generalised account of them.
The mother conveyed vaguely as the keen Rector's
questions would let her the impression that Gwendolen was
in some uncertainty about her own mind, but inclined on the
whole to acceptance. The result was that the uncle felt himself
called on to interfere: he did not conceive that he should
do his duty in withholding direction from his niece in a
momentous crisis of this kind. Mrs Davilow ventured a hesitating
opinion that perhaps it would be safer to say nothing -
Gwendolen was so sensitive (she did not like to say wilful). But the Rector's was a firm mind,
]]] grasping its first judgmentstenaciously and acting on them promptly, whence counter-judgments
were no more for him than shadows fleeting
across the solid ground to which he adjusted himself.
  This match with Grandcourt presented itself to him as a
sort of public affair; perhaps there were ways in which it
might even strengthened the Establishment. To the Rector,
whose father (nobody would have suspected it, and nobody
was told) had risen to be a provincial corndealer, aristocratic
heirship resembled regal heirship in excepting its
possessor from the ordinary standard of moral judgments,

*177

Grandcourt, the almost certain baronet, the probable peer,
was to be ranged with public personages, and was a match
to be accepted on broad general grounds national and
ecclesiastical. Such public personages, it is true, are often in
the nature of giants which an ancient community may
have felt pride and safety in possessing, though, regarded
privately, these born eminences must often have been
inconvenient and even noisome. But of the future husband
personally Mr Gascoigne was disposed to think the best.
Gossip is  a sort of smoke  that comes from the
dirty tobaccopipes of those who diffuse it: it proves nothing but
the bad taste of smoker. But if Grandcourt had really made any
deeper or more unfortunate experiments in folly than were
common in young men og high prospects, he was of an age
to have finished them. All accounts, can be suitably wound
up when a man has not ruined himself, and the expense
may be taken as an insurance against future error. This
was the view of practical wisdom; with reference to higher
views, repentance had a supreme moral and religious value.
There was every reason to believe  that a woman of well
regulated mind would be happy with Grandcourt.
  It was no surprise to Gwendolen on coming down to tea to
be told that her uncle wished to see her in the diningroom.
He threw aside the paper as she entered and greeted her with
his usual kindness. As his wife had remarked, he always "made
much" of Gwendolen, and her importance,had risen of late.
"My dear," he said, in a fatherly way, moving a chair for her
as he held her hand, "I want to speak to you on a subject
which is more momentous than any other with regard to your
welfare. You will guess what I mean. But I shall speak to you
with perfect directness: in such maters I consider myself
bound to act as your father. You have no objection, I hope?"
  "Oh, dear no, uncle. You have always been very kind to
me," said Gwendolen, frankly. This evening she was willing,
if it were possible, to be a little fortified against her trouble
some self, and her resistant temper was in abeyance. The
Rector's mode of speech always conveyed a thrill of
authority, as of word of command: it seemed to take for
granted that there could be no wavering in the audience,

*178

and that every one was going to be rationally obedient.
  "It is naturally a satisfaction to me that the prospect of a
marriage for you - advantageous in the highest degree -
has presented itself so early. I do not know exactly what
has passed between you and Mr Grandcourt, but I presume
there can be little doubt, from the way in which he has
distinguished you, that he desires to make you his wife."
  Gwendolen did not speak immediately, and her uncle
said with more emphasis -
  "have you any doubt of that yourself, my dear?"
  "I suppose that is what he has been thinking of. But he
may have changed his mind tomorrow."," said Gwendolen.
  "Why tomorrow? Has he made advances which you have
discouraged?"
  "I think he meant - he began to make advances - but I
did not discourage them. I turned the conversation."
  "Will you confide in me so far as to tell me your reasons?"
  "I am not sure that I had any reasons, uncle." Gwemdolen
laughed rather artificially.
  "You are quite capable of reflecting, Gwendolen. You are
aware that this  is not a trivial occasion, and it concerns
your establishment for life under circumstances which may not
occur again. You have a duty here both to yourself and your
family. I wish to understand whether you have any ground
for hesitating as to your acceptance of Mr Grandcourt."
  "I suppose I hesitate without grounds." Gwendolen spoke
rather poutingly, and her uncle grew suspicious.
  Is he disagreeable to your personality?"
  "No."
  "Have you heard anything of him which has affected you
disagreeably?" The Rector thought it impossible that
Gwendolen could have heard the gossip he had heard, but
in any case he must endeavour to put all things in the right
light for her.
  "I have heard nothing about him except that he is a great
match," said Gwendolen, with some sauciness; "and that
affects me very agreeably."
  "Then, my dear Gwendolen, I have nothing further to say
than this: you hold your fortune in your own hands - a

*X179

fortune such as rarely happens to a girl in your circumstances -
a fortune in fact which almost takes the question
out of the range of mere personal feeling, and makes your
acceptance of it a duty. If Providence offers you power and
position - especially when unclogged by any conditions
that are repugnant to you - your course is one of responsability,
into which caprice must not enter. A man does not
like to have his attachment trifled with: he may not be at
once repelled - these things are matters of individual
disposition. But the trifling may be carried out too far. And I
must point out to you that in case Mr Grandcourt were
repelled without your having refused him - without your
having intended ultimately to refuse him, your situation
would be a humiliating and painful one. I, for my part,
should regard you with severe disapprobation, as the victim
of nothing else than your own coquetry and folly."
  Gwendolen became pallid as she listened to this admonitory
speech. The ideas it raised had the force of sensations.
Her resistant courage would not help her here, because her
uncle was not urging her against her own resolve; he was
pressing upon her motives of dread which she already
felt; he was making her more conscious of the risks that lay
within herself. She was silent, and the Rector observed that
he had produced some strong effect.
  "I mean this in kindness, my dear." His tone had softened.
  "I am aware of that, uncle," said Gwendolen, rising and
shaking her head back, as if to rouse herself out of painful
passivity. "I am not foolish. I know that I must be married
some time - before it is too late. And I don't see how I
could do better than marry Mr Grandcourt. I mean to
accept him, if possible." She felt as if she were reinforcing
herself by speaking with this decisiveness to her uncle.
  But the Rector was a little startled by so bare a version of
his own meaning from those young lips. He wished that in
her mind his advice should be taken in an infusion of
sentiments proper to a girl, and such as are presupposed in
the advice of a clergyman, although he may not consider
them always appropriate to be put forward. He wished his
niece parks, carriages, a title - everything that would make

*X180

this world a pleasant abode; but he wished her not to be
cynical - to bbe, on the contrary, religiously dutiful, and
have warm domestic affections.
  "My dear Gwendolen," he said, rising also, and speaking
with benignant gravity, "I trust that you will find in marriage
a new fountain of duty and affection. Marriage is the
only true and satisfactory sphere of a woman, and if your
marriage with Mr Grandcourt should be happily decided
upon, you will have probably an increasing power, both of
rank and wealth, which may be used for the benefit of
others. These considerations are something higher than
romance. You are fitted by natural gifts for a position
which, considering your birth and early prospects, could
hardly be looked forward to as in the ordinary course of
things; and I trust  that you will grace it not only by
those personal gifts, but by a good and consistent life."
  "I hope mamma will be happier," said Gwendolen, in
a more cheerful way, lifting her hands backward to her
neck and moving towards the door. She wanted to waive
those higher considerations.
  Mr Gascoigne felt that he had come to a satisfactory
understanding with his niece, and had furthered her happy
settlement in life by furthering her engagement to Grandcourt.
Meanwhile there was another person to whom the
contemplation of that issue had been a motive for some
activity, and who believed that he too on this particular
day had done something towards bringing about a favourable
decision in ˛his˛ sense - which happened tobbe the
reverse of the Rector's.
  Mr Lush's absence from Diplow during Gwendolen's visit
had been due not to any fear on his part of meeting that
supercilious young lady, or of being abashed by her frank
  The place of meeting was a grassy spot called Green
Arbour, where a bit of hanging wood made a sheltering
amphitheatre. It was here that the coachful of servants
with provisions had to prepare the picnic meal; and the
warden of the Chase was to guide the roving archers so as
to keep them within the due distance from this centre, and
hinder them from wandering beyond the limit which had
been fixed on - a curve that might be drawn through
certain wellknown points, such as the Double Oak, the
Whispering Stones, and the High Cross. The plan was, to
take only a preliminary stroll before laincheon, keeping the
main roving expedition for the more exquisite lights of the
afternoon. The muster was rapid enough to save every one
from dull moments of waiting, and when the groups began
to scatter themselves through the light and shadow made
here by closely neighbouring beeches and there by rarer
oaks, one may suppose that a painter would hav3e been glad
to look on. This roving archery was far prettier than the
stationary game, but success in shooting at variable marks
was less favoured by practice, and the hits were distributed

*X184

among the volunterr archers otherwise than they would
have been in targetshooting. From this cause perhaps, as
well as from the twofold distractionof being preoccupied
and wishing not to betray her preoccupation, Gwendolen
did not greatly distinguished herself in these first experiments,
unless it were by the lively grace with which she
took her comparive failure. She was in her white and
green as on the day of the former archery meeting, when it
made an epoch for her that she was introduced to Grandcourt;
he was continually by her side now, yet it would have been
hard to tell from mere looks and manners that
their relation to each other had at all changed since their
first conversation. Still there were other grounds that made
most persons conclude them to be, if not engaged already,
on the eve of being so. And she believed this herself. As
they were all returning towards Green Arbour in divergent
groups, not thinking at all of taking aim but merely
chattering, words passed which seemed really the beginning
of that end - the beginning of her acceptance. Grandcourt
said, "Do you how long it is since I first saw you
in this dress?"
  "The archery meeting was on the 25th, and this is the
13th," said Gwendolen, laughingly. "I am not good at calculating,
but I will venture to say that it must be nearly three
weeks."
  A little pause, and then he said, "That is a great loss of
time."
  "That your knowing me has caused you? Pray don't be
uncomplimentary: I don't like it."
  Pause again. "It is because of the gain, that I feel the loss."
  Here Gwendolen herself left a pause. She was thinking,
"He is really very ingenious. He never speak stupidly." Her
silence was so unusual, that it seemed the strongest of
favourable answers, and he continued-
  "The gain of knowing you makes me feel the time I lose
in uncertainty. Do ˛you˛ like uncertainty?"
  "I think I do, rather," said Gwendolen, suddenly beaming
on him with a playful smile. "There is more in it."
  Grandcourt met her laughing eyes with a slow, steady

*X185

look into them, which seemed like vision in the
abstract, and said, "Do you mean more torment for me?"
  There was something so strange to Gwendolen in this
moment that she was quite shaken out of her usual selfconsciousness.
Blushing and turning away her eyes, she
said, "No, that would make me sorry."
  Grandcourt would have followed up this answer, which
the change in her manner made apparently decisive of her
favourable intention; but he was not in any way overcome
so as to be unaware that they were now, within sight of
everybody, descending the slope into Green Arbour, and
descending it at an illchosen point where it began to be
inconveniently steep. This was a reason for offering his
hand in the literal sense to help her; she took it, and they
came down in silence, much observed by those already on
the level - among others by Mrs Arrowpoint, who happened
to be standing with Mrs Davilow. That lady had
now made up her mind that Grandcourt's merits were not
such as would have induced Catherine to accept him,
Catherine having so high a standard as to have refused
Lord Slogan. Hence she looked at the tenant of Diplow
with dispassionate eyes.
  "Mr Grandcourt is not equal as a man to his uncle, Sir
Hugo Mallinger - too languid. To be sure, Mr Grandcourt
is a much younger man, but I shouldn't wonder if Sir
Hugo were to outliive him, notwithstanding the difference
of years. It is ill calculating on successions," concluded Mrs
Arrowpoint, rather too loudly.
  "It is indeed," said Mrs Davilow, able to assent with quiet
cheerfulness, for she was so well safisfied with the actual
situation of affairs that her habitual melancholy in their
general unsatisfactoriness was altogether in abeyance.
  I am not concerned to tell of the food that was eaten in
that green refectory, or even to dwell on the glories of the
forest scenary that spread themselves out beyond the level
front of the hollow; being just now bound to tell a story of
life at a stage when the blissful beauty of earth and sky
entered only by narrow and oblique inlets into the consciousness,
which was busy with  a small social drama

*X186

almost as little penetrated by a feeling of wider relations as
if it had been a puppetshow. It will be understood that the
food and champagne were of the best - the talk and
laughter too, in the sense of belonging to the best society,
where no one makes an invidious display of anything in
particular, and the advantages of the world are taken with
that highbred depreciation which follows from being
accustomed to them. Some of the gentlemen strolled a little
and indulged in a cigar, there being a sufficient interval
before four o' clock - the time for beginning to rove again.
Among these, strange to say, was Grandcourt; but not Mr
Lush, who seemed to be taking his pleasure quite generously
today by making himself particularly serviceable,
ordering everything for everybody, and by his activity
becoming more than ever a blot on the scene to Gwendolen,
though he kept himself amiably aloof from her, and
never even lokoked at her obviously. When there was a
general move to prepare for starting, it appeared that the
bows had all been put under the charge of Lord Brackenshaw's
valet, and Mr Lush was concerned to save ladies the
trouble of fetching theirs from the carriage where they
were propped. He did not intend to bring Gwendolen's, but
she, fearful lest he should do so, hurried to fetch it herself.
The valet seeing her approach met  her with it, and in
giving it into her hand gave also a letter addressed to her.
She asked no question about it, perceived at a glance that
the address was in a lady's handwriting (of the delicate
kind which used to be esteemed feminine before the present
uncial period), and moving away with her bow in her hand,
saw Mr Lush coming to fetch other bows. To avoid meeting
him she turned aside and walked with her back towards
the stand of carriages, opening the letter. It contained these
words-

  If Miss Harleth is in doubt whether she should accept Mr
Grandcourt, let her break from her party after they have passed
the Wihispering Stones and return to that spot. She will then
hear something to decide her, but she can only hear it by keeping
this letter a strict secret from every one. If she does not act
according to this letter, she will repent, as the woman who writes

*X187

it has repented. The secrecy Miss Harleth will feel herself bound
in honour to guard."


  Gwendolen felt an inward shock, but her immediate
thought was, "It is come in time." It lay in her youthfulness
that she was absorbed by the idea of the revelation to be
made, and had not even a momentary suspicion of contrivance
that could justity her in showing the letter. Her
mind gathered itself up at once into the resolution that she
would manage to go unobserved to the Whispering Stones;
and thrusting the letter into her pocket she turned back to
rejoin the company, with that sense of having something to
conceal which to her nature had a bracing quality and
helped her to be mistress of herself.
  It was a surprise to every one that Grandcourt was not,
like the other smokers, on the spot in time to set out roving
with the rest. "We shall alight on him byandby," said Lord
Brackenshaw; "he can't be gone far." At any rate, no man
could be waited for. This apparent forgetfulness might be
taken for tthe distraction of a lover so absorbed in thinking
of the beloved object as to forget an appointment which
would bring him into her actual presence. And the
goddnatured Earl gave Gwendolen a distant jocose hint to that
effect, which she took with suitable qietude. But the
thought in her mind was, "Can he too be starting away
from a decision?" It was not exactly a pleasant thought to her;
but it was near the truth. "Starting away," however, was
not the right expression for the languor of intention that
came over Grandcourt, like a fit of diseased numbness, when
an end seemed within easy reach: to desist then, when all
expectation was the contrary, became another
gratification of mere will, sublimely indipendent of definite
motive. At that moment he had begun a second large cigar in a
vague, hazy obstinacy which, if Lush or any other mortal who might
be insulted with impunity had interrupted by overtaking
him with a request for his return, would have expressed
itself by a slow removal of his cigar to say, in an undertone,
"You'll be kind enough to go to the devil, will you?"
  But he was not interrupted, and the rovers set off without

*X188

any visible depression of spirits, leaving behind only a few
of the less vigorous ladies, including Mrs Davilow, who
preferred a quiet stroll free from obligation to keep up with
others. The enjoyment of the day was soon at its highest
pitch, the archery getting more spirited and the changing
scenes of the forest from  roofed grove to open
glade growing lovier with the lengthening shadows, and the deeply
felt but undefinable gradations of the mellowing afternoon.
It was agreed that they were playing an extemporised
"As you like it"; and when a pretty compliment had been turned to
Gwendolen about her having the part of Rosalind, she felt
the more compelled to be surpassing in liveliness. This was
not very difficult to her, for the effect of what had happened
today was an excitement which needed a vent, a sense of
adventure rather than alarm, and a straining towards the
management of her retreat  as not to be impeded.
  The roving had been lasting nearly an hour before the
arrival at the Whispering Stones, two tall conical blocks
that leaned towards each other like gigantic greymantled
figures. They were soon surveyed and passed by with the
remark that they would be good ghosts on a starlit night.
But a soft sunlight was on them now, and Gwendolen felt
daring. The stones were near a fine grove of beeches where
the archers found plenty of marks.
  "How far are we from Green Arbour now?"said Gwendolen
having gor in front by the side of the warden.
  "Oh, not more than half a mile, taking along the avenue
we'are going to cross up there: but I shall take round a
couple of miles, by High Cross."
  She was falling back among the rest, when suddenly they
seemed all to be hurrying obliquely forward under the
guidance of Mr Lush, and lingering a little where she was,
she perceived her opportunity of slipping away. Soon she
was out of sight, and without running she seemed to herself
to fly along the ground and count the moments
nothing till she found herself back again at the Whispering
Stones. They turned their  blank grey  sides to her: what
was there on the other side? If there were nothing after all?
That was her only dread now - to have to turn  back again in

*X189

mystification; and walking round the righthand stone without
pause, she found herself in front of some one whose large
dark eyes met hers at a foot's distance. In spite of expectation
she was startled and shrank back, but in doing so she could
take in the whole figure of this stranger and perceive that
she was unmistakably a lady, and one who must once have
been exceedingly handsome. She perceived, also, that a few
yards from her were two children seated on the grass.
  "Miss Harleth?" said the lady.
  "Yes." All Gwendolen's consciousness was wonder.
  "Have you accepted Mr Grandcourt?"
  "No."
  "I have promised to tell you something. And you will
promise me to keep my secret. However you may decide, you
will not tell Mr Grandcourt, or any one else, that you have
seen me?"
  "I promise."
  "My name is Lydia Glasher. Mr Grandcourt ought  not to
marry any one but me. I left my hushand and child for him
nine years ago. Those two children are his, and we have
two others - girls - who are older. My husband is dead
now, and Mr Grandcourt ought to marry me. He ought to
make that boy his heir."
  She lokked towards the boy as she spoke, and Gwendolen's
eyes followed hers. The handsome little fellow was puffing
out his cheeks in trying to blow a tiny trumpet which remained
dumb. His hat hung backward by a string, and his
brown curls caught the sunrays. He was a cherub.
  The two women's eyes met again, and Gwendolen said
proudly, "I will not interfere with your wishes." She looked
as if she were shivering, and her lips were pale.
  "You are very attractive, Miss Harleth. But when he first
knew me, I too was young. Since then my life has been
broken up and embittered. It is not fair that he should be
happy and I am miserable, and my boy thrust out of sight for
another."
  These words were uttered with a biting accent, but with
a determined abstinence from anything violent in tone or
manner. Gwendolen, watching Mrs Glasher's face while she


*X190

spoke, felt a sort of terror: it was as if some ghastly vision had
come to her in a dream and said, "I am a woman's life."
  "Have you anything more to say to me?" she asked in a
lowtone, but still proudly and coldly. The revulsion within her
was not tending to soften her. Every one seemed hateful.
  "Nothing. You know what I wished you to know. You
can inquire about me if you like. My husband was CloOlonel
glasher."
  "Then I will go, said Gwendolen, moving away with a
ceremonious inclination, which was returned with equal
grace.
  In a few minutes Gwendolen was in the beech grove
again, but her party had gone out of sight and apparently
had not sent in search of her, for all was solidute till she
had reached the avenue pointed out by the warden. She
determined to take this way back to Green Arbour, which
she reached quickly; rapid movements seeming to her just
now a means of suspending the thoughts which might
prevent her from behaving with due calm. She had already
made her mind up what step she would take.
  Mrs Davilow was of course astonished to see Gwendolen
returning alone, and was not without some uneasiness
which the presence of other ladies hindered her from showing.
In answer to her words of surprise Gwendolen said -
  "Oh, I have been rather silly. I lingered behind to look at
the Whispering Stones, and the rest hurried on after something, so I
lost sight of them. I thought it best to come home
by the short way - the avenue that the warden had told me
of. I'm not sorry after all. I had had enough walking."
  "Your party did not meet Mr Grandcourt, I presume,"
said Mrs Arrowpoint, not without intention.
  "No," said Gwendolen, with a little flash of defiance and
a light laugh. "And we didn't  see any carvings on the trees
either. Where can he be? I should think he has fallen into
the pool or had an apopletic fit."
  With all Gwendolen's resolve not to betray any agitation,
she could not help it that her tone was unusually high and
hard, and her mother felt sure that something unpropitious
had happened.

*X190

Mrs Arrowpoint thought that the selfconfident young
lady was much piqued, and that Mr Grandcourt was probably
seeing reason to change his mind.
  "If you have no objection, mamma, I will order a carriage,"
said Gwendolen. "I am tired. And every one will be going soon."
  Mrs Davilow assented; but by the time the carriage was
announced as ready - the horses having to be fetched from
the stables on the warden's premises - the roving party
reappeared, and with them Mr Grandcourt.
  "Ah, there you are]" said Lord Brackenshaw, going up to
Gwendolen, who was arranging her mamma's shawl for the
drive. "We thought at first you had alighted on Grandcourt
and he had taken you home. However, we didn't suppose you could
be in any danger. The warden said he had told you a near
way back."
  "You are going?" said Grandcourt, coming up with his
usual air, as if he did not conceive that there had been any
omission on his part. Lord Brackenshaw gave place to him
and moved away.
  "Yes, we are going," said Gwendolen, looking busily at her
scarf which she was arranging across her shoulders Scotch
fashion.
  "May I call at Offendene tomorrow?"
  "Oh yes, if you like," said Gwendolen, sweeping him from
a distance with her eyelashes. Her voice was light and
sharp as the first touch of frost.
  Mrs Davilow accepted his arm to lead her to the carriage;
but while that was happening, Gwendolen with incredible
swiftness had got in advance of them and had sprung into
the carriage.
  "I got in, mamma, because I wished to be on this side,"
she said, apologetically. But she had avoided Grandcourt's
touch: he only lifted his hat and walked away - with the
not unsatisfactory impression that she meant to show herself
offended by his neglect.
  The mother and daughter drove for five minutes in
silence. Then Gwendolen said, "I intend to join the Langens

*X191

at Dover, mamma. I shall pack up immediately on getting
home, and set off by the early train. I shall be at Dover
almost as soon as they are; we can let them know by
telegraph."
  "Good heavens, child] what can be your reason for saying
so?"
  "My reason for saying it, mamma, is that I mean to do it."
  "But why do you mean to do it?"
  "I wish to go away."
  "It is because you are offended with Mr Grandcourt's odd
behaviour in walking off today?"
  "It is useless to enter in such questions. I am not going
in any case to marry Mr Grandcourt. Don't interest yourself
further about him."

  "What can I say to your uncle, Gwendolen? Consider the
position you place me in. You led him to believe only last
night that you had made up your mind in favour of Mr
Grandcourt."
  "I am very sorry to cause you annoyance, mamma, dear,
but I can't help it," said Gwendolen, with still harderresistance
in her tone. "whatever you or my uncle may think or
do, I shall not alter my resolve, and I shall not tell my
reason. I don't care what comes of it. I don7t care if I never
marry any one. There is nothing worth caring for. I believe
all men are bad, and I hate them.
  "But need you set off in this way, Gwendolen?" said
Mrs Davilow, miserable and helpless.
  "Now, mamma, don't interfere with me. If you have ever
had any trouble in your own life, remember it, and don't
interfere with me. If I am to be miserable, let it be by my
own choice."
  The mother was reduced to trembling silence. She began
to see that the difficulty would be lessened if Gwendolen
went away.
  And she did so. The packing was all carefully done that
evening, and not long after dawn the next day Mrs Davilow
accompanied her daughter to the railway station.
The sweet dews of morning, the cows and horses looking
over the hedges without any particular reason, the early

*X193

travellers on foot with their bundles, seemed all very
melancholy and purposeless to them both. The dingy torpor
of the railway station, before the ticket could be taken,
was still worse. Gwendolen had certainly hardened in the
last twentyfour hours: her mother's trouble evidently
counted for little in her present state of mind, which did
not essentially differ from the mood that makes men take
to worse conduct when their belief inpersons or things is
upset. Gwendolen's uncontrolled reading, though consisting
chiefly in what are called pictures of life, had somehow not
prepared her for this encounter with reality. Is that surprising?
It is  to be believed that attendance at the ˛opera˛ bouffe˛
in  the present day would not leave men's minds
entirely without shock, if the manners observed there with
some applause were suddenly to start up in their own
families. Per spective, as its inventor remarked, is a beautiful
thing. What horrors of damp huts, where human
beings languis, may not become picturesque through
aerial distance] What hymning of cancerours vices may we
not languish over as sublimest art in the safe remoteness of
a strange language and artificial phrase] Yet we keep a
repugnance to rheumatism and other painful effects when
presented in our personal experience.
  Mrs Davilow felt Gwendolen's new phase of indifference
keenly, and as she drove back alone, the brigtening morning
was sadder to her than before.
  Mr Grandcourt called that day at Offendene, but nobody
was at home.

*C15

˛'festina lente -- celerity should be contempered with cunctation.'˛
-- Sir Thomas Browne

Gwendolen, we have seen, passed her time aborad in the
new excitement of gambling, and in imagining herself an
empress of luck, having brought from her late experience a

*X194
vague impression than in this confused world it signified
nothing what any one did, so that they amused themselves.
We have seen, too, that certain persons, mysteriously
symbolised as Grapnell and Co., having also thought of
reigning in the realm of luck, and being also bent on
amusing themselves, no matter how, had brought about a
painful change in her family circumstances; whence she
had returned home -- carrying with her, against her inclination,
a necklace which she had pawned and some one else
had redeemed.
  While she was going back to England, Grandcourt was
coming to find her; coming, that is, after his own manner --
not in haste by express straight from Diplow to Leubronn,
where she was understood to be; but so entirely without
hurry that he was induced by the presence of some Russian
acquaintances to linger at Baden-Baden and make various
appointements with them, which, however, his desire to be
at Leubronn ultimately caused him to break. Grandcourt's
passions were of the intermittent, flickering kind: never
flaming out strongly. But a great deal of life goes on
without strong passion: myriads of cravats are carefully
tied, dinner attended, even speeches made proposing the
health of august personages, without the zest arising from
a strong desire. And a man may make a good appearance in
high social positions -- may be supposed to know the classics,
to have his reserves on science, a strong though repressed
opinion on politics, and all the sentiments of the English
gentleman, at a small expense of vital energy. Also, he may
be obstinate or persistent at the same low rate, and may even
show sudden impulses which have a flase air of daemonic
strength because they seem inexplicable, though perhaps
their secret lies merely in the want of regulated channels for
the soul to move in -- good and sufficient ducts of habit without
which our nature easily turns to a mere ooze and mud,
and at any pressure yelds nothing but a spurt or a puddle.
  Grandcourt had not been altogether displeased by Gwendolen's
running away from the splendid chance he was
holding out to her. The act had some piquancy for him. He
liked to think that it was due to resentment of his careless

*X195
behaviour in Cardell Chase, which, when he came to consider
it, did appear rather cool. To have brought her so
near a tender admission, and then to have walked headlong
away from further opportunities of winning the consent
which he had made her understand him to be asking for,
was enough to provoke a girl of spirit; and to be worth his
mastering it was proper that she should have some spirit.
Doubtless she meant him to follow her, and it was what he
meant too. But for a whole week he took no measures
towards starting, and did not even inquire where Miss
Harleth was gone. Mr Lush felt a triumph that was
mingled with much distrust; for Grandcourt had said no
word to him about her, and looked as neutral as an alligator:
there was no telling what might turn up in the
slowly-churning chances of his mind. Still, to have put off a
decision was to have made rrom for the waste of Grandcourt's
energy.
  The guests at Diplow felt more curiosity than their host.
How was it that nothing more was heard of Miss Harleth?
Was it credible that she had refused Mr Grandcourt? Lady
Flora Hollis, a lively middle-aged woman, well endowed
with curiosity, felt a sudden interest in making a round of
calls with Mrs Torrington, including the Rectory, Offendene,
and Quetcham, and thus not only got twice over, but
also discussed with the Arrowpoints, the inflormation that
Miss Harleth was gone to Leubronn with some old friends,
the Baron and Baroness von Langen; for the immediate
agitation and disappointment of Mrs Davilow and the Gascoignes
had resoleved itself into a wish that Gwendolen's
disappearance should not be interprested as anything eccentric
or needful to be kept secret. The Rector's mind, indeed,
entertained the possibility that the marriage was only a
little deferred, for Mrs Davilow had not dared to tell him
of the bitter determination with which Gwendolen had
spoken. And in spite of this practical ability, some of his
experience had petrified into maxims and quotations.
Amaryllis fleeing desired that her hiding-place should be
known; and that love will find out the way "over the mountain
and over the wave" may be said without hyperbole in

*X196
this age of steam. Gwendolen, he conceived, was an
Amaryllis of excellent sense but coquettish daring; the
question was whether she had dared too much.
  Lady Flora, coming back charged with news about Miss
Harleth, saw no good reason why she should not try
whether she could electrify Mr Grandcourt by mentioning
it to him at table; and in doing so shot a few hints of a
notion having got abroad that he was a disappointed
adorer. Grandcourt heard with quietude, but with attention;
and the next day he ordered Lush to bring about a
decent reason for breaking up the party at Diplow by the
end of another week, as he meant to go yachting to the
Baltic or somewhere -- it being impossible to stay at Diplow
as if he were a prisoner on parole, with a set of people
whom he had never wanted. Lush needed no clearer
announcement that Grandcourt was going to Leubronn;
but he might go after the manner of a creeping billiard-ball
and stick on the way. What Mr Lush intended was to
make himself indispensable so that he might go too, and
he succeeded; Gwendolen's repulsion for him being a fact
that only amused his patron, and made him none the less
willing to have Lush always at hand.
  This was how it happended that Grandcourt arrived at the
˛Czarina˛ on the fifth day after Gwendolen had left Leubronn,
and found there his uncle, Sir Hugo Mallinger, with
his family, including Deronda. It is not necessarily a
pleasure either to the reigning power or the heir presumptive
when their separate affairs -- a touch of gout, say, in
the one, and a touch of wilfulness in the other -- happen to
bring them to the same spot. Sir Hugo was an easy-tempered
man, tolerant both of differences and defects; but
a point of view different from his own concerning the
settlement of the family estates fretted him rather more
than if it had concerned Church discipline or the ballot,
and faults were the less venial for belonging to a person
whose existence was inconvenient to him. In no case could
Grandcourt have been a nephew after his own heart; but as
the presumptive heir to the Mallinger estates he was the
sign and embodiment of a chief grievance in the baronet's

*X197
life -- the want of a son to inherit the lands, in no portion
of which had he himself more than a life-interest. For in
the ill-advised settlement which has father, Sir Francis, had
chosen to make by will, even Diplow with its modicum of
land had been left under the same conditions as the
ancient and wide inheritance of the two Toppings --
Diplow, where Sir Hugo had lived and hunted through
many a season in his younger years, and where his wife and
daughters ought to have been able to retire after his death

  This grievance had naturally gathered emphasis as the
years advanced, and Lady Mallinger, after having had
three daughters in quick succession, had remained for
eight years till now that she was over forty without producing
so much as another girl; while Sir Hugo, almost
twenty years older, was at a time of life when, notwithstanding
the fashionable retardation of most things from
dinners to marriages, a man's hopefulness is apt to show
signs of wear, until restored by second childhood.
  In fact, he had begun to despair of a son, and this
confirmation of Grandcourt's interest in the estates certainly
tended to make his image and presence the more
unwelcome; but, on the other hand, it carried circumstances
which disposed Sir Hugo to take care that the
relation between them should be kept as friendly as possible.
It led him to dwell on a plan which had grown up
side by side with his disappointement of an heir; namely, to
try and secure Diplow as a future residence for Lady Mallinger
and her daughters, and keep this pretty bit of the
family inheritance for his own offspring in spite of that
disappointement. Scuh knowledge as he had of his nephew's
disposition and affairs encouraged the belief that Grandcourt
might consent to a transaction by which he would
get a good sum of ready money, as an equivalent for his
prospective interest in the domain of Diplow and the
moderate amount of land attached to it. If, after all, the
unhoped-for son should be born, the money would have
been thrown away, and Grandcourt would have been paid for
giving up interests that had turned out good for nothing;
but Sir Hugo set down this risk as /nil˛, and of late years he

*X198
had husbanded his fotune so well by the working of mines
and the sale of leases that he was prepared for an outlay.
  Here was an object that made him careful to avoid any
quarrel with Grandcourt. Some years before, when he was
making improvements at the Abbey, and needed Grandcourt's
concurrence in his felling an obstructive mass of
timber on the demesne, he had congratulated himself on
finding that there was no active spite against him in his
nephew's peculiar mind; and nothing had since occurred to
make them hate each other more than was compatible with
perfect politeness, or with any accommodation that could
be strictly mutual.
  Grandcourt, on his side, thought his uncle a superfluity
and a bore, and felt that the list of things in general would
be improved whenever Sir Hugo came to be expunged. But
he had been made aware through Lush, always a useful
medium, of the baronet's inclinations concerning Diplow,
and he was gratified to have the alternative of the money
in his mind: even if he had not thought it in the least
likely that he would choose to accept it, his sense of power
would have been flattered by his being able to refuse what
Sir Hugo desired. The hinted transaction had told for
something among the motives which had made him ask for
a year's tenancy of Diplow, which it had rather annoyed Sir
Hugo to grant, because the excellent hunting in the neighbourhood
might decide Grandcourt not to part with his
chance of future possession; -- a man who has two places, in
one of which the hunting is less good, naturally desiring a
third where it is better. Also, Lush had thrown out to Sir
Hugo the probability that Grandcourt would woo and win
Miss Arrowpoint, and in that case ready money might be
less of a temptation to him. Hence, on this unexpected
meeting at Leubronn, the baronet felt much curiosity to
know how things had been going on at Diplow, was bent
on being as civil as possible to his nephew, and looked
forward to some private chat with Lush.
  Between Deronda and Grandcourt there was a more
faintly marked but peculiar relation, depending on circumstances
which have yet to be made known. But on no side

*X199
was there any sigh of suppressed chagrin on the first meeting
at the ˛table d'hote˛, an hour after Grandcourt's arrival;
and when the quartette of gentlemen afterwards met on
the terrace, without Lady Mallinger, they moved off together
to saunter through the rooms, Sir Hugo saying as
the entered the large ˛saal˛ --
""Did you play much at Baden, Grandcourt?""
  ""No; I looked on and betted a little with some Russians
there.""
  ""Had you luck?""
  ""What did I win, Lush?""
  ""You brought away about two hundred,"" said Lush.
  ""You are not here for the sake of the play, then?"" said Sir
Hugo.
  ""No; I don't care about play now. It's a confounded
strain,"" said Grandcourt, whose diamond ring and
demeanour, as he moved along playing slightly with his
whisker, were being a good deal stared at by rouged
foreigners intereseted in a new milord.
  ""The fact is, somebody should invent a mill to do amusements
for you, my dear fellow,"" said Sir Hugo, ""As the
Tartars get their praying done. But I agree with you; I
never cared for play. It's monotonour -- knits the brain up
into meshes. And it knocks me up to watch it now; I
suppose one get poisoned with the bad air. I never stay
here more than ten minutes. But where's your gambling
beauty, Deronda? Have you seen her lately?""
  ""An uncommonly fine girl, a perfect Diana,"" said Sir
Hugo, turning to Grandcourt again. ""Really worth a little
straining to look at her. I saw her winning, and she took it
as coolly as if she had known it all beforehand. The same
day Deronda happened to see her losing like wildfire, and
she bore it with immense pluck. I suppose she was cleaned
out, or was wise enough to stop in time. How do you know
she's gone?""
  ""Oh, by the Visitor-list,"" said Deronda, with a scarcely
perceptible shrug. ""Vndernoodt told me her name was
Harleth, and she was with the Baron and Baroness von

*X200
Langen. I saw by the list that Miss Harleth was no longer
there.""
  This held no further information for Lush than that
Gwendolen had been gambling, He had already looked at
the list, and ascertained that Gwendolen had gone, but he
had no intention of thrusting this knowledge on Grandcourt
before he asked for it; and he had not sked, finding
it enough to believe that the object of serach would turn
up somewhere or other.
  But now Grandcourt had heard what was rather piquant,
and not a word about Midd Harleth had been missed by
him. After a moment's pause he said to Deronda --
  ""Do you know these people -- the Langens?""
  ""I have talked with them a little since Miss Harleth went
away. I knew nothing of them before.""
  ""Where is she gone -- do you know?""
  ""She is gone home,"" said Deronda, coldly, as if he wished
to say no more. But then, from a fresh impulse, he turned
to look markedly at Grandcourt, and added, ""But it is
possible you know her. Her home is not far from Diplow:
Offendene, near Wancester.""
  Deronda, turning to look straight at Grandcourt who was
on his left hand, might have been a subject for those old
painters who liked contrasts of temperament. There was a
calm intensity of life and richness of tint in his face that on
a sudden gaze from him was rather startling, and often
made him seem to have splen, so that servants and
officials asked him automatically, "what did you say, Sir?"
when he had been quite silent. Grandcourt himself felt an
irritation, which he did not show except by a slight movement
of the eyelids, at Deronda's turning round on him when
he was not asked to do more than speak. But he answered,
with his usual drawl, " "Yes, I know her," and paused with his
shoulder towards Deronda, to look at the gambling.
  "What of her, eh?" asked Sir Hugo of Lush, as the three
moved on a little way. "She must be a new-comer at Offendene.
Old Blenny lived there after the dowager died."
  "A little too much of her," said Lush, in a low, significant
tone; not sorry to let Sir Hugo know the state of affairs.

*X201
  "Why? how?" said the baronet. They all moved out of the
˛salon˛ into a more airy promendae.
  "He has been on the brink of marrying her," Lush went
pn. "But I hope it's off now. She's a niece of the clergyman --
Gascoigne -- at Pennicote. Her mother is a widow with a
brood of daughters. This girl will have nothing, and is as
dangerous as gunpowder. It would be a foolish marriage.
But she has taken a freak against hi, for she ran off here
without notice, when he had agreed to call the next day.
The fact is, he's here after her; but he was in no great
hurry, and between his caprice and hers they are liikely
enough not to get together again. But of course he has lost
his chance with the heiress."
  Grandcourt joining them said, "What a beastly den this is]
-- a worse hole than Baden. I shall go back to the hotel."
  When Sir Hugo and Deronda were alone, the baronet
began --
  "Rather a pretty story. That girl has some drama in her.
She must be worth running after -- has ˛de l'impre<vu.! I
think her appearance on the scene has bettered my chance
of getting Diplow, whether the marriage comes off or not."
  "I should hope a marriage like that would not come off,"
said Deronda, in a tone of disgust.
  "What] are you a little touched with the sublime lash?"
said Sir Hugo, putting up his glasses to help his short sight
in looking at his companion. "Are you inclined to run after
her?"
  "On the contrary," said Deronda, "I should rather be inclined
to run away from her."
  "Why, you would easily cut out Grandcourt. A girl with
her spirity would think you the finer match of the two," said
Sir Hugo, who often tried Deronda's patience by finding a
joke in impossible advice. (A difference of taste in jokes is a
great strain on the affections.)
  "I suppose pedigree and land belong to a fine match," said
Deronda, coldly.
  "The best horse will win in spite of pedigree, my boy. You
remember Napoleon's ˛mot˛ - ˛je suis un ancetre˛, said Sir
Hugo, who habitually undervalued birth, as men after

*X202
dining well often agree that the good of life is distributed
with wonderful equality.
  "I am not sure that I want to be an ancestor," said
Deronda. "It doesn't seem to me the rarest sort of
origination."
  "You won't run after the pretty gambler, then?" said Sir
Hugo, putting down his glasses.
  "Decidedly not."
  This answer was perfectly truthful; nevertheless it had
passed through Deronda's mind that under other circumstances
he should have given way to the interest this girl
had raised in him, and tried to know more of her. But his
history had given him a stroonger bias in another direction.
He felt himself in no sense free.

*C16
Men, like planets, have both a visible and an invisible history.
The astronomer threads the darkness with strict deduction,
accounting so for every visible arc in the wanderer's orbet; and$orbit;and
the narrator of human actions, if he did his work with the same
completeness, would have to thread the hidden pathways of feeling
and thought which lead up to every moment of action, and
to those moments of intense suffering which take the quality of
action -- like the cry of Prometheus, whose chained anguish
seems a greater energy than the sea and sky he invokes and the
deity he defies.

Deronda's circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional.
One moment had been burnt into his life as its chief epoch
-- a moment full of July sunshine and large pink roses
shedding their last petals on a grassy court enclosed on
three sides by a Gothic cloister. Imagine him in such a
scene: a bou of thirteen, stretched prone on the grass
where it was in shadow, his curly head propped on his arms
over a book, while his tutor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool
under shelter. Deronda's book was Sismondi's

*X203
History of the Italian Republics:- the lad had a passion
for history, eager to know how time had been filled up
since the Flood, and how things were carried on in the dull
periods. Suddenly he let down his left arm and looked at
his tutor, saying in purest boyish tones --
  "Mr Fraser, how was it that the popes and cardinals
always had so many nephews?"
  The tutor, an able young Scotchman who acted as Sir
Hugo Mallinger's secretary, roused rather unwillingly from
his political economy, answered with the clear-cut, emphatic
chant whcich makes a truth doubly telling in Scotch
utternace --
  "Their own children were called nephews."
  "Why?" said Deronda.
  "It was just for the propriety of the thing; because, as you
know very well, priests don't marry, and the children were
illegitimate."
  Mr Fraser, thrusting out his lower lip and making his
chant of the last word the more emphatic for a little
impatience at being interrupted, had already turned his
eyes on his book again, while Deronda, as if something had
stung him, started up in a sitting attitude with his back to
the tutor.
  He had always called Sir Hugo Mallinger his uncle, and
when it once occured to him to ask about his father and
mother, the baronet had answered, "You lost your father
and mother when you were quite a little one; that is why I
take care of you." Daniel then straining to discern something
in that early twilight, had a dim sense of having been
kissed very much, and surrounded by thin, cloudy, scented
drapery, till his fingers caught in something hard, which
hurt him, and he began to cry. Every other memory he had
was of the little world in which he still lived. And at that
time he did not mind about lerning more, for he was too
fond of Sir Hugo to be sorry for the loss of unknown
parents. Life was very delightful to the lad, with an uncle
who was always indulgent and cheerful -- a fine man in the
bright noon of life, whom Daniel thought absolutely perfect,
and whose place was one of the finest in England, at

*X204
once historical, romantic, and home-like: a picturesque
architectural outgrowth from an abbey, which had still
remnants of the old monastic trunk. Diplow lay in another
county, and was a comparatively landless place which had
come into the family from a rich lawyer on the female side
who wore the perruque of the Restoration; whereas the
Mallingers had the grant of Monk's Topping under Henry
the Eighth, and ages before had held the neighbouring
lands of King's Topping, tracing indeed their origin to a
certain Hugues le Malingre, who came in with the Conqueror --
and also apparently with a sickly complexion
whcih had been happily corrected in his descendants. Two
rows of these descendants, direct and collateral, females of
the male line, and males of the female, looked down in the
gallery over the cloisters on the nephew Daniel as he
walked there: men in armour with pointed beards and
arched eyebrows, pinched ladies in hoops and ruffs with no
face to speak of; grave-looking men in black velvet and
stuffed hips, and fair, frightened women holding little boys
by the hand; smiling politicians in magnificent perruques,
and ladies of the prize-animal kind, with rosebud mouths
and full eyelids, coording to Lely; then a generation whose
faces were revised and embellished in the taste of Kneller;
and so on through refined editions of the family types in
the time of Reynolds and Romney, till the line ended with
Sir Hugo and his younger brother Henleigh. This last had
married Miss Grandcourt, and taken her name along with
her estates, thus making a junction between two equally
old families, impaling the three Saracens' heads proper
and three bezants of the one with the tower and falcons
˛argent˛ of the other, and, as it happened, uniting their highest
advantages in the prospects of that Henleigh Mallinger
Grandcourt who is at present more of an acquaintance to
us than either Sir Hugo or his nephew Daniel Deronda.
  In Sir Hugo's youthful portrait with rolled collar and
high cravat, Sir Thomas Lawrence had done justice to the
agreeable alacrity of expression and sanguine temperament
still to be seen in the original, but had done something
more than justice in slightly lengthening the nose, which

*X205
was in reality shorter than might have been expected in a
Mallinger. Happily the appropriate nose of the family reappeared
in his younger brother, and was to be seen in all
its refined regularity in his nephew Mallinger Grandcourt.
But in the nephew Daniel Derond the family faces of
various types, seen on the walls of the gallery, found no
reflex. Still he was handsomer than any of them, and when
he was thirteen might have served as model for any painter
who wanted to image the most memorable of boys: you
could hardly have seen his face throughly meeting yours
without believing that human creatures had done nobly in
times past, and might do more nobly in time to come. The
finest childlike faces have this consecrating power, and make
us shudder anew at all the grossness and basely-wrought
griefs of the world, lest they should enter here and defile.
  But at this moment on the grass among the rose-petals,
Daniel Deronda was making a first acquaintance with those
griefs. A new idea had entered his mind, and was beginning
to change the aspect of his habitual feelings as happy
careless voyagers are changed when the sky suddenly
threatens and the thought of danger arises. He sat perfectly
still with his back to the tutor, while his face
expressed rapid inward transition. The deep blush, which
had come when he first started up, gradually subsided; but
his features kept that indescribably look of subdued
activity which often accompanies a new mental survey of
familiar facts. He had not lived wit other boys, and his
mind showed the same blending of child's ignorance with
surprising knowledge which is oftener seen in bright girls.
Having read Shakespeare as well as a great deal of history,
he could have talked with the wisdom of a bookish child
about men who were born out of wedlock and were held
unfortunate in consequence, being under disadvantages
which required them to be a sort of heroes if they were to
work themselves up to an equal standing with their legally
born brothers. But he had never brought such knowledge
into any association with his own lot, which had been too
easy for him ever to think about it -- until this moment
when there had darted into his mind with the magic of

*X206
quick comparison, the possibility that here was the secret of
his own birth, and that the man whom he called uncle was
really his father. Some children, even younger than Daniel,
have known the first arrival of care, like an ominous irremovable
guest in their tender lives, on the discovery that
their parents, whom they had imagined able to but everything,
were poor and in hard money troubles. Daniel felt
the presence of a new guest who seemed to come with an
enigmatic veiled face, and to carry dimly-conjectured,
dreaded revelations. The ardour which he had given to the
imaginary world in his books suddenly rushed towards his
own history and spent its pictorial energy there, explaining
what he knew, representing the unknown. The uncle whom
he loved very dearly took the aspect of a father who held
secrets about him -- who had done him a wrong -- yes, a
wrong: and what had become of his mother, from whom
he must have been taken away? -- Secrets about which he,
Daniel, could never inquire; for to speak or be spoken to
about these new thoughts seemed like falling flakes of fire
to his imagination. Those who have known an impassioned
childhood will understand this dread of utternace about
any shame connected with their parents. The impetuous
advent of new images took possession of him with the force
of fact for the first time told, and left him no immediate
power for the reflection that that he might be trembling at a
fiction of his own. The terrible sense of collision between a
strong rush of feeling and the dread of its betryal, found
relief at length in big slow tears, which fell without
restraint until the voice of Mr Fraser was heard saying --
  ""Daniel, do you see that you are sitting on the bent pages
of your book?"
  Daniel immediately moved the book without turning
round, and after holding it before him for an instant, rose
with it and walked away into the open ground, where he
could dry his tears unobserved. The first shock of suggestion
past, he could remember that he had no certainty how
things really had been, and that he had been making
conjectures about his own history, as he had often made
stories about Pericles or Columbus, just to fill up the blanks

*X207
before they became famous. Only there came back certain
facts which had an obstinate reality, -- almost like the
fragments of a bridge, telling you unmistakably how the
arches lay. And again there came a mood in which his
conjectures seemed like a doubt of religion, to be absihed
as an offence, and a mean prying after what he was not
meant to know; for there was hardly a delicacy of feeling
this lad was not capable of. But the summing up of all his
fluctuating experience at this epoch was, that a secret impression
had come to him which had given him something
like a new sense in relation to all the lements of his life.
And the idea that others probably knew things concerning
him which they did not choose to mention, and which he
would not have had them mention, set up in him a premature
reserve which helped to intensify his inward experience.
His ears were open now to words which before tha
July day would have passed by him unnoted; and round
every trivial incident which imagination could connect
with his suspicions, a newly-roused set of feelings were
ready to cluster themselves.
  One such incident a month later wrought itself deeply
into his life. Daniel had not only one of those thrilling boy
voices which seem to bring an idyllic heaven and earth
before our eyes, but a fine musical instinct, and had early
made out accompaniments for himself on the piano, while
he sang from memory. Since then he had had some teaching,
and Sir Hugo, who delighted in the boy, used to ask
for his music in the presence of guests. One morning after
he had been singing "Sweet Echo" before a small party of
gentlemen whom the rain had kept in the house, the
baronet, passing from a smiling remark to his next neighbour,
said,
  "Come here, Dan]"
  The boy came forward with unusual reluctance. He wore
an embroidered holland blouse which set off the rich
colouring of his head and throat, and the resistant gravity
about his mouth and eyes as he was being smiled upon,
made their beauty the more impressive. Every one was
admiring him.

*X208
  "What do you say to being a great singer? Should you
like to be adored by the world and take the house by storm,
like Mario and Tamberlik?"
  Daniel reddened instantaneously, but there was a just
perceptible interval before he answered with angry decision --
  "No; I should hate it]"
  "Well, well, well]" said Sir Hugo, with surprised kindliness
intended to be soothing. But Daniel turned away
quickly, left the room, and going to his own chmber threw
himself on the broad window-sill, which was a favourite
retreat of his when he had nothing particular to do. Here
he could see the rain gradually subsiding with gleams
through the parting clouds which lit up a great reach of
the park, where the old oaks stood apart from each other,
and the bordering wood was pierced with a green glade
which met the eastern sky. This was a scene which had
always been part of his home -- part of the dignified ease
which had been a matter of course in his life. And his
ardent clinging nature had appropriated it all wtih affection.
He knew a great deal of what it was to be a gentleman
by inheritance, and without thinking much about himself --
for he was a boy of active perceptions and easily forgot his
own existence in that of Robert Bruce -- he had never
supposed that he could be shut out from such a lot, or have
a very different part in the world from that of the uncle
who petted him. It is possible (thought not greatly believed
in at present) to be fond of poverty and take it for a bride,
to prefere scoured deal, red quarries, and whitewash for
one's private surrounding, to delight in no splendour but
what has open doors for the whole nation, and to glory in
having no privilege except such as nature insists on; and
noblemen have been known to run away from elaborate
ease and the option of idleness, that they might bind themselves
for small pay to hard-handed labour. But Daniel's
tastes were altogether in keeping with his nurture: his
kisposition was one in which everday scenes and habits
beget not ˛ennui˛ or rebellion, but delight, affection, aptitudes;
and now the lad had been stung to the quick by the
idea that his uncle -- perhaps his father -- thought of a

*X209
career for him which was totally unlike his own, and which
he knew very well was not thought of among possible
destinations for the sons of English gentlemen. He had
often stayed in London with Sir Hugo, who to indulge the
boy's ear had carried him to the opera to hear the great
tenors, was very vivid to hi; but now, spite of his musical
gift, he set himself bitterly against the notion of being
dressed up to sing before all those fine people who would
not care about him except as a wonderful toy. That Sir
Hugo should have thought of him in that position for a
moment, seemed to Daniel an unmistakable proof that
there was something about his birth which threw him out
from the class of gentlemen to which the baronet belonged.
Would it never mentioned to him? Would the time come
when his uncle would tell him everything? He shrank from
the prospect: in his imagination he preferred ignorance. If
his father had been wicked - Daniel inwardly used strong
words, for he was feeling the injury done him as a maimed
boy feels the crushed limb which  for others is merely
reckoned in an average of accidents -- if his father had done any wrong,
he wished it might never be spoken of to him:
it was already a cutting thought that such knowledge
might be in other minds. Was it in Mr Fraser's? probably
not, else he would not have spoken in that way about the
pope's nephews: Daniel fancied, as older people do, that
every one else's consciousness was as active as his own on a
matter which was vital to him. Did Turvey the valet know?
-- and old Mrs  French the housekeeper? -- and Banks the
bailiff, with whom he had ridden about the farms on his
pony? -- And now there came back the recollection of a day
some years before when he was drinking Mrs Bank's hwey,
some years before when he was drinking Mrs Banks's whey,
and Banks said to his wife with a wink and a cunning
laugh, "He features the mother, eh?" At that time little
Daniel merely thought that Banks made a silly face, as
the common farming men often do -- laughing at what
was laughable; and he rather resented being winked at
and talked of as if he did not understand everything. But
now that small  incident became information: it was to be

*X210

reasoned on. How could he be like his mother and not like
his father? His mother must have been a Mallinger, if Sir
Hugo were his uncle. But no] His father might have been
Sir Hugo's brother and have vhanged his name, as Mr
Henleigh Mallinger did when he married Miss Grandcourt.
  But then, why had he ever heard Sir Hugo speaks of his
brother Deronda, as he spoke of his brother Grandcourt?
Daniel had never before cared  about the family tree -- only
about that ancestor who had killed three Saracens in one
encounter. But his mind turned to a cabinet of estatemaps
in the library, where he had once seen an illuminated
parchemeent hanging out, that Sir Hugo said was the family
tree. The phase was new and odd to him -- he was a little
fellow then, hardly more than half his present age -- and he
gave it precise meaning. He knew more mow and wished
that he could examine that parchment. He imagined that
the cabinet was always locked, and longed to try it. But
here he checked himself. He might be seen; and he would
never bring himself near even a silent admission of the sore
that had opened in him.
  It is in such experiences of boy and girlhood, while elders
are debating whether most education lies in science or
literature, that the main lines of character are often laid
down. If Daniel had been of a less ardently affectionate
nature, the reserve about himself and the supposition that
others had something to his disadvantage in their minds,
mig have turned into a hard, proud antagonism. But
inborn lovingness was strong enough to keep itself level
with resentment. There was hardly any creature in his
habitual world that he was not fond of; teasing them
occasionally, of course -- all except his uncle, or "Nunc," as
Sir Hugo had taught him to say; for the baronet was the
reverse of a straitlaced man, and left his dignity to take
care of itself. Him Daniel loved in that deeprooted filial
way which makes children always the happier for being in
the same room with father or mother, though their occupations
may be quite apart. Sir Hugo's watchchain and seals,
his handwriting, his mode of smoking and of talking to his
dogs and horses, had all a rightness and charm about them

*X211

to the boy which went along with the happiness of morning
and breakfast time. That Sir Hugo had always been a
Whig, made Tories and Radicals equally opponents of the
truest and best; and the books he had written were all seen
under the same consecration of loving belief which
differenced what was his form what was not his, in spite of
general resemblance. Those writings were various, from
volumes of travel in the brilliant style, to articles or things
in general, an pamphlets on political crisis; but to Daniel
they were alike in having u an unquestionable rightness by
which other people's information could be tested.
  Who cannot imagine the bitterness of a first suspicion
that something in this  object of complete love was ˛not˛
quite right? Children demand that their heroes should be
fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery
to the contrary is hardly a less revolutionary shock to a passionate
child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs
which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.
  But sometime after this renewal of Daniel's agitation it
appeared that Sir Hugo must have been making a merely
playful experiment in his question about the singing. He
sent for Daniel into the library, and looking up from his
writing as the boy entered threw himself sideways in his
armchair. "Ah, Dan]" he said kindly, drawing one of the old
embroidered stools close to him. "Come and sit down here."
  Daniel obeyed, and Sir Hugo put a gentle hand on his
shoulder, looking at him affectionately.
  "What is it, my boy? Have you heard anything that has
put you out of spirits lately?"
  Daniel was determined not to let the tears come, but he
could not speak.
  "All ghanges are painful when people have been happy,
you know," said Sir Hugo, lifting his hand from the boy's
shoulder to his dark  curls and rubbing them gently. "you can't
be educated exactly as I wish you to be without our parting.
And I think you will find a great deal to like at school."
  This was not what Daniel expected, and was so far a
relief, which gave him spirit to answer --
  "Am I go to school?"

*X212

  "yes, I mean you go to Eton. I wish you to have the
education of an English gentlemen; and for that it is
necessary that you ahould go to a public school in preparation
for the university: Cambridge I mean you to go; it
was my own university."
  Daniel's colour came and went.
  "What do you say, sirrah?" said Sir Hugo, smiling.
  "I should like to be a gentleman, " said Daniel, with firm
distinctness, "and go to school, if that is what a gentleman's
son must do."
  Sir Hugo watched him silently for a few moments thinking
he understood now why the lad had seemed angry at
the notion of becoming a singer. Then he said tenderly --
  "And so you won't mind about leaving your old Nunc?"
  "Yes, I shall," said Daniel, clasping Sir Hugo's caressing
arm with both his hands. "But shan't I come home and be
with you in the holidays?"
  "Oh yes, generally," said Sir Hugo. "But now  I mean you
to go at once to a new tutor, to break the change for you
before to go to Eton."
  After this interview Daniel's spirit rose again. He was
meant to be a gentleman, and in some unaccountable way
it might be that his conjectures were all wrong. The very
keenness of the lad taught him to find comfort in his
ignorance. While he was busying his mind in the construction
of possibilities, it became plain to him that there must
be possibilities of which he knew nothing. He left off
brooding, young joy and the spirit of adventure not being
easily quenched within him, and in the interval before his
going away he sang about the house, danced among the
old servants, making them parting gifts, and insisted many
times to the groom on the care that was to be taken of the
black pony.
  "Do you think I shall know much less than the other
boys, Mr Fraser?" said Daniel. I It was  his bent to think that
every stranger would be surprised at his ignorance.
  "There are dunces to be found everywhere," said the
judicious Fraser. you'll not be the biggest; but you've not
the makings of a Porson in you, or a Leibnitz either."

*X213

  "I don't want to be a Porson or a Leibnitz," said Daniel.
"I would rather be a greater leader, like Pericles or
Washington."
  "Ay, ay; you've a notion they did with little parsing, and
less algebra," said Fraser. But in reality he thought his
pupil a remarkable lad, to whom one thing was as easy as
another if he had only a mind to it.
  Things went very well with Daniel in his new world,
except that a boy with whom he was at once inclined to
strike up a close friendship talked to him a great deal about
his home and parents, and seemed to expect a like expansiveness
inreturn. Daniel immediately shrank into reserve,
and this experience remained a check on his naturally
strong bent towards the formation of intimate friendships.
Every one, his tutor included, set him down as a reserved
boy, though he was so goodhumoured and unassuming, as
well as quick both at study and sport, that nobody called
his reserve disagreeable. Certainly his face had a great deal
to do with that favourable interpretation; but in  this
instance the beauty of the closed lips tol no falsehood.
  A surprise that came to him before his first vacation,
strengthened the silent consciousness of a grief within,
which might be compared in some ways with Byron's
susceptibility about his deformed foot. Sir Hugo wrote
word that he was married to Miss Raymond, a sweet lady
whom Daniel must remember having seen. The event
would meke no difference about his spending the vacation
at the Abbey; he would find Lady Mallinger a new friend
whom he would be sure to love, -- and much more to the
usual effect when a man, having done something aggreable
to himself, is disposed to congratulate others on his own
good fortune, and the  deducible satisfactoriness of
events in general.
  Let Sir Hugo be partly excused until the grounds of his
action can me more fully known. The mistakes in his behaviour
to Deronda were due to that dulness towards what
may be going on in other minds, especially the minds of
children, which is among the commonest deficiencies even
in goodnatured men like him, when life has been generally

*X214

easy to themselves, and their energies have been quietly
spent in feeling gratfied. No one was better aware than he
that Daniel was generally suspected to be his own son. But
he was pleased with that suspicion; and his imagination
had never once been troubled with the way in  which the
boy himself might be affected, either then or in the future,
by the enigmatic spect of his circumstances. He was as
fond of him as he could be, and meant the best by him. And
considering the lightness with which the preparation of
young lives seems to lie on respectable consciences, Sir
Hugo Mallinger can hardly be held open to exceptional
reproach. He had been a bachelor till he was fiveandforty,
had always been regarded as a fascinating man of elegant
tastes; what could be more natural, even according to the
index of language, than that he should have a beautiful
boy like the little Deronda to take care of? The mother might
even perhaps be in the great world -- met with Sir
Hugo's residences abroad. The only person to feel  any
objection was the boy himself, who could not have been
consulted. And the boy's objections had never been
dreamed of by anybody but himself.
  By the time Deronda was ready to go toCambridge,
Lady Mallinger had already three daughters -- charming
babies, all three, but  whose sex was announced as a
melancholy alternative, the offspring desired being a son:
if Sir Hugo had no son the succession must go to his
nephew Mallinger Grandcourt. Daniel no longer held a
wavering opinion about his own birth. His fuller knowledge
had tended to convince him that Sir Hugo was his father,
and he conceived that the baronet, since he never
approached a communication on the subject, wished him to
have a tacit understanding of the fact, and to accept in
silence what would be generally considered more than the
due love and nurture. Sir Hugo's marriage might certainly
have been felt as a new ground of resentment by some
youths in Deronda's position, and the timid Lady
Mallinger with her fastcoming little ones might have been
images to scowl at, as likely to divert much that was disposable
in the feelings and possessions of the baronet from

*X215

one who felt his own claim to be prior. But hatred of
innocent human obstacles was a form of moral stupidity
not in Deronda's grain; even the indignation which had
long mingled itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took the
quality of pain rather than of temper; and as his mind
ripened to the idea of tolerance towards error, he habitually
linked the idea with his own silent grievances.
  The sense of an entailed disadvantage -- the deformed
foot doubtfully hidden by the shoe, makes a restlessly
active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a selfcentred unloving
nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the  rarer sort, who
presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a
myriad, the inexorable sorrow takes the form of fellowship
and makes the imagination tender. Deronda's earlywakened
susceptibility, charged at first with ready indignation
and resistant pride, had raised in him a premature
reflection on certain questions of life; it had given a bias to
his conscience, a sympathy with certain ills, and a tension
of resolve in certain directions, which marked him off from
other youths much more than any talents he possessed.
  One day near the end of the Long Vacation, when he
had been making a tour in the Rhineland with his Eton
tutor, and was come for a farewell stay at the Abbey before
going to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo --
  "What do you intend me to be, sir?" They were inthe
library, and it was the fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called
him in to reada letter from a Cambridge Don who was to
be interested in him; and since the baronet wore an air at
once businesslike and leisurely, the moment seemed
propitious for entering on a grave subject which had never
yet been thoroughly discussed.
  "Whatever your inclination leads you to, my boy. I
thought it right to give you the option of the army, but
you shut the door on that, and I was glad. I don't expect
you to choose just yet -- byandby, when you have looked
about you a little more and tried your mettle among older
men. The university has a good wide opening into the
forum. There are prizes to be won, and a bit of good
fortune often gives the turn to a man's taste. From what I

*X216

see and hear, I should think you can take up anything you
like. You are in deeper water with your classics than ever
got into, and if you are rather sick of that swimming,
Cambridge is the place where you can go into mathematics
with a will, and disport yourself on the dry sand as much as
you like. I floundered along like a carp."
  "I suppose money will make some  difference, sir",
said Daniel, blushing. "I shall have to keep myself byandby."
  "Not exactly. I recommaend you not to be extravagant --
yes, yes, I know -- you are not inclined to that; -- but you
need not take up anything against the grain. You will have
a bachelor's income -- enough for you to look about  with.
Per haps I had better tell you that you may consider yourself
secure of seven hundred a year.  You might make
yourself a barrister -- be a writer -- take up politics. I confess
that is what would please me best. I should like to have you
at my elbow and pulling me with.
at my elbow and pulling me with."
  Deronda looked embarassed. He felt that he ought to
make some sign of gratitude, but other feelings clogged his
tongue. A moment was passing by  in which a question
about his birth was throbbing within him, and yet it
seemed more impossible than ever that the question should
find vent -- more impossible than ever that he could hear
certain things from Sir Hugo's lips. The liberal way in
which he was dealt with was the more striking because the
baronet had of late cared particularly for money, and for
making the utmost of his lifeinterest in the estate by way
of providing for his daughters; and as all this flashed
through Daniel's mind it was momentarily within his
imagination that the provision for him might come in
some way from his mother. But such vaporous conjecture
passed away as quickly as it came.
  Sit Hugo appeared not to notice anything peculiar in
Daniel's manner, and presently went on with his usual
chatty liveliness.
  "I am glad you have done some good reading outside
your classics, and have got a grip of French and German.
The truth is, unless a man can get the prestige and income
of a Don and write donnish books, it's hardly worth while

*X217

for him to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself and
be able to spin you outpages of the Greek  dramatists at
any verse you'll give him as a cue. That's all very fine, but
in practical life nobody does give you the cue for pages of
Greek. In fact it's a nicety of conversation which I would
have you attend to -- much quotation of any sort, even in
English, is bad. It ends to choke ordinary remark. One
couldn't carry on life comfortably without a little blindness
to the fact that everything has been said better than we
can put it ourselves. But talking of Dons, I have seen Dons
make a capital figure in society; and occasionally he can
shoot you down a cartload of learning in the right place,
which will tell in politics. Such men are wanted; and if you
have any turn for being a Don, I say nothing against it."
  "I think there's not much chance of that. Quicksett and

Puller are both stronger than I am. I hope you will not be
much disappointed if I don't come out with high honours."
  "No, no. I should like you  to do yourself credit, but for
God's sake don't come out as a superior expensive kind of
idiot, like young Brecon, who got a  Double First,
and has been learning to knit braces ever since. What I wish you to
get is a passport in life. I don't go against  our
university system: we want a little disinterested culture  to make
head against cotton and capital, especially in the House. My
Greek has all evaporated: if I had to construe a verse on a
sudden, I should get an  apoplectic fit. But it formed
my taste. I daresay my English is the better for it."
  On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The
enthusiastic belief in Sir Hugo's writings as a standard, and
in the Whigs as the chosen race among politicians, had
gradually vanished along with the seraphic boy's face. He
had not been the hardest of workers at Eton. I Though some
kinds of study and reading came as easily as boating to
him, he was not  of the material that ussually makes the firstrate
Eton scholar. There had  sprung up  in him a meditative
yearning after wide knowledge which is likely always
to abate ardour in the fight for prize acquirement in
narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and took any
secondrateness in himself simply as a fact, not as a marvel

*X218

necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority. Still Mr
Fraser's high opinion of the lad had not been altogether
belied by the youth: Daniel had tha stamp of rarity in a
subdued fervour of symphaty, an activity of imagination
on behalf of others, which did not show itself effusively,
but was continually seen in acts of considerateness that
struck his companions as moral eccentricity. "Deronda
would have been firstrate if he had had more ambition" --
was a frequent remark about him. But how could a fellow
push his way properly when he objected to swop for his
own advantage, knocked under by choice when he was
within an inch of victory, and, unlike the great Clive,
would rather be the calf than the butcher? It was a
mistake, however, to suppose that Deronda had not his
share of ambition: we know  he had suffered keenly from
the belief that there was a tinge of dishonour in his lot; but
there are some cases, and his was one of them, in which the
sense of injury breeds -- not the will to inflict injuries and
climb over them as a ladder, but -- a hatred of all injury.
He had his flashes of fierceness, and could hit out upon
occasion, but the occasions were not always what might
have been expected. For in what related to himself his
resentful impulses had been early checked by  a
mastering affectionateness. Love has a habit of saying "Never mind" to
angry self, who, sitting down for the nonce in the lower
place byandby gets used to it. So it was that as Deronda
approached manhood his feeling for Sir Hugo, while it was
getting more and more mixed with criticism, was gaining
in that sort of allowance which reconciles criticism with
tenderness. The dear old beautiful home and everything
within it, Lady Mallinger and her little ones included, were
consecrated for the youth as they had been for the boy --
only with a certain difference of light on the objects. The
altarpiece was no longer miraculously perfect, painted
under  infallible guidance, but the human hand discerned
in the work was appealing to a reverent tenderness safer
from the  gusts of discovery. Certainly Deronda's ambition
even in his springtime, lay exceptionally aloof from conspicuous
vulgar triumph, and from other ugly forms of

*X219

boyish energy; perhaps because he was early impassioned
by ideas, and burned his fire  on those heights. One may
spend a good deal of energy in disliking and resistingwhat
others pursue, and a boy who is fond of somebody else's
pencilcase may  not be  more energetic than another who is
fond of giving his own pencilcase away. Still, it was not
Deronda's disposition to escape from ugly scenes: he was
more inclined to sit through them and take care of the
fellow least able to take care of himself. It had helped to
make him popular that he was sometimes a little compromised by
this apparent comradeship. For a meditative
interest in learning how human miseries are wrought -- as
precocious in him as another sort of genious in the poet who
writes a Queen Mab at nineteen -- was so infused with
kindliness that it easily passed for comradeship. Enough. In
many of our neighbours' lives, there is much not only of
error and lapse, but of a certain exquisite goodness which
can never be written or even spoken -- only divined by each of
us, according to the inward instruction of our own privacy.
  The impression he made at Cambridge corresponded to
his position at Eton. Every one interested in him agreed
that he might have taken a high place if his motives had
been of a more pushing sort, and if he had not, instead of
regarding studies as instruments of success, hampered himself
with the notion that they were to feed motive and
opinion -- a notion which set him criticising methods and
arguing against freight and harness when he should
have been using all his might to pull. In the beginning his
work at the university had a new zest for him: indifferent
to the continuation of the Eton classical drill, he applied
himself vigorously to mathematics, for which he had
shown an early aptitude under Mr Fraser, and he had the
delight of feeling his strength in a comparatively fresh
exercise of thought. That delight, and the favourable
opinion of his tutor, determined him to try for a mathematical
scholarship in the Easter of his second year: he
wished to gratify  Sir Hugo by some achievement, and the
study of the higher mathematics, having the growing
fascination inherent in all thinking which demands intensity,

*X220

was making him a more exclusive worker than he had been before.
  But here came the old check which had been growing with
his growth. He found the inward bent towards comprehension
and  thoroughness diverging more and more from the
track marked out by standards of examination: he felt
a heightening discontent with the wearing futility and
enfeebling strain of a demand for excessive retention and
dexterity without any insight into the principles which
form the vital connections of knowledge. (Deronda's undergraduateship
occured fifteen years ago, when the perfection
of our university methods was not yet indisputable.)
In hours  when his dissatisfaction was strong upon him he
reproached himself for having been attracted by the conventional
advantage of belonging to an English university,
and was tempted towards the project of asking Sir Hugo yo
to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a more indipendent
line of study abroad. The germs of his inclination had
been already stirring in his boyish love of universal history
which made him want to be at home in foreign countries,
and follow  in imagination the travelling students
of the middle ages. He longed now to have the sort of apprenticeship
to life whoch would not shape him too definetely, and
rob him of that choice that might come from a free
growth. One sees that Deronda's demerits were likely to be
on the side of reflective hesitation, and this tendency was
encouraged by his position: there was no need for him to
get an immediate income, or to fit in haste for a
profession; and his sensibility to the halfknown facts of his
parentage made him an excuse for lingering longer than
others in a state of social neutrality. Other men, he inwardly
said, had a more definite place and duties. But the
project which flattered his inclination might not have gone
beyond the stage of ineffective brooding, if certain circumstances
had not quickened it into action.
  The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship
which extended into his afterlife. Of the same year with
himself, and occupying small rooms close to his, was a
youth who had come as an exhibitioner from Christ's

*X221

Hospital, and had eccentricities enough for a Charles
Lamb. Only to look at his pinched features and blond hair
hanging over his collar reminded one of pale quaint heads
by early German painters; and when this faint colouring
was lit up by a joke, there came sudden creases  about the
mouth and eyes which might have been moulded by the
soul of an aged humorist. His father, an engraver of some
distinction, had been dead eleven years, and his mother
had three girls to educate and maintain on a meagre
annuity. Hans Meyrick -- he had been daringly christened
after Holbein -- felt himself the pillar, or rather the knotted
and twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing
pplants must cling. There was no want of  ability or of
honest weel  wellmeaning affection to make the prop trustworthy:
the ease and quickness with which he studied
might serve him to win prizes at Cambridge, as he had
done among the Blue Coats, in spite of irregularities. The
only danger was, that the incalculable tendencies in him
might be fatally timed, and that his good intentions might
be frustrated by some act which was not due to habit but
to capricious, scattered impulses. He could not be said to
have any one bad habit; yet at longer or shorter intervals
he had fits of impish recklessness, and did things that would
have made the worst habits.
  Hans in his right mind, was a lovable creature,
and in Deronda he had happened to find a friend who was
likely to stand by him with the more constancy, from
compassion  for these brief aberrations that might bring a
long repentance. Hans, indeed, shared  Deronda's rooms
nearly as much as he used his own: to Deronda he poured
himself out of his studies, his affairs, his hopes; the poverty
of his home, and his love for the creatures there; the itching
of his fingers to draw, and his determination of fight it
away for the sake of getting some sort of plum that he
might divide with his mother and  the girls. He wanted no
confidence in return, but seemed to take Deronda as an
Olympian who needed nothing -- an egotism in friendship
which is common enough with mercurial, expensive
natures. Deronda was content, and gave Meyrick all the

*X222

interest he claimed, getting at last a brotherly anxiety
about him, looking after him in his erratic moments, and
contriving by adroitly delicate devices not only to make up
for his friend's lack of pence, but to save him from
threatening chances. Such friendship easily becomes
tender: the one  spreads strong sheltering wings that
delight in spreading, the other gets the warm protection
which is also a delight. Meyrick was going in for a classical
scholarship, ans his success, in various ways momentous,
was the more probable from the steadying influence of
Deronda's friendship.
  But an imprudence of Meyrick's, committed at the beginning
of the autumn term, threatened to disappoint his hopes.
With his usual alteration between unnecessary
expense and selfprivation, he had given too much money
for an old engraving which fascinated him, and to make up
for it, had come to London in a thirdclass carriage with
his eyes exposed to a bitter wind and a ny irritating particles
the wind might drive before it. The consequence was a severe
inflammation of his eyes, which for  some time hung over
him the threat of a lasting injury. This crushing trouble
called out all Deronda's readiness to devote himself, and he
made every  other occupation secondary to that of being
companion and eyes to Hans, working with him and for
him at his classics, that if possible his chance of the classical
scholarship might be saved. Hans, to keep the knowledge
of his suffering from his mother and sisters, alleged his
work as a reason for passing the Christmas at Cambridge,
and his friend stayed up with him.
  Meanwhile Deronda relaxed his hold  on his mathematics,
and Hans, reflecting on this, at length said, " Old
fellow, while you are hoisting me you are risking yourself.
With your mathematical cram one may be like Moses or
Mahomet or somebody of that sort who had to cram, and
forgot in one day what it had taken him forty to learn."
  Deronda would not admit that he cared about the risk,
and he had arleary been beguiled into a little  indifference
by double  sympathy: he was very anxious that Hans
should not miss the muchneeded scholarship, and he felt a

*X223

revival of interest in the old studies. Still, when Hans,
rather late in the day, got able to use his own eyes, Deronda
had tenacity enough to try hard and recover his lost
ground. He failed, however; but he had the satisfaction of
seeing Meyrick win.
  Success, as a sort of beginning that urged completion,
might have reconciled Deronda to his university course;
but the emptiness of all things, from politics to pastimes, is
never so striking to us as when we fail in them. The loss of
the personal triumph had no severity for him, but the sense
of having spent his time ineffectively in a mode of working
which had been against the grain, gave him a distaste for
any renewal of the process, which turned his imagined
project of quitting Cambridge into a serious intention. In
speaking of his intention to Meyrick he made it appear
that he was glad of the turn events had taken -- glad to
have the balance dip decidedly, and feel freed from his
hesitations: but he observed that he must of course submit
to any strong objection on the part of Sir Hugo.
  Meyrick's joy and gratitude were disturbed by much
uneasiness. He believed Deronda's alleged preference,
but he felt keenly that in serving him Daniel had placed
himself in a disadvantage in Sir Hugo's opinion, and he
said mournfully, "If you had gor the scholarship, Sir Hugo
would have thought that you asked to leave us with a
better grace. You have spoilt your luck for my sake, and I
can do nothing to mend it."
  "Yes, you can; you are to be a firstrate fellow. I call that
a firstrate investment of my luck."
  "Oh, confound it] You save an ugly mongrel from
drowing, and expect him to cut a fine figure. The poets
have made tragedies enough about signing one's self over
to wickedness for the sake of getting something plummy;
I shall write a cmtragedy of a fellow who  signed himself
over to be good, and was uncomfortable ever after."
  But Hans lost no time in secretly writing the history of
the affair to Sir Hugo, making it plain that but for
Deronda's generous devotion he could hardly have failed to
win the prize he had been working for.

*X224

  The two friends went up to town together: Meyrick to
rejoice with his mother and the girls in their little home at
Chelsea; Deronda to carry out the less easy task of opening
his mind to Sir Hugo. He relied a little on the baronet's
general tolerance of eccentricities, but he expected more
opposition than he met with. He was received with even warmer
kindness than usual, the failure was passed over
lightly, and when he detailed his  reasons for wishing to
quit the university and go to study abraod,  Sir Hugo sat
for some time in silence which was rather meditative
than surprised. At last he said, looking at Daniel with
examination, "So you don't want to be an Englishman to
the backbone after all?"
  "I want to be an  Englishman, but I want to understand
other points of view. And I want to get rid of a merrely
English attitude in studies."
  "Isee; you don'  don't want to be turned out in the same
mould as every other youngster. And I have nothing to say
against your doffing some of our national prejudices. I feel
the better myself for having spent a good deal of my time
abroad. But, for God's sake, keep an English cut, and don't
become indifferent to bad tobacco] And, my dear boy, it is
good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too
far. It will not do to give yourself to be melted down for
the benefit of the tallowtrade; you must know where to
find yourself. However, I shall put no veto on your going.
Wait until I can get off Committee, and I'll run over with
yu."
  So Deronda went according to his will. But not before the
he had spent some hours with Hans Meyrick, and been introduced
to the mother and sisters in the Chelsea home. The
shy girls watched and registered every look of their
brother's friend, declared by Hans to have been the salvation
of him, a fellow like nobody else, and,  in fine, a brick.
They so throughly accepted Deronda as an ideal, that
when he was gone the youngest set  to work, under the
criticism of the two elder girls, to paint him as Price
Prince Camaralzaman.

*C17

*X225

                              "This is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
                              -- Tennyson: ˛locksley˛ ˛Hall˛


On a fine morning near the end of July, Deronda was
rowing himself on the Thames. It was already a year or
more since he had come back to England, with the understanding
that his education was finished, and that he was
somehow to take his place in English society; but though,
in deference to Sit Hugo's wish, and to fence off idleness,
he had begun to read law, this apparent decision had been
without other result than to deepen the roots of indecision.
His old love of boating had revived with the more force
now that he was in town with the Mallingers, because he
could nowhere else get the same still seclusion which the
river gave him. He had a boat of his own at Putney, amd
whenever Sir Hugo did not want him, it was his chief
holiday to row till past sunset and come in again with the
stars. Not that he was in a sentimental stage; but he was
in another sort of contemplative mood perhaps more common
in the young men of our day -- that of questioning whether
it were worth while to take part in the battle of the world:
I mean, of course, the young men  in  whom the unproductive
labour of questioning is sustained by three or five
per cent on capital which somebody else has battled for. It
puzzled Sir Hugo that  one who made a splendid contrast
with all that was sickly and puling should be hampered
with ideas which, since they left an accomplished Whig
like himself unobstructed, could be no better than spectral
illusions; especially as Deronda set himself against authorship --
a vocation which is understood to turn foolish thinking
into funds.
  Rowing in his darkblue shirt and skullcap, his curls
closely clipped, his mouth beset with abundant soft waves
of beard, he bore only disguises traces of the seraphic boy
"trailing clouds of glory." Still, even one who had seen
him since his boyhood might have looked at him with slow

*X226

recognition, due perhaps to the peculiarity of the gaze
which Gwendolen chose to call "dreadful," though it had
really a very mild sort of scrutiny.  The voice,
sometimes audible in subdued snatches of song, had turned out
merely a high barytone; indeed, only to look at his lithe
powerful frame and the firm gravity of his face would have
been enough for an experienced guess that he had no rare
and ravishing tenor such as nature reluctantly makes at
some sacrificie. Look at his hands: they are not small and
dimpled, with tapering fingers that seem to have only a
deprecating touch: they are long, flexible, firmlygrasping
hands, such as Titian has painted in a picture where he
wanted to show the combination of refinement with force.
And there is something of a likeness, too, between the faces
belonging to the hands -- in both the uniform  palebrown
skin, the perpendicular brow, the calmly penetrating eyes
skin, the perpendicular brow, the calmly penetrating eyes.
Not seraphic any longer: thoroughly terrestrial and
manly; but still of a kind to raise belief in a human dignity
which can afford to acknowledge poor relations.
  Such types meet here and there among average conditions;
in a workman, for example, whistling over a bit of
measurement and lifting his eyes to answer our question
about the road. And often the grand meanings of facesas
well as of written words may lie chiefly in the impressions
of those who look on them. But it is precisely such impressions
that  happen just now to be of importance in relation
to Deronda, rowing on the Thames in a very ordinary
equipment for a young Englishman at leisure, and passing
under Kew Bridge with no thought of an adventure in
which his appearance was likely to play any part. In fact,
he objected very strongly to the notion, which others had
not allowed him to escape, that his appearance was of a
kind to draw attention; and hints of this, intended to be
complimentary, found an angry  resonance in him, coming
from mingled experiences, to which a clue has already been
given. His own face in the glass had during many years
been associated for him with thoughts or some one whom
he must be like -- one about whose character and lot he
continually wondered, and never dared to ask.

*X227

  In the neighbourhood of Kew Bridge, between six and
seven o'clock the river was so solidute. Several persons
were sauntering on the towingpath, and here and there a
boat was playing. Deronda has been rowing fast to get over
this spot, when, becoming aware of a great  barge advancing
towards him, he guided his boat aside, and rested on
his oar within a couple of yards of the  riverbrink. He was
all the while unconsciously continuing the lowtoned chant
which had  haunted his throat all the way up the river --
the gondolier's song in the "Othello," where Rossini has worthily
set to music the immortal words of Dante --

                               "Nessun maggior dolore
                      Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
                      Nella miseria:"

and, as he rested on his oar, the pianissimo fall of the
melodic wail "nella miseria" was distinctly audible on the
brink of the water. Three or four persons had paused at
various spots to watch the barge passing the bridge, and
doubtless included in their notice the young gentleman in
the boat; but probably it was only to one ear that the low
vocal sounds came with more significance than if they had
been an insectmurmur amidst the sum of current noises.
Deronda, awaiting the barge, now turned his head to the
riverside, and saw at a few  yards' distance from him a
figure which might have been an impersonation of the
misery he was unconsciously giving voice to: a girl hardly
more than eighteen, of low slim figure, with most delicate
little face, her dark curls pushed behind her ears under a
large black hat, a long wollen cloak over her shoulders. Her
hands were hanging down clasped before her, and her eyes
were fixed on the river with a look of immovable, statuelike
despair. The strong arrest of his attention made him
cease singing: apparently his voice had entered her inner
world without  her having taken any note of whence it
came,  for when it suddenly ceased she changed her attitude
slightly, and, looking around with a frightened clance, met
Deronda's face. It was but a couple of moments, but that

*X228

seems a long while for two people to look straight at each other.
Her look was something  like that of a fawn or other
gentle animal before it turns to run away: no blush, no
special alarm, but only some timidity which yet could not
hinder her from a long look before she turned. In  fact, it
seemed to Deronda that she was only half conscious of her
surroundings: was she hungry, or was there some other
cause of  bewilderment? He felt an outleap
of interest and compassion towards her; but the next instant she
had turned and walked away to a neighbouring bench under a
tree. He had no right to linger and watch her: poorlydressed,
melancholy women are common sights; it was only
the delicate beauty, the picturesque lines and colour of the
image that were exceptional, and these conditions made it
the more markedly impossible that he should obtrude his
interest upon her. He began to row away, and was soon far
up the river; but no other thoughts were busy enough
quite to expel that pale image of unhappy girlhood. He fell
again and again to speculating on the probable romance
that lay behind that loneliness and look of desolation; then
to smile at his own share in the prejudice that interesting
faces must have interesting adventures; then to justify
himself for feeling that sorrow was the more tragic when it
befell delicate, childlike beauty.
  "I should not have forgotten the look of misery if  she had
been ugly and  vulgar," he said to himself. But there was no
denying that the attractiveness of the image made it likelier
to last. It was clear to him as an onyx cameo: the
brownblack drapery, the white face with small, small
features and dark, longlashed eyes. His mind glanced over
the girltragedies that are going on in the world, hidden,
unheeded, as if they were but tragedies of the corpse or
hedgerow, where the helpless drag wounded wings forsakenly
and streak the shadowed moss with the red
 momenthand of their own death. Deronda of late, in his
solitary excursions, had been occupied chiefly with uncertainties
about his own course; but those uncertainties,
being much at their leisure, were wont to have such widesweeping
connections with all life and history that the new

*X229

image of helpless sorrow easily blent itself with what
seemed to him the strong array of reasons why he sould
shrink from getting into that routine of the world which
makes men apologise for all its  wrongdoing, and take
opinions as mere professional equipment -- why he should
not draw strongly at any threat in the hopelesslyentangled
scheme of things.
  He used his oars little, satisfied to go with the tide and be
taken back by it. It was his habit to indulge himself in that
solemn passivity which easily comes with the lengthening
shadows and mellowing light, when thinking and desiring
melt together imperceptibly, and what in other hours may
have seemed  argument  takes the quality of
passionate vision. By the time he had come back again  with the tide
past Richmond Bridge the sun was near setting; and the
approach of his favourite hour -- with its deepening stillness,
and darkening masses of tree and building between
the double glow of the sky and the river -- disposed him to
linger as if they had been an unfinished strain of music. He
looked out for a perfectly solitary spot where he could
lodge his boat against  the bank, and, throwing himself on
his back with his head propped on the cushions, could
watch  out the light of sunset and the opening of that beadroll
which some oriental poet describes as God's call to the
little stars, who each answer, "Here I am." He chose a spot
in the bend of the river just opposite Kew Gardens, where
he had a great breadth of water before him reflecting the
glory of the sky, while he himself was in shadow. He lay
with his hands behind his head propped on a level with the
boat's edge, so that he could see all aorund him, but  could
not be seen by any one at a few yards's distance; and for a
long while he never turned his eyes from the view right in
front of him. He was forgetting everything else in halfspeculative,
halfinvoluntary identification of himself with
the objects he was looking at, thinking how far it might be
possible habitually to shift his centre till his own personality
would be no less outside him than the landscape, --
when  the sense of something moving on the bank opposite
him where it was bordered by a line of willowbushes,

*X230

made him turn his glance thitheward. In the first moment
he had a darting presentiment about the moving figure;
and now he could see the small face with the strange dying
sunlight upon it. He feared to frighten her by a sudden
movement, and watched her with motionless attention. She
looked  round, but seemed only to gather security from the
apparent solitude, hid her hat among the willows, and
immediately took off her wollen dark cloak. Presently she seated
herself and deliberately dipped the cloak in the water,
holding it there a little while, then taking it out  with effort,
rising from her seat as she did so. By this time Deronda felt
sure that she meant to wrap the wet cloak round her as a
drowingshroud; there was no longer time to hesitate
about frightening her. He rose and seized his oar to ply
across; happily her possition lay a little below him. The poor
thing, overcome with terror at this sign of discovery from
the opposite bank, sank down on the brink again, holding
her coak but half out of the water. She crouched and
covered her face as if she kept a faint hope that she had not
been seen, and that the boatman was accidentally coming towards
her. But soon he was within brief space of her, steadying
his boat against the bank, and speaking, but very gently --
  "Don't be afraid.... You are unhappy.... Pray, trust
me.... Tell me what I can do to help you."
  She raised her head and looked up at him. His face now
was towards the light, and she knew it again. But she did
not speak for a few moments which were a renewal of their
former gaze at each other. At last she said in a low sweet voice,
with an accent so distinct that it suggested foreigness
and yet was not foreign, "I saw you before;" ... and
then added dreamily, after a like pause, "nella miseria."
  Deronda, not understanding the connection of her thought,
supposed that her mind was weakened by distress and
hunger.
  "It was you, singing?" she went on, hesitatingly -- "Nessun
maggior dolore."... The mere words themselves uttered in
her sweet undertones seemed to give the melody to
Deronda's ear.
  "Ah, yes," he said, understanding now, "I am often singing

*X231

them. But I fear you will injure yourself staying here. Pray
let me carry you in my boat to some place of safety. And
that wet cloak -- let me take it."
  He would not attempt to take it without her leave, dreading
lest he should  her. Even at his words, he fancied
that she shrank and clutched the cloak more tenaciously.
But her eyes were fixed on him with a question in them as
she said, "You look good. Perhaps it is God's command."
  "Do trust me. Let me help you. I will die before i I will let
any harm come to you.
any harm come to you."
  She rose from her sitting posture, first dragging the
saturated cloak and then letting it fall on the ground -- it
was too heavy for her tired arms. Her little woman's figure
as she laid her delicate chilled hands together one over the other
against her waist, and went a step backward while she
leaned her head forward as if not to lose her sight of his
face, was unspeakably touching.
  "Great God]" the words escape Deronda in a tone so low
and solemn  that they seemed like a prayer  become
unconsciously vocal. The agitating impression this forsaken girl was
making on him stirred a fibre that lay close to his deepest
interest in the fates of women -- "perhaps my mother was
like this one." The old thought had come now with a new
impetus of mingled feeling, and urged that exclamation in
which both East and West have for ages concentrated their
awe in the  presence of inexorable calamity.
  The lowtoned words seemed to have some reassurance  in
them for the hearer: she stepped forward close to the
boat's side, and Deronda put out his hand, hoping now that
she would let him help her in. She had already  put her tiny
hand into his which closed round it, when some new
thought struck her, and drawing back she said --
  "I have nowhere to go -- nobody belonging to me in all
this land."
  "I will take to a lady who has daughters," said
Deronda, immediately. He felt a sort of relief in gathering
that the wretched home and cruel friends he imagined her
to be fleeing from were not in the near backgrounds. Still
she hesitated, and said more  dimidly than ever --

*X232

  "Do you belong to the  theatre?"
  "No; I have nothing to do with the theatre, " said
Deronda, in a decided tone. Then beseechingly, "I will put
you in perfect safety at once; with a lady, a good woman; I
am sure she will be kind. Let us lose no   time: you will
make yourself ill. Life may still become sweet to you.
There are good people -- there are good women who will
take care of you."
  She drew backward no more, but stepped in easily, as is she
were used to such action, and sat down on the cushions.
  "You had a covering for your head," said Deronda.
  "My hat?" (she lifted up her hands to her head). "It is
quite hidden in the bush."
  "I will find it," said Deronda, putting out his hand deprecatingly
as she attempted to rise. "The boat is fixed."
  He jumped out, found the hat, and lifted up the
saturated cloak, wringing it and throwing it into the
bottom of the boat.
  "We must carry the cloak away, to prevent any one who
may have noticed you from thinking you have been drowned."
he said cheerfully, as he got in again and presented the old
hat to her. "I wish I had any other garnment than my coat to
offer you. But shall you mind throwing it over your
shoulders while we are on the water? It is quite an ordinary
thing to do, when people return late and are not enough
provided with wraps." He held out the coat towards her
with a smile, and there came a faint melancholy smile in
answer, as she took it and put it on very cleverly.
  "I have some biscuits -- should you like them?" said
Deronda.
  "No; I cannot eat. I had still some money left to buy
bread."
  He began to ply his  oar without further remark, and
they went along swiftly for many minutes without speaking.
She did not look at him, but was watching the oar,
leaning forward in an attitude of repose, as if she were
beginning to feel the comfort of returning warmth and the
prospect of life instead of death. The twilight was deepening;
the red flush was all gone and the little stars were

*X233

giving their  answer one after another. The moon was
rising, but was still entangled among trees and buildings.
The light was not such that he could distinctly discern the
expression of her features or her glance, but they were
distinctly before him nevertheless -- features and a glance
which seemed to have given a fuller meaning for him to
the human face. Among his anxieties one was dominant:
his first impression about her, that her mind might be
disordered, had not been quite dissipated: the project of
suicide was unmistakable, and gave a deeper colour to
every other suspicious sign. He longed to begin a conversation,
but abstained, wishing to encourage the confidence
that might induce her to speak first. At last she did speak.
  "I like to listen to the oar."
  "So do I."
  "If you had not come, I should have been dead now."
  "I cannot bear you speak of that. I hope you will never
b be sorry that I came."
  "I cannot see how I should be glad to live. The ˛maggior˛
˛dolore˛ and the ˛miseria˛ have lasted longer than the ˛tempo˛
˛felice˛ ˛.˛ ˛"˛ She paused and then went on dreamily, -- ˛"˛
Dolore˛ -- ˛miseria˛ -- I think those words are alive."
  Deronda was mute: to question her seemed an unwarrantable
freedom; he shrank from appearing to claim the
authority of a benefactor, or to treat her with the less
reverence because she was in distress. She went on,
musingly --
  "I thoutht it iwas not wicked. Death and life are one
before the Eternal. I know our fathers slew their children
and then slew themselves, to keep their soul pure. I meant
it so. But now I am  commanded to live. I cannot see how I
shall live."
  "You will find friends. I will find them for you."
  She shook her head and said mounfully, "Not my
mother and brother. I cannot find them."
  "You are English? You must be -- speaking English so
perfectly."
  She did not answer immediately, but looked at Deronda
again, straining to see him in the doubtful light. Until now

*X234

she had been watching the oar. It seemed as  if she were
half roused, and wondered which part of her impressions
was dreaming and which waking. Sorrowful isolation had
benumbed her sense of reality, and the power of distinguishing
outward and inward was continually slipping
away from her. Her look was full of wondering timidity,
such as the forsaken one in the desert might have lifted to
the  angelic vision before she knew whether her m
the angelic vision before she knew whether his message
were in anger or  in pity.
  "You want to know if I am English?" she said at last,
while Deronda was reddening nervously under a gaze
which he  felt more fully than he saw.
  "I want to  know nothing except what you want to tell me,"
he said, still uneasy in the fear that her mind was wandering.
"perhaps it is not good for you to talk."
  "yes, I will tell you. I am Englishborn. But I am a
Jewess."
  Deronda was silent, inwardly wondering that he had not
said this to himself before, though any one who had seen
delicatefaced Spanish girls migh simply have guessed her
to be Spanish.
  "Do you despise me for it?" she said presently in low
tones, which had a sadness that pierced like a cry from a
small dumb creature in fear.
  "Why should I?" said Deronda. "I am not so foolish."
  "I know many Jews are bad."
  "So are many Christians. But I should not think it fair for
you to despise me because of that."
  "My mother and brother were good. But I shall never
find them. I am come a long way -- from abroad. I ran
away; but I cannot tell you -- I cannot speak of it. I thought I
might find my mother again -- God would guide me. But then
I despaired. This morning when the light came, I felt as if
one word kept sounding within me -- Never] never] But now
-- I begin -- to think --" her words were broken by rising sobs --
"I am commanded to live -- perhaps we are going to her."
  With an outburst of weeping she buried her head and her
  With  outburst of weeping she buried her head on her knees.
He hoped that this passionate weeping might relieve
her excitement. Meanwhile he was inwardly picturing in

*X235

much embarassment how he should present himself with
her in Park Lane -- the course which he had at first unreflectingly
determined on. No one kinder and more gentle
than Lady Mallinger; but it was hardly probable that she
would be at home; and he had a shuddering sense of a
lackey staring at this delicate, sorrowful image of wpmanhood --
of glaring lights and fine staircases, and perhaps
chilling suspicious manners from lady'smaid and housekeeper,
that might scare the mind already in a state of
dangerous susceptibility. But to take her to any other
shelter than a home already known to him was not to be
contemplated: he was full of  fears about the issue of the
adventure which had brought on him a responsability all
the heavier for the strong and agitating impression this
chillike creature had made on him. But another resource
came to mind: he could venture to take her to Mrs
Meyrick's -- to tThe candles were on a table for Kate, who was
drawing illustrations for a publisher; the lamp was not only
for the reader but for Army and Mab, who were embroidering
satin cushions for  "the great world."
  Outside, the house looked very narrow and shabby, the
bright light  through the holland blind showing the heavy
oldfashioned windowframa; but it is pleasant to know that
many such grimwalled slices of space in our foggy London
have been, and still are the homes of a culture the more
spotlessly free from vulgarity, because poverty has rendered
everything like diplay an impersonal question, and all the
grand shows of the wold simply a spectacle which rouses
no petty rivalry or vain effort after possession.
  The Meyricks' was a home of that kind; and they all
clung to this particular house in a row because its interior
was filled with objects always in the same places, which for
the mother held memories of her marriage time, and for
the young ones seemed as necessary and uncriticised a
part of their world as the stars of the Great Bear seen from
the back windows. Mrs Meyrick had borne much stint of
other matters that she might be able to keep some engravings
specially cherished by her husband; and the narrow
spaces of wall held a wold history in scenes and heads
which the children had early learned by heart. The chairs
and tables were also old friends preferred to new. But in
these two little parlours with no furniture that a broker
would have cared to cheapen except the prints and piano,
there was space and apparatus for a wideglancing, nicely-
select life, open to the highest things in music, painting,
and poetry. I am not sure that in the times of greatest
 scarcity, before Kate could get paid work, these ladies had
always had a servant to light their fires and sweep their
rooms; yet they were fastidious in some points, and could
not believe that the manners of ladies in the fashionable
world were so full of coarse selfishness, petty quarrelling,
and slang as they are represented to be in what are called
literary pgotographs. The Meyricks had their little oddities,
streaks of eccentricity from the mother's blood as well
as the father's, their minds being like medieval houses with

*X238

unexpected recesses and openings from this into that,
flights of steps and sudden outlooks.
  But mother and daughters were all united by a triple
bond -- family love; admiration for the finest work, the best
action; and habitual industry. Han's desire to spend some
of his money in making their lives more luxurious had
been resisted by all of them, and both they and he had
been thus saved from regrets at the threatened triumph of
his yearning for art  over the attractions of secured income
-- a triumph that would bynad by obliged him to give up his
fellowship. They could all afford to laugh at his Gavarni-
caricatures and to hold him blameless in following a
natural bent which their unselfishness and indipendence
had left without obstacle. It was enough for them to go on
in their old way, only  having a grand treat of operagoing
(to the gallery) when Hans came home on a visit.
  Seeing the group they made this evening, one could
hardly wish them to change their way of life. They were all
alike small, and so in due proportion with their miniature
rooms. Mrs Meyrick was reading aloud from French
book: she was a lively little woman, half French, half
Scotch, with a pretty articulateness of speech that seemed
to make daylight in her hearer's understanding. Though
she was not yet fifty, her rippling hair, covered by a
quakerish net cap, was chiefly grey, but her eyebrows were
brown as the bright eyes below them; her black dress,
almost like a priest's cassock with its row  of buttons,
suited a neat figure hardly five feet high. The daughters were to
match the mother, except that Mab had Hans's light hair
and complexion, with a bossy irregular brow and other
quaintnesses that reminded one of him. Everything about
them was compact, from the firm coils of their hair,
fastened back ˛a˛ ˛la ˛ ˛Chinoise˛ ˛,˛ to their grey skirts in purita
nonconformity with the fashion, which at that time would
have demanded that four  feminine circumferences should
fill at the free space in the front parlour. All four, if they
had been waxwork, might have been packed easily in a
fashionable lady's travelling trunk. Their faces seemed full
of speech, as if their minds had been shelled, after the

*X239

manner of horsechestnuts, and become brightly visible.
The only large thing of its kind in the room was Hafiz, the
Persian cat, comfortably poised on the brown leather back
of a chair, and opening his large eyes now and then to see
that the lower animals were not in any mischief.
  The book Mrs Meyrick had before her was Erckmann-Chatrian's
˛Histoire˛ ˛d'un˛ ˛Conscrit˛ ˛.˛ She had just finished
reading it sloud, and Mab, who had let her work fall on the
ground while she stretched her head forward and fixed her
eyes on the reader, exclaimed --
  "I think that is the finest story in the world."
  "Of course, Mab]" said Amy, "it is the last you have
heard. Everything that pleases you is the best in its turn."
  "It is hardly to be called a story," said Kate. "it is a bit of
history brought near us with a strong telescope. We can see
the soldiers's faces: no, it is more than that -- we can hear
everything -- we can almost hear their hearts beat."
  "I don't care what you call it," said Mab, flirting away her
thimble. "Call it a chapter in Revelations. It makes me want
to do something good, something grand. It makes me so sorry
for everybody. It makes me like Shiller -- I want to take the
world in my arms and kiss it. I must kiss you instead, little
mother]" She threw her arms round her mother's neck.
  "Whenever you are in that mood, Mab, down goes your
work," said Amy. "it would be doing something good to
finish your cushion without soiling it."
  "Oh -- oh -- oh]" groaned Mab, as she stopped to pick up
her work and thimble. "I wish I had three wounded
conscripts to take care of."
  "You would spill their beeftea while you were talking,"
said Amy.
  "Poor Mab] don't be hard on her," said the mother. "Give
me the embroidery now, child. You go on with your enthusiasm,
and I will go on with the pink and white poppy."
  "Well, ma, I think you are more caustic than Amy," said
Kate, while she drew her head back to look at her drawing.
  "Oh -- oh -- oh]" cried Mab again, rising and stretching
her arms. "I wish something wonderful would happen. I feel
like the deluge. The waters of the great deep are broken

*X240

up and the windows of heaven are opened. I must sit down
and play the scales."
  Mab was opening the piano while the others were laughing
at this climax, when a cab stopped before the house,
and there forthwith came a quick rap of the knocker.
  "Dear me]" said Mrs Meyrick, starting up, "it is after ten,
and phoebe is gone to bed." She hastened out, leaving the
parlour door open.
  "Mr Deronda]" The girls could hear this exclamation
from their mamma. Mab clasped her hands, saying in a loud
whisper, "There now] something ˛is˛ going to happen;" Kate
and Amy gave up their work in amazement. But Deronda's
tone in reply was so low that they could not hear his words.
and Mrs Meyrick immediately closed the parlour door.
  "I know I am trusting to your goodness in a most extraordinary
way," Deronda went on, after giving his brief narrative,
"but you can imagine how helpless I feel with a young
creature like this on my hands. I could not go with her among
strangers, and in her nervous state I should dread taking
her into a house full of servants. I have trusted to your
mercy. I hope you will not think my act unwarrantable."
  "On the contrary, You have honoured me by trusting me.
I see your difficulty. Pray bring her in. I will go and prepare
the girls."
  While Deronda went back to the cab, Mrs Meyrick
turned into the parlour again and said, "Here is somebody
to take care of instead of your wounded conscripts, Msb: a
poor girl who was going to drown herself in despair. Mr
Deronda found her only just in time to save her. He
brought her along in his boat, and did not know what else
it would be safe to do with her, so he trusted us and
brought her here. It seems she is sa Jewess, but quite refined,
he says -- knowing Italian and music."
  The  three girls, wondering and expectant, came forward
and stood near each other in mute confidence that they
were all feeling alike under this appeal to their compassion.
Mab looked rather awestricken, as if this answer to her
wish were something preternatural.
  Meanwhile Deronda going to the door of the cab where

*X241

the pale face was now gazing out with roused observation,
said, "I have brought you to some of the kindest people in
the world: there are daughters like you. It is a happy
home. Will you let me take you to them?"
  She stepped out obediently, putting her hand in his and
forgetting her hat; and when Deronda led her into the full
light of the parlour where the four little women sttod
awating her, she made a picture that would have stirred
much duller sensibilities than thiers. At first she was a little
dazed by the sudden light, and before she had concentrated
her glance he had put her hand into the mother's.
He was inwardly rejoicing that the Meyricks were so
small: the darkcurled head was the highest among them.
The poor wanderer could not be afraid of these gentle faces
so near hers; and now she was looking at each of them in
turn while the mother said, "You must be weary, poor child."
  "We will take care of you -- we will comfort you -- we will
love you," cried Mab, no longer able to restrain herself, and
taking the small right hand caressingly between both her
own. This gentle welcoming warmth was penetrating the
bewildered one: she hung back just enough to see
better the four faces in front of her, whose goodwill was being
reflected in hers, not in any smile, but in that undefinable
change which tells us that anxiety is passing into contentment.
For an instant she looked up at Deronda, as if she
were referring all this mercy to him, and then again turning
to Mrs Meyrick, said with more collectedness in her
sweet tones than he had heard before --
  "I am a stranger. I am Jewess. You might have thought
I was wicked."
  "No, we are sure you are good," burst out Mab.
  "We think no evil of you, poor child. You shall be safe
with us," said Mrs Meyrick. "Come now and sit down. You
must have some food, and then go to rest."
  The stranger looked up again at Deronda, who said --
  "You will have no more fears with these friends? You
will rest tonight?"
  "Oh, I should not fear. I should rest. I think these are the
ministering angels."

*X242

  Mrs Meyrick wanted to lead her to a seat, but again
hanging back gently, the poor weary thing spoke as if with
a scruple at being received without a further account of
herself:
  "My  nsme is Mirah Lapidoth. I am come a long way, all
the way from Prague by myself. I made my escape. I ran
away from dreadful things. I came to find my mother and
brother in London. I had been taken from my mother
when I was little, but I thought I could find her again. I
had trouble -- the houses were all gone --I could not find
her. It has been a long while, and I had not much money.
That is why I am in distress."
  "Our mother will be good to you," cried Mab. "See what a
nice little mother she is]"
  "Do sit down now," said Kate, moving a chair forward,
while Amy ran to get some tea.
  Mirah resisted no longer, but seated herself with perfect
grace, crossing her little feet, laying her hands one over the
other on her lap, and looking at her friends with placid
reverence; whereupon Hafiz, eho had been watching the
scene restlessly, came forward with tail erect and rubbed
himself against her ankles. Deronda felt it time to take his
leave.
  "Will allow me to come again and inquire -- perhaps
at five tomorrow?" he said to Mrs Meyrick.
  "yes, pray; we shall have had time to make acquaintance
then."
  "Goodbye," said Deronda, looking down at Mirah, and
putting out his hand.  She rose and she took it, and the
moment brought back to them both strongly thae other
moment when she had first taken that outstretched hand.
She lifted her eyes to his and said with reverential fervour,
"The God of our fathers bless you and deliver you from all
evil as you have delivered me. I did not believe there was
any man so good. None before have thought me worthy of
the best. You found me poor and miserable, yet you have
given me the best.
  Deronda could not speak, but with silent adieux to the
Meyricks, hurried away.

*X243

*B3

                          MAIDENS CHOOSING

*X245
*C19

"I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say,
""Tis all barren;"" and so it is: and so it is all the world to him
who will not cultivate the fruits it offers."
                               -- Sterne: ˛Sentimental ˛ ˛Journey˛ ˛.˛

To say that Deronda was romantic would be to
misrepresent him. but under his calm and somewhat selfrepressed
exterior there was a fervour which made him easily find
poetry and romance among the events of everyday life.
And perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in
the world except for those phlegmatic natures who I
suspect would in an age have regarded them as a dull form
of erroneous thinking. They exist very easily in the same
room with the microscope and even in railway carriages:
what banishes them in the vacuum in gentlemen and lady
passengers. How should all the apparatus of heaven and
earth, from the farthest firmament to the  tender bosom of
the mother who nourished us, make poetry for a mind that
has no movements of awe and tenderness, no sense of
fellowship which  thrills from the near to the distant, and
back again from the distant to the near?
  To Deronda this event to find Mirah was as heartstirring
as anything that befell Orestes or Rinaldo. He sat
up half the night, living again through the moments since
he had first discerned Mirah  on the riverbrink, with the
fresh and fresh vividness which belongs to emotive
memory. When he took up a book to try and dull this
urgency of inward vision, the printed words were no more
than a network through which he sawand heard everything
as clearly as before -- saw not only the actual events
of two hours, but possibilities of what had been and what
might be which those events were enough to feed with the
warm blood of passionate hope and fear. Something in his
own experience caused Mirah's search after her mother to
lay hold with peculiar force in his imagination. The first
prompting of  sympathy was to aid her in the search: if
given persons were extant in London there were ways of

*X246

finding them as subtle as scientific experiment, the right
machinery being set at work. But here the mixed feelings
which belonged to Deronda's kindred experience naturally
transfused themselves into the anxiety on behalf of Mirah.
  The disire to know his own mother, or to know about
her, was constantly haunted with dread; and in imagining
what might befall Mirah it quickly occured to him that
finding the mother and brother from whom she had been
parted when she was  a little one might turn out
to be a calamity. When she was in the boat she said that her
mother and brother were good; but the goodness might
have been chiefly in her own ignorant innocence and yearning
memory, and the ten or twelve years since the parting had
been time enough for much worsening. Spite of his strong
tendency to side with the objects of prejudice, and in
general with those who got the worst of it, his interest had
never been practically drawn towards existing Jews, and the
facts he knew about them, whether they walked conspicuous
in fine apparel or lurked in bystreets, were chiefly of
the sort most repugnant to him. Of learned and accomplished
Jews he took it for granted that they had dropped
their religion, and wished to be merged in the people of their
native lands. Scorn flung at a Jew as such would have
roused all his sympathy in griefs of inheritance; but the
indiscriminate scorn of a race will often strike a specimen
who has well earned it on his own account, and might
fairly be gibbeted as a rascally son of Adam. It appears
that the Caribs, who know little of theology, regard
thieving as a practice peculiarly connected with Christian
tenets, and probably they could allege experimental
grounds for this opinion. Deronda could not escape (who
can?) knowing ugly stories of Jewish characteristics and
occupations; and though one of his favourite protests was
against the  severance of the past and present history,
he was like others who shared his protest, in never having cared to
reach any more special conclusions about actual Jews than
that they retained the virtues and vices of a longoppressed
race. But now that Mirah's longing roused his mind to a
closer survey of details, very disagreeable images urged themselves

*X247

of what it might be to find out this middleaged
Jewess and her son. To be sure, there was the exquisite
refinement and charm of the creature herself to make a
presumptionin favour of her immediate kindred, but -- he
must wait to know more: perhaps through Mrs Meyrick he
might gather some guiding hints from Mirah's own lips.
Her voice, her accent, her looks -- all the sweet purity that
clothed her as with a consecrating garment made him shrink the more
from giving her, either ideally or practically,
an association with what was hateful or contaminating.
But these fine words with which we fumigate and
becloud unpleasant facts are not the language in which we
think. Deronda's thinking went on  in rapid images of what
might be: he saw himself guided by some official scout
into a dingy street; he entered through a dim doorway, and
saw a hawkeyed woman, roughheaded, and unwashed,
cheapening a hungry girl's last bit of finery; or in some
quarter  only the more hideous  for being smarter,
he found himself under the breath of a young Jew talkative and
familiar,  willing to show his acquaintance with gentlemen's
tastes, and not fastidious in any transactions with which
they would favour him -- and so on through the brief
chapter of his experience in this kind. Excuse him: his
mind was not apt to run spontaneously into insulting ideas,
or to practise a form of wit which identifies Moses with the
advertisement sheet; but he was just now governed by
dread, and if Mirah's parents had been Christian, the
chief difference would have been that his forebodings
would have been fed with wider knowledge. It was the
habit of his mind to connect dread with unknown
parentage, and in this case as well as his own there was
enough to make the connection reasonable.
  But what to be done with Mirah? She needed shelter
and protection in the fullest sense, and all his chivalrous
sentiment roused itself to insist that the sooner and the more
fully he could engage for her the interest of others besides
himself, the better he should fulfil her claims on him. He
had no right to provide for her entirely, though he might
be able to do so; the very depth of the impression she had

*X248

produced made him desire that she should understand
herself to be entirely independent of him; and vague
visions of the future which he tried to dispel as fantastic
left their influence in an anxiety stronger than any motive
he could give for it, that those who saw his actions closely
should be acquainted from the first with the history of his
relation to Mirah. He had learned to hate secrecy about
the grand ties and obligations of his life -- to hate it the
more because a strong spell of interwoven sensibilities
hindered him from breaking such secrecy. Deronda had
made a vow to himself that -- since the truths which disgrace
mortals are not all of their own making -- the truth
should never be made a disgrace to another by his act. He
was not without terror lest he should break this vow, and
fall into the apologetic philosophy which explains the world
into containing nothing better than one's own conduct.
  At one moment he resolved to tell the whole of his
adventure to Sir Hugo and Lady Mallinger the next morning
at breakfast, but the possibility that something quite
new might reveal itself on his next visit to Mrs Meyrick's
checked this impulse, and he finally went to sleep on the
conclusion that he would wait until that visit had been
made.

*C20

"It will hardly be denied that even in the frail and corrupted
world, we sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and
aspect, as well as in the whole habit of life, manifest such a
signature and stamp of virtue, as to make our judgment of them
a matter of intuition rather than the rresult of continued
examination."
  -- Alexander Knox: quoted in Southey's Life of Wesley


Mirah said that she had slept well that night; and when
she came down in Mab's black dress, her dark hair curling in
fresh fibrils as it gradually dried from its plenteous bath, she

*X249


looked like one who has beginning to take comfort after the
long sorrow and watching which had paled her cheek and
made deep blue semicircles under her eyes. It was Mab who
carried her breakfast and ushered her down -- with some pride
in the effect produced by a pair of tiny felt slippers which
she had rushed out to buy because there were no shoes in the
house small enough for Mirah, whose borrowed dress ceased
about her ankles and displayed the cheap clothing that
moulding itself on her feet seemed an adornment
as choice as the sheaths of buds. The farthing buckles were bijoux.
  "Oh, if you please, mamma]" cried Mab, clasping her
hands and stopping towards Miriah's feet, as she entered
the parlour; "look at the slippers, how beautifully they fit] I
declare she is like the Queen Budoor -- "two delicate feet,
the work of the protecting and allrecompensing Creator,
support her; and I wonder how they can sustain what is above them.""
  Mirah loooked down at her feet in a chillike way and
then smiled at Mrs Meyrick, who was saying inwardly,
"One could hardly imagine this creature having an evil
thought. But wise people would tell to be cautious." She
returned Mirah's smile and said, "I fear the feet have had
to sustain their burthen a little too often lately. But today
she will rest and be my companion."
  "And she will tell you so many things and I shall not
hear them," grumbled Mab, who felt herself in the first
volume of a delightful romance and obliged to miss some
chapters because she had to go to pupils.
  Kate was already gone to make sketches along the river,
and Amy was away on business errands. It was what the
mother wished, to be alone with this stranger, whose story
must be sorrowful one, yet was needful to be told.
  The small front parlour was as good as a temple that morning.
The sunlight was on the river and soft air came in through
the open window; the walls showed a glorious
silent cloud of witnesses -- the Virgin soaring amid her
cherubic escort; grand Melancholia with her solemn
universe; the Prophets and Sibyls; the School of Athens;
the Last Supper; mystic groups where faroff ages made

*X250

one moment; grave Holbein and Rembrandt heads; the
Tragic Muse; lastcentury children at their musings or
their play; Italian poets, -- all were there through the
medium of a little black and white. The neat mother who
had weathered her troubles, and come out of them with a
face still cheerful, was sorting coloured wools for her
embroidery. Hafiz purred on the windowledge, the clock on
the mantelpiece ticked without hurry, and the occasional
sound of wheels seemed to lie outside the more massive
central quiet. Mrs Meyrick thought that this qiet might be
the best invitation to speech on the part of her companion,
and chose not to disturb it by remark. Mirah sat opposite in
her former attitude, her hands clasped on her lap, her ankles
crossed, her eyes at first travelling slowly over the objects
around her, but finally resting with a sort of placid reverence
on Mrs Meyrick. At length she began to speak softly.
  "I remember my mother's face better than anything; yet I
was not seven when I was taken away, and I am ninenteen now."
  "I can understand that," said Mrs Meyrick. "There are
some earliest things that last the longest."
  "Oh yes, it was the earliest. I think my life began with
waking up and loving my mother's face: it was so near to
me, and her arms were around me, and she sang to me. One
hymn she sang so often, so often: and then she taught me
to sing it with her: it was the first I ever sang. They were
always Hebrew hymn she sang; and because I never knew
the meaning of the words they seemed full of nothing but
our love and happiness. When I lay in my little bed and it
was all white above me, she used to bend over me between
me and the white, and sing in a sweet low voice. I can dream
myself back into that time when I am awake, and often it
comes back to me in my sleep -- my hand is very little, I put
it up to her face and she kisses it. Sometimes in my dream I
begin to tremble and think that we are both dead; but then
I wake up and my hand lies like this, and for a moment I
hardly know myself. But if I could see my mother again, I
should know her."
  "You must expect some change after twelve years," said
Mrs Meyrick, gently. "See my grey hair: ten years ago it

*X251

was bright brown. The days and months pace over us
like restless little birds, and leave the marks of their feet
backwards and forwards; especially when they are like
birds with heavy hearts -- then they tread heavily."
  "Ah, I am sure her heart has been heavy for want of me.
But to feel her joy if we could meet again, and I could
make her know how I love her and give her deep comfort
after all her mourning] If that could be, I should mind
nothing; I should be glad that I have lived through my
trouble. I did despair. The world seemed miserable and
wicked; none helped me so that I could bear their looks
and words; I felt that my mother was dead, and death was
the only way to her. But then in the last moment -- yesterday,
when I longed for the water to close me over -- and I
thought that death was the best image of mercy -- then
goodness came to me living, and I felt trust in the living.
And -- it is strange -- but I began to hope that she was
living too. And now I am with you -- here -- this morning,
peace and hope have come into me like a flood. I want
nothing; I can wait; because I hope and believe and am
grateful -- oh, so graful] You have not thought evil of me
-- you have not despised me."
  Mirah spoke with lowtoned fervour, and sat as still as a
picture all the while.
  "many others would have felt as we do, my dear," said
Mrs Meyrick, feeling a mist come over her eyes as she
looked at her work.
  "But I did not meet them -- they did not come to me."
  "How long was it that you were taken from your mother?"
  "Ah, I am a long while coming to that. It is dreadful to
speak of, yet I must tell you -- I must tell you everything.
My father -- it was he who took me away. I thought we
were only going on a little journey; and I was pleased.
There was a box with all my little things in. But we went
on board a ship, and got farther and farther away from the
land. Then I was ill; and I thought it would never end -- it
was the first misery, and it seemed endless. But at last we
landed. I knew nothing then, and believed what my father
said. He comforted me, and told me I should go back to

*X252

my mother. But it was America we had reached, and it was
long years before we came back to Europe. At first I often
asked my father when we were going back; and I tried to
learn writing fast, because I wanted to write to my mother;
but one day when he found me trying to write a letter, he
took me on his knee and told me that my mother and
brother were dead; that was why we did not go back. I
remember my brother a little; he carried me once; but he
was not always at home. I believed my father when he said
that they were dead. I saw them under the earth when he
said they were there, with their eyes for ever closed. I never
thought of its not being true; and I used to cry every night
in my bed for a long while. Then when she came so often
to me, in my sleep, I thought she must be living about me
though I could not always see her, and that comforted me.
I was never afraid in the dark, because of that; and very
often in the day I used to shut my eyes and bury my face
and try to see her and to hear her singing. I came to do
that at last without shutting my eyes."
  Mirah paused with a sweet content in her face, as if she
were having h her happy vision, while she looked out
towards the river.
  "Still your father was not unkind to you, I hope," said Mrs
Meyrick, after a minute, anxious to recall her.
  "No; he petted me, and took pain to teach me. He was
an actor; and I found out, after, that the "Cobourg" I used
to hear of his going to at home was a theatre. But he had
more to do with the theatre than acting. He had not always
been an actor; he had been a teacher, and knew many
languages. His acting was not very good, I think; but he
managed the stage, and wrote and traslated  translated plays. An
Italian lady, a singer, lived with us a long time. They both
taught me; and I had a master besides, who made me learn
by heart and recite. I worked quite hard, though I was so
little; and I was not nine when I first went on the stage. I
could easily learn things, and I was not afraid. But then
and ever since I hated our way of life. My father had
money, and we had finery about us in a disorderly way;
always there were men and women coming and going

*X253

there was loud laughing and disputing, strutting, snapping
of fingers, jeering, faces I did not like to look at -- though
many petted and caressed me. But then I remembered my
mother. Even at first, when I understood nothing, I shrank
away from all those things ouside me into companioship
with thoughts that were not like them; and I gathered
thoughts very fast, because I  read many things -- plays and
poetry, Shakespeare and Shiller, and learned evil and
good. My father began to believe that I might be a great
singer: my voice was considered wonderful for a child; and
he had the best teaching for me. But it was painful that he
boasted of me, and set me to sing for show at any minute,
as iif I had been a musical box. Once when I was ten years
old, I played the part of a  little girl who had been forsaken
and I did not know it, and sat singing to herself while she
played with flowers. I did it without any trouble; but the
clapping and all the sounds of the theatre were hateful to
me; I never liked the praise I had, because it seemed
all very hard and unloving: I missed the love and the trust I
had been born into. I made a life in my own thoughts quite
different from everything about me: I chose what seemed
to me beautiful out of the plays and everything, and made
my world out of it; and it was like a sharp knife
always grazing me that we had two sorts of life which jarred so
with each other -- women looking good and gentle on the
stage, and saying good things as if they felt them, and
directly after i saw them with coarse, ugly manners. My
father sometimes noticed my shrinking ways; and Signora
said one day when I had been rehearsing, "She will never
be an artist: she had no notion of being anybody but
herself. That does very well now, but byandby you will
see -- she will have no more face and action than a singing-
bird." My father was angry, and they quarrelled. I sat
alone and cried, because what she had said was like a long
unhappy future unrolled before me. I did not want to be an
artist; but this was what my father expected of me. After a
while Signora left us, and a governess used to come and give
me lessons in different things, because my father began to
be afraid of my singing too much; but I still acted from time

*X254

disbelieved him. I have found that he did not always tell the
truth, and made promises without meaning to keep them;
and that raised my suspicion that my mother and brother
were still alive though he had told me that they were dead.
For in going over the past again and again as I got older
and knew more, I felt sure that my mother had been deceived,
and had expected to see us back again after a very little
while; and my father taking me on his knee and telling me
that my mother and brother were both dead seemed to me
now nothing but a bit of acting, to set my mind at rest.
The cruelty of that falsehood sank into me, and I hated all
untruth because of it. I wrote to my mother secretely: I knew
the street, Colman Street, where we lived, and that it
was near Blackfriars Bridge and the Coburg, and that our
name was Cohen the, though my father  called us
Lapidoth, because, he said, it was a name of his forefathers
in Poland. I sent my letter secretly; but no answer came,
and I thought there was no hope for me. Our life in
America did not last much longer. My father suddenly told
me we were to pack up and go to Hamburg, and I was
rather glad. I hoped we might get among a different sort of
people, and I knew German quite well -- some German
plays almost all by heart. My father spoke it better than he
spoke English. I was thirteen then, and I seemed to myself
quite old -- I knew so much, and yet so little. I think other
children cannot feel as I did. I had often wished that I had
been drowned when I was going away from my  mother.
But I set myself to obey and suffer: what else could I do?
One day when we were on our voyage, a new thought came
into my mind. I was not very ill that time, and I kept on
deck a good deal. My father acted and sang and joked to
amuse people on board, and I used often to overhear
remarks about him. One day, when I was looking at the sea
and nobody took notice of me, I overheard a gentleman say,
"Oh, he is one of those clever Jews -- a rascal, I shouldn't
wonder. There's no race like them for cunning in the men
and beauty in the women. I wonder what market he means
that daughter for." When I heard this, it darted into my mind
that the unhappiness in my life came from my being
a Jewess,

*X255

and that always, to the end the world would think slightly of
me and that I must bear it, for I should be judged by that
name; and it comforted me to believe that my suffering was
part of the affliction od my people, my part in the long song
of mourning that has been going on through ages and ages.
For if many of our race were wicked and made merry in
their wickedness -- what was that but part of the affliction
borne by  the just among them, who were despised for the
sins of their brethren? -- But you have not rejected me."
  Mirah had changed her tone in this last sentence, having
suddenly reflected that at this moment she had reason not
for complaint but for gratitude.
  "And we will try to save you from being judged unjustly
by others, my poor child," said Mrs Meyrick, who had now
given up all attempt at going on with her work, and sat
listening with folded hands and a face hardly less eager
than Mab's would have been. "Go on, go on: tell me all."
  "Afetr that we lived in different towns -- Hamburg and
Vienna, the longest. I began to study singing again, and my
father always got money about the theatres. I think he
brought a good deal of money from America: I never knew
why we left. For some time he was in great spirits about my
singing, and he made me rehearse parts and act continually.
He looked forward to my coming out in the opera. But byandby
it seemed that my voice would never be strong
enough -- it  did not  fulfil its promise. My master at
Vienna said, "Don't strain it further: it will never do for the
public: -- it is gold, but a thread of gold dust." My father
was bitterly disappointed: we were not so well off at that
time. I think I have not quite told you what I felt about my
father. I knew he was fond of me and meant to indulge me,
and that made me afraid of hurting him; but he always
mistook what would please me and give me happiness. It was
his nature to take everything lightly; and I soon left off
asking him any question about things that I cared for
much, because he always turned them off with a joke. He
would even ridicule our w^cown people; and once when he had
been imitating their movements and their tones in praying,
only to make  others laugh, I could not restrain myself -- for

*X256

I always had an anger in my heart about my mother --and
when we were alone, I said, "Father, you ought not to
mimic our own people before Christians who mock them:
would it not be bad if I mimicked you, that they might
mock you?" But he only shrugged his houlders and
and laughed and pinched my chin, and said, " you couldn't do
it, my dear." It was this way of turning off everything, that
made a great wall between me and my father, and whatever
I felt most I took the most care to hide from him. For
there were some things -- when they were laughed at I
could not bear it: the world seemed like a hell to me. Is
this world and all the life upon it only like a force or a
vaudeville, where you find no great meanings? Why then
are there tragedies and grand operas, where men do difficult
things and choose to suffer? I think it is silly to speak
of all things as a joke. And I saw that his wishing me to
sing the greatest music, and parts in grand operas, was only
wishing for what would fetch the greatest price. That
hemmed in my gratitude for his affectionateness, and the
tenderest feeling I had towards him was pity. Yes, I did
sometimes pity him. He had aged and changed. Now he
was no longer so lively. I thought he seemed worse -- less
good to others and to me. Every now and then in the latter
years his gaiety went away suddenly, and he would sit at
home silent and gloomy; or he would come in and fling himself
down and sob, just as I have done myself when I have
been in trouble. If I put my hand on his knee and said,
"What is the matter, father?" he would make noanswer, but
would draw my arm round his neck and put his arm round
me, and go on crying. There never came any confidence
between us; but oh, I was sorry for him. At hose moments
I knew he must feel his life bitter, and I pressed my cheek
against his head and prayed. Those moments were what
most bound me to him; and I used to think how much my
mother once loved him, else she would not have married him.
  "but soon there came the dreadful time. We had been at
Pesth and we came back to Vienna. In spite of what my
master Leo had said, my father got me an engagement, not
at the opera, but to take singing parts at a suburb theatre

*X257

in Vienna. He had nothing to do with the theatre then; I
did not understand what he did, but I think he was continually
at a gamblinghouse, though he was careful always
about taking me to the theatre. I was very miserable. The
plays I acted in were detestable to me. Men came about us
and wanted to talk to me: women and men seemed to look
at me with a sneering smile: it was no better than
a fiery furnace. Perhaps I make it worst than it was -- you don't
know that life; but the glare and the faces, and my having
to go on and act and sing what I hated, and then see people
who came to stare at me behind the scenes -- it was all so
much worse than when I was  a little girl. I went through
with it; I did it; I had set my mind to obey my father and
work, for I saw nothing better that I could do. But I felt
that my voice was getting weaker, and I knew that my
acting was not good except when it was not really acting,
but the part was one that I could be myself in, and some
feeling within me carried me along. That was seldom.
  "Then in the midst of all this, the news came to me one
morning that my father had been taken to prison, and he had
sent for me. He did not tell me the reason why he was
there, but he ordered me to go to an address he gave me, to
see a Count who would be able to get him released. The
address was to some public rooms where I was to ask for
the Count, and beg him to come to my father. I found him,
and recognised him as a gentleman whom I had seen the
other night for the first time behind the scenes. That agitated
me, for I remembered his way of looking at me and
kissing my hand -- I thought it was in mockery. But I
delivered my errand and he promised to go immediately to
my father, who came home again that very evening, bringing
the Count with him. I now began to feel a horrible dread
of this man, for he worried me with his attentions,
his eyes were always on me: I felt sure that whatever else
there might be in his mind towards me, below it all there
was scorn for the Jewess and the actress. And when he
came to me the next day in the theatre and would put my
shawl round me, a terror took hold of me; I saw that my
father wanted me to look pleased. The Count was neither

*X258

very young not very old: his hair and eyes were pale; he
was tall and walked heavily, and his face was heavy and
grave except when he looked at me. He smiled at me, and
his smile went through me with horror: I could not tell
why he was so much worse to me than other men. Some
feelings are like hearing: they come as sounds do,
before we know their reason. My father talked to me about
him when we were alone, and praised him -- said what a
good friend he had been. I said nothing, because I supposed
he had got my father out of prison. When the Count
came again, my father left the room. He asked me if I liked
being on the stage. I said No, I only acted in obedience to
my father. He always spoke French, and called me "petit
ange" and such things, which I felt insulting. I knew he
meant to make love to me, and I had it firmly in my mind
that a nobleman and one who was not a Jew could have no
love for me that was not half contempt. But then he told
me that I need not act any longer; he wished me to visit
him at his beautiful place, where I might be queen of
everything. It was difficult to me to speak, I felt so shaken
with anger: I could only say, "I would rather stay on the
stage for ever," and I left him there. Hurrying out of the
room I saw my father sauntering in the passage. My heart
was crushed. I went past him and locked myself up. It had
sunk into me that my father was in a conspiracy with that
man against me. But the next day he persuaded me to
come out: he said that I had mistaken everything, and he
would explain: if I did not come out and act and fulfil my
engagement, we should be ruined and he must starve. So I
went on acting, and for a week or more the Count never
came near me. My father changed our lodgings, and kept
at home except when he went to the theatre with me. He
began one day to speak discouragingly of my acting, and say,
I could never go on singing in public -- I should lose
my voice -- I ought to think of my future, and not put my
nonsensical feelings between me and my fortune. He said,
"What will you do? You will be brought down to sing and
beg at people's doors. You have had a splendid offer and
ought to accept it." I could not speak: a horror took

*X259

possession of me when I thought of my mother and of him.
I felt for the first time that I should not do wrong to leave
him. But the next day he told me that he had put an end
to my engagement at the theatre, and that we were to to go to
Prague. I was getting suspicious of everything, and my will
was hardening to act against him. It took us two days to pack
and get ready; and I had it in my mind that I might
be obliged to run away from my father, and then I would
come to London and try if it were possible to find my
mother. I had a little money, and I sold  some things to get
more. I packed a few clothes in a little bag that I could
carry with me, and I kept my mind on the watch. My
father's silence -- his letting drop that subject of the
Count's offer -- made me feel sure that there was a plan
against me. I felt as if it had been a plan to take me to a
madhouse. I once saw a picture of a madhouse, that I could
never forget; it seemed to me very much like some of the
life I had seen -- the people strutting, quarrelling, leering --
the faces with cunning and malice in them. It was my will
to keep myself from wickedness; and I prayed for help. I had
seen what despised women were: and my heart
against my father, for I saw always behind him that man
who made me shudder. You will think I had not enough
reason for my suspicions, and perhaps I had not, outside
my own feeling; but it seemed to me that my mind had
been lit up, and all that might be stood out clear and sharp.
If I slept, it was only to see the same sort of things, and I
could hardly sleep at all. Through our journey I was everywhere
on the watch. I don't know why, but it came before
me like a real event, that my father would suddenly leave
me and should find myself with the Count where I could
not get away from him. I thought God was warning me:
my mother's voice was in my soul. It was dark when we
reached Prague, and though the strange bunches of lamps
were lit it was difficult to distinguish faces as we drove
along the street. My father chose to sit outside -- he was
always smoking now -- and I watched everything in spite of
the darkness. I do believe I could see better than ever
I did before: the strange clearness within seemed to have

*X261
got outside me. It was not my habit to notice faces and
figures much in the street; but this night I saw every one;
and when we passed before a great hotel I caught sight
only of a back that was passing in -- the light of the great
bunch of lamps a good way off fell on it.  I knew it -- before
the face was turned, as it fell into shadow, I knew who it
was. Help came to me. I feel sure help came tto me. I did
not sleep that night. I put on my plainest things -- the cloak
and hat I have worn ever since; and I sat watching for the
light and the sound of the doors being unbarred. Someone
rose early -- at four o'clock, to go to the railway. That gave
me courage. I slipped out with my little bag under my
cloak, and none noticed me. I had been a long while
attending to the railway guide that I might learn the way
to England; and before the sun had risen I was in the train
for Dresden. Then I cried for joy. I did not know whether
my money would last out, but I trusted. I could sell the
things in my bag, and the little rings in my ears, and I
could live on bread only. My only terror was lest my father
should follow me. But I never paused. I came one, and on,
and on, only eating bread now and then. When I got to
Brussels I saw that I should not have enough money, and I
sold all that I could sell; but here a strange thing happened.
Putting my hand into the pocket of my cloak, I
found a half-napoleon. Wondering and wondering how it
came there, I remembered that on the way from Cologne
there was a young workman sitting against me. I was
frightened at every one, and did not like to be spoken to. At
first he tried to talk, but when he saw that I did not like it,
he left off. It was a long journey; I ate nothing but a bit of
bread, and he once offered me some of the food he brought
in, but I refused it. I do believe it was he who put that bit
of gold in my pocket. Without it I could hardly have got to
Dover, and I did walk a good deal of the way from Dover
to London. I knew I should look like a miserable beggar-girl.
I wanted not to look very miserable, because if I found
my mother it would grieve her to see me so. But oh, how
vain my hope was that she would be there to see me come]
AAs soon as I set foot in London, I began to ask for Lambeth

*X262
and Blackfriars Bridge, but they were a long way off,
and I went wrong. At last I got to Blackfriars Bridge and
asked for Colman Street. People shook their heads. None
knew it. I saw it in my mind -- our doorsteps, and the white
tiles hung in the windows, and the large brick building
opposite with white doors. But there was nothing like it. At
last when I asked a tradesman where the Coburg Theatre
and Colman Street were, he said, "Oh, my little woman,
that's all done away with. The old streets have been pulled
down; everything is new." I turned away, and felt as if
death had laid a hand on me. He said: "Stop, stop] young
woman; what is it you're wanting with Colamn Street, eh?"
meaning well, perhaps. But his tone was what I could not
bear; and how could I tell him waht I wanted? I felt
blinded and bewildered with a sudden shock. I suddenly
felt that I was very weak and weary, and yet where could I
go? for I looked so poor and dusty, and had nothing with
me -- I looked like a street-beggar. And I was afraid of all
places where I could enter. I lost my trust. I thought I was
forsaken. It seemed that I had been in a fever of hope --
delirious -- all the way from Prague: I thought that I was
helped, and I did nothing but strain my mind forward and
think of finding my mother; and now -- there I stood in a
strange world. Alll who saw me would think ill of me, and I
must herd with beggars. I stood on the bridge and looked
along the river. People were going on to a steamboat. Many
of them seemed poor, and I felt as if it would be a reguge to
get away from the streets: perhaps the boat would take me
where I could soon get into a solitude. I had still some
pence left, and I bought a loaf when I went on the boat. I
wanted to have a little time and strength to think of life
and death. How could I live? And now again it seemed
that if ever I were to find my mother again, death was the
way to her. I ate, that I might have strength to think. The
boat set me down at a place along the river -- I don't know
where -- and it was late in the evening. I found some large
trees apart from the road and I sat down under them that I
might rest through the night.  Sleep ,ust have come soon
to me, and when I awoke it was morning. The birds were

*X263
singing, the dew was white about me, I felt chill and oh so
lonely] I got up and walked and followed the river a long
way and then turned back again. There was no reason why
I should go anywhere. The world about me seemed like a
vision that was hurrying by while I stood still with my
pain. My thoughts were stronger than I was: they rushed
in and forced me to see all my life from the beginning;
ever since I was carried away from my mother I had felt
myself a lost child taken up and used by strangers, who did
not care what my life was to me, but only what I could do
for them. It seemed all a weary wandering and heart-loneliness --
as if I had been forced to go to merry-makings
without the expectation of joy. And now it was worse. I was
lost again, and I dreaded lest any stranger should notice me
and speak to me. I had a terror of the world. None knew
me; all would mistake me. I had seen so many in my life
who made themselves glad with scorning, and lauged at
another7s shame. What could I do? This life seemed to be
closing in upon me with a wall of fire -- everywhere there
was scorching that made me shirnk. The high sunlight
made me shrink. And iI began to think that my despair was
the voice of God telling me to die. But it would take me
long to die of hunger. Then I thought of my People, how
they had been driven from land to land and been afflicted,
and multitudes had died of misery in their wandering --
was I the first? And in the wars and troubles when
Christians were cruelest, our fathers had sometimes slain
their children and afterwards themselves; it was to save
them from being false apostates. That seemed to make it
right for me to put an end to my life; for calamity had
closed me in too, and I saw no pathway but to evil. But my
mind got into war with itself, for there were contrary
things in it. I knew that some had held it wrong to hasten
their own death, though they were in the midst of flames;
and while I had some strength left it was a longing to bear
if I ought to bear -- else where was the good of all my life?
It had not been happy since the first years: when the light
came every morning I used to thing, "I will bear it." But
always before I had some hope; now it was gone. With

*X264
these thoughts I wandered and wandered, inwardly crying
to the Most High, from whom I should not flee in death
more than in life -- though I had no strong faith that He
cared for me. The strength seemed departing from my
sould: deep below all my cries was the feeling that I was
alone and forsaken. The more I thought, the wearier I got,
till it seemed I was not thinking at all, but only the sky and
the river and the Eternal God were in my soul. And what
was it whether I died or lived? If I lay down to die in the
river, was it more than lying down to sleep? -- for there too
I committed my soul -- I gave myself up. I could not hear
memories any more: I could only feel what was present in
me -- it was all one longing to cease from my weary life,
which seemed only a pain outside the great peace that I
might enter into. That was how it was. When the evening
came and the sun was gone, it seemed as if that was all I had
tto wait for. And a new strength came into me to will what I
would do. You know what I did. I was going to die. You know
what happened -- did he not tell you? You know
what happened -- did he not tell you? Faith came to me
again: I was not forsaken. He told you how he found me?"
  Mrs Meyrick gave no audible answer, but pressed her lips
against Mirah's forehead.


  "She's just a pearl: the mud has only washed her," was
the fervid little woman's closing commentary, when, ˛te´te-a>-te´te˛
with Deronda in the back parlour that evening, she
had conveyed Mirah's story to him with much vividness.
  "What is your feeling about a search for this mother?"
said Derond. "Have you no fears? I have, I confess."
  "Oh, I believe the mother's good," said Mrs Meyrick, with
rapid decisiveness; "or ˛was˛ good. She may be dead -- that's
my fear. A good woman, you may depend: you may know it
by the scoundrel the father is. Where did the child get her
goodness from? Wheaten flour has to be accounted for."
  Deronda was rather disappointed at this answer: he had
wanted a confirmation of his own judgment, and he began
to put in demurrers. The argument about the mother
would not apply to the brother; and Mrs Meyrick admitted
that the brother might be an ugly likeness of the father.

*X265
Then, as to advertising, if the name was Cohen, you might
as well advertise for two undescribed terriers: and here
Mrs Meyrick helped him, for the idea of an advertisement,
already mentioned to Mirah, had roused the poor child's
terror: she was convinced that her father would see it -- he
saw everything in the papers. Certainly there were safer
means than advertising: men might be set to work whose
business it was to find missing persons; but Deronda wished
Mrs Meyrick to fell with him that it would be wiser to
wait, before seeking a dubious -- perhaps a deplorable
result; especialy as he was engaged to go abroad the next
week for a couple of months. If a search were made, he
would like to be at hand, so that Mrs Meyrick might not be
unaided in meeting any consequences -- supposing that she
would generously continue to watch over Mirah.
  "We should be very jealous of any one who took the task
from us," said Mrs Meyrick. "She will stay under my roof:
there is Hans's old room for her."
  "Will she be content to wait?" said Deronda, anxiously.
  "No trouble there. It is not her nature to run into planning
and devising: only to submit. See how she submitted
to that father] It was a wonder to herself how she found
the will and contrivance to run away from him. About
finding her mother, her only notion now is to trust: since
you were sent to save her and we are good to her she trusts
that her mother will be found in the same unsought way.
And when she is talking I cather her feeling like a child."
  Mrs Meyrick hoped that the sum Deronda put into her
hands as a provision for Mirah's wants was more than
would be needed: after a little while Mirah would perhaps
like to occupy herself as the other girls did, and make herself
independent. Deronda pleaded that she must need a long rest.
  "Oh yes; we will hurry nothing," said Mrs Meyrick. "Rely
upon it, she shall be taken tender care of. If you like to give
me your address abroad, I will write to let you know how
we get on. It is not fair that we should have all the pleasure
of her salvation to ourselves. And besides, I want to make believe
that I am doing something for you as well as for Mirah."
  "That is no make-believe. What should I have done without

*X266
you last night? Everything would have gone wrong. I
shall tell Hans that the best of having him for a friend is,
knowing his mother."
  After that they joined the girls in the other room, where
Mirah was seated placidly, while the others were telling her
what they knew about Mr Deronda -- his goodness to Hans,
and all the virtues that Hans had reported of him.
  "Kate burns a pastille before his portrait every day," said
Mab. "And I carry his signature in a little black-silk bag
round my neck to keep off the cramp. And Amy says the
multiplication-table in his name. We must all do something
extra in honour of him, now he has brought you to us."
  "I suppose he is too great a person to want anything," said
Mirah, smiling at Mab, and appealing to the graver Amy.
"He is perhaps very high in the world?"
  "He is very much above us in rank," said Amy. "He is
realted to grand people. I daresay he leans on some of the
satin cushions we prick our fingers over."
  "I am glad he is of high rank," said Mirah, with her usual
quietness.
  "Now, why are you glad of that?" said Amy, rather suspicious
of this sentiment, and on the watch for Jewish
peculiarities which had not appeared.
  "Because I have always disliked men of high rank before."
  "Oh, Mr Deronda is not so very high," said Kate. "He
need not hinder us from thinking ill of the whole peerage
and baronetage if we like."
  When he entered, Mirah rose with the same look of
grateful reverence that she had lifted to him the evening
before: impossible to see a creature freer at once from
embarrassment and boldness. Her theatrical training had
left no recognisable trace; probably her manners had not
much changed since she played the forsaken child at nine
years of age; and she had grown up in her simplicity and
truthfulness like a little flower-seed that absorbs the chance
confusion of its surroundings into its own definited mould of
beauty. Deronda felt that he was making acquaintance
with something quite new to him in the form of woman-hood.
For Mirah was not childlike from ignorance: her

*X267
experience of evil and trouble was deeper and stranger than
his own. He felt inclined to watch her and listed to her as if
she had come from a far-off shore inhabited by a race
different from our own.
  But for that very reason he made his visit brief: with his
usual activity of imagination as to how his conduct might
affect others, he shrank from what might seem like
curiosity, or the assumption of a right to know as much as
he pleased of one to whom he had done a service. For
example, he would have liked to hear her sing, but he would
have felt the expression of such a wish to be a rudeness in
him -- since she could not refuse, and he would all the
while have a sense that she was being treated like one
whose accomplishments were to be ready on demand. And
whatever reverence could be shown to woman, he was bent
on showing to this girl. Why? He gave himself several good
reasons; but whatever one does with a strong unhesitating
outflow of will, has a store of motive that it would be hard
to put into words. Some deeds seem little more than interjections
which give vent to the long passion of a life.
  So Deronda soon took farewell for the two months
during which he expected to be absent from London, and
in a few days he was on his way with Sir Hugo and Lady
Mallinger to Leubronn.
  He had fulfilled his intention of telling them about
Mirah. The baronet was decidedly of opinion that the
search for the mother and brother had better be let alone.
Lady Mallinger was much interested in the poor girl,
observing that there was a Society for the Conversion of
the Jews, and that it was to be hoped Mirah would embrace
Christianity; but perceiving that Sir Hugo looked at
her with amusement, she concluded that she had said
something foolish. Lady Mallinger felt apologetically about
herself as a woman who had produced nothing but
daughters in a case where sons were required, and hence
regarded the apparent contradictions of the world as
probably due to the weakness of her own understanding.
Btu when she was much puzzled, it was her habit to say
to herself, "I will ask Daniel." Deronda was altogether a

*X268
convenience in the family; and Sir Hugo, too, after intending
to do the best for him, had begun to feel that the
pleasantest result would be to have this substitute for a son
always ready at his elbow.
  This was the history of Deronda, so far as he knew it, up
to the time of that visit to Leubronn in which he saw
Gwendolen Harleth at the gaming-table.

*C21
It is a common sentence that Knowledge is power; but who hath
duly considered or set forth the power of Ignorance? Knowledge
slowly builds up what Ignorance in an hour pulls down. Knowledge,
through patient and frugal centuries, enlarges discovery
and makes record of it; Ignorance, wanting its day's dinner,
lights a fire with the record, and gives a flavour ot its one roast
with the burnt souls of many generations. Knowledge, instructing
the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms itself
into skill and makes life various with a new six days' work;
comes Ignorance drunk on the seventh, with a firkin of oil and
a match and an easy "Let ther not be" -- and the many-coloured
creation is shrivelled up in blackness. Of a truth, Knowledge is
power, but it is a power reined by scruple, having a conscience
of what must be and what may be; whereas Ignorance is a blind
giant who, let him but wax unbound, would make it a sport to
seize the pillars that hold up the long-wrought fabric of human
good, and turn all the places of joy dark as a buried Babylon.
And looking at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who
having a practised vision may not see that ignorance of the true
bond between events, and false conceit of means whereby
sequences may be compelles -- like that falsity of eyesight which
overlooks the gradations of distance, seeing that which is afar
off as if it were within a step or a grasp -- precipitates the mistaken
soul on destruction?



It was halfast ten in the morning when Gwendolen Harleth,
after her gloomy journey from Leubronn, arrived at
the staion from which she must drive to Offendene. No

*X269
carriage or friend was awaiting her, for in the telegram
she had sent from Dover she had mentioned a later train,
and in her impatience of lingering at a London station she
had set off without picturing what it would be to arrive
unannounced at half an hour's drive from home -- at one of
those stations which have been fixed on not as near anywhere
but as equidistant from everywhere. Deposited as a
˛feme˛ ˛sole˛ with her large trunks, and having to wait while a
vehicle was being got from the large-sized lantern called
the Railway Inn, Gwendolen felt that the dirty paint in the
waiting-room, the dusty decanter of flat water, and the
texts in large letters calling on her to repent and be converted,
were part of the dreary prospect opened by her
family troubles; and she hurried away to the outer door
looking towards the lane and fields. But here the very
gleams of sunshine seemed melancholy, for the autumnal
leaves and grass were shivering, and the wind was turning
up the feathers of a cock and two croaking hens which
had doubtless parted with their grown-ip offspring and did
not know what to do with themselves. The railway official
also seemed without resources, and his innocent demeanour
in observing Gwendolen and her trunks was rendered intolerable
by the cast in his eye; especially since, being a
new man, he did not know her, and must conclude that she
was not very high in the world. The vehicle -- a dirty old
barouche -- was within sight, and was being slowly prepared
by an elderly labourer. Contemptible details these, to make
part of a history; yet the turn of most lives is hardly to be
accounted for without them. They are continually entering
with cumulative force into a mood until it gets the mass
and momentum of a theory or a motive. Even philosophy
is not quite free from such determining influences; and to
be drop solitary at an ugly irrelevant-looking spot with a
sense of no income on the mind, might well prompt a man
to discouraging speculation on the origin of things and the
reason of a world where a subtle thinker found himself so
badly off. How much more might such trifles tell on a
young lady equipped for society with a fastidious taste, an
Indian shawl over her arm, some twenty cubic feet of

*X270
trunks by her side, and a mortal dislike to the new consciousness
of poverty which was stimulating her imagination
of disagreeables? At any rate they told heavily on poor
Gwendolen, and helped to quell her resistant spirit. What
was the good of living in the midst of hardships, ugliness,
and humiliation? This was the beginning of being at home
again, and it was a sample of what she had to expect.
  Here was the theme on which her discontent rung its sad
changes during her slow drive in the uneasy barouche, with
one great trunk squeezing the meek driver, and the other
fastened with a rope on the seat in front of her. Her ruling
vision all the way from Leubronn had been that the family
would go abroad again; for of course there must be some
little income left -- her mamma did not mean that they
woould have literally nothing. To go to a dull place abroad
and live poorly, was the dismal future that threatened
he: she had seen plenty of poor English people abroad,
and imagined herself plunged in the despised dulness of
their ill-plenished lives, with Alice, Bertha, Fanny, and
Isabel all growing up in tediousness around her, while
she advanced towards thirty, and her mamma got more
and more melancholy. But she did not mean to submit, and
let misfortune do what it would with her: she had not yet
quite believed in the misfortune; but weariness, and disgust
with this wretched arrival, had begun to affect her like an
uncomfortable waking, worse than the uneasy dreams
which had gone before. The self-delight with which she
had kissed her image in the glass had faded before the
sense of futility in being anything whatever -- charming,
clever, resolute -- what was the good of it all? Events might
turn out anyhow, and men were hateful. Yes, men were
hateful. Those few words were filled out with very vivid
memories. But in these last hours, a certain change had
come over their meaning. It is one thing to hate stolen
goods, and another thing to hate them the more because
their being stolen hinders us from making use of them.
Gwendolen had begun to be angry with Grandcourt for
being what had hindered her from marrying him, angry
with him as the cause of her present dreary lot.

*X271
  But the slow drive was nearly at an end, and the lumbering
vehicle coming up the avenue was within sight of the
windows. A figure appearing under the portico brought a
rush of new and less selfish feeling in Gwendolen, and
when springing from the carriage she saw the dear beautiful
face with fresh lines of sadness in it, she threw her arms
round her mother's neck, and for the moment felt all sorrows
only in relation to her mother's feeling about them.
  Behind, of course, were the sad faces of the four superfluous
girls, each, poor thing -- like those other many
thousand sisters of us all -- having her peculiar world which
was of no importance to any one else, but all of them
feeling Gwendolen's presence to be somehow a relenting of
misfortune: where Gwendolen was, something interesting
would happen; even her hurried submission to their kisses,
and "Now go away, girls," carroed the sort of comfort which
all weakness finds in decision and authoritativeness. Good
Miss Merry, whose air of meek depression, hitherto held
unaccountable in a governess affectionately attached to the
family, was now at the general level of circumstances, did
not expect any greeting, but busied herself with the trunks
and the coachman's pay; while Mrs Davilow and Gwendolen
hastened up-stairs and shut themselves in the black
and yellow bedroom.
  "Never mind, mamma dear," said Gwendolen, tenderly
pressing her handkerchief against the tears that were rolling
down Mrs Davilow's cheeks. "Never mind. I don't mind.
I will do something. I will be something.Things will come
right. It seemed worse because I was away. Come now] you
must be glad because I am here."
  Gwendolen felt every word of that speech. A rush of
compassionate tenderness stirred all her capability of
generous resolution; and the self-confident projects which
had vaguely glanced before her during her journey sprang
instantaneously into new definiteness. Suddenly she seemed
to perceive how she could be "something." It was one of her
best moments, and the fond mother, forgetting everything
below that tide-mark, looked at her with a sort of adoration.
She said --

*X272
  "Bless you, my good, good darling] I can be happy, if you
can]"
  But later in the day there was an ebb; the old slippery
rocks, the old weedy places reappeared. Naturally, there
was a shrinking of courage as misfortune ceased to be a mere
announcement, and began to disclose itself as a grievous
tyrranical inmate. At first -- that ugly drive at an end -- it
was still Offendene that Gwendolen had come hom eto, and
all surroundings of immediate consequence to her were still
there to secure her personal ease; the roomy stillness of the
large solid house while she rested; all the luxuries of her
toilet cared for without trouble to her; and a little tray
with her favourite food brought to her in private. For she
had said, "Keep them all away from us to-day, mamma. Let
you and me be alone together."
  When Gwendolen came down into the drawing-room,
fresh as a newly-dipped swan, and sat leaning against the
cushions of the settee beside her mamma, their misfortune
had not yet turned its face and breath upon her. She felt
prepared to hear everything, and begain in a tone of
deliberate intention:
  "What have you thought of doing exactly, mamma?"
  "Oh my dear, the next thing to be done is to move away
from this house. Mr Haynes most fortunately is as glad to
have it now as he would have been when we took it. Lord
Brackenshaw's agent is to arrange everything with him to
the best advantage for us: Bazeley, you know; not at all an
ill-natured man."
  "I cannot help thinking that Lord Brackenshaw would let
you stay here rent-free, mamma," said Gwendolen, whose
talents had not been applied to business so much as to
discernment of the admiration excited by her charms.
  "My dear child, Lord Brackenshaw is in Scotalnd, and
knows nothing about us. Neither your uncle nor I would
choose to apply to him. Besides, what could we do in this
house without servants, and without money to warm it?
The sooner we are out the better. We have nothing to carry
but our clothes, you know."
  "I suppose you mean to go abroad, then?" said Gwendolen.

*X273
After all, this is what she had familiarised her mind
with.
  "Oh no, dear, no. How could we travel? You never did
learn anything about income and expenses," said Mrs Davilow,
trying to smile, and putting her hand on Gwendolen's
as she added, mournfully, "that makes it so much harder
for you, my pet."
  "But where are we to go?" said Gwendolen, with a trace of
sharpness in her tone. She felt a new current of fear passing
through her.
  "It is all decided. A little furniture is to be got in from
the rectory -- all that can be spared." Mrs Davilow hesitated.
She dreaded the reality for herself less than the shock she
must give Gwendolen, who looked at her with tense expectancy,
but was silent.
  "It is Sawyer's Cottage we are to go to."
  At first, Gwendolen remained silent, paling with anger --
justifiable anger, in her opinion.  Then she said with
haughtiness --
  "That is impossible. Something else than that ought to
have been thought of. My uncle ought not to allow that. I
will not submit to it."
  "My sweet child, what else could have been thought of?
Your uncle, I am sure, is as kind as he can be; but he is
suffering himself: he has his family to bring up. And do
you quite understand? You must remember -- we have
nothing. We shall have absolutely nothing except what he
and my sister give us. They have been as wise and active as
possible, and we must try to earn something. I and the girls
are going to work a table-cloth border for the Ladies'
Charity at Wancester, and a communion cloth that the
parishioners are to present to Pennicote Church."
  Mrs Davilow went into these timidly; but how else
was she to bring the fact of their position home to this poor
child who, alas] must submit aat present, whatever might be
in the background for her? and she herself had a superstition
that there must be something better in the background.
  "But surely somewhere else than Sawyer's Cottage might
have been found," Gwendolen persisted -- taken hold of (as

*X274
if in a nightmare) by the image of this house where an
exciseman had lived.
  "No, indeed, dear. You know houses are scarce, and we
may be thankful to get anything so private. It is not so
very bad. There are two little parlours and four bedrooms.
You shall sit alone whenever you like."
  The ebb of sympathetic care for her mamma had gone
so low just now, that Gwendolen took no notice of these
deprecatory words.
  "I cannot conceive that all your property is gone at once,
mamma. How can you be sure in so short a time? It is not
a week since you wrote to me."
  "The first news came much earlier, dear. But I would not
spoil your pleasure till it was quite necessary."
  "Oh how vexatious]" said Gwendolen, colouring with
fresh anger. "If I had known, I could have brought home
the money I had won; and for want of knowing, I stayed
and lost it. I had nearly two hundred pounds, and it would
have done for us to live on a little while, till I could carry
out some plan." She paused an instant and then added more
impetuously, "Everything has gone against me. People have
come near me only to blight me."
  Among the "People" she was including Deronda. If he had
not interfered in her life she would have gone to the
gaming-table again with a few napoleons, and might have
won back her losses.
  "We must resign ourselves to the will of Providence, my
child," said poor Mrs Davilow, startled by this revelation of
the gambling, but not daring to say more. She felt sure
that "people" meant Grandcourt, about whom her lips were
sealed. And Gwendolen answered immediately --
  "But I don't resign myself. I shall do what I can against
it. What is the good of calling people's wickedness Providence?
You said in your letter it was Mr Lassmann's fault
we had lost our money. Has he run away with it all?
  "No, dear, you don't understand. There were great speculations:
he meant to gain. It was all about mines and
things of that sort. He risked too much."
  "I don't call that Providence: it was his improvidence with

*X275
our money, and he ought to be punished. Can't we go to law
and recover our fortune? My uncle ought to take measures,
and not sit down by such wrongs. We ought to go to law."
  "My dear child, law can never bring back money lost in
that way. Your uncle says it is milk spilt upon the ground.
Besides, one must have a fortune to get any law: there is
no law for people who are ruined. And our money has only
gone along with other people's. We are not the only
sufferers: others have to resign themselves besides us."
  "But I don't resign myself to live at Sawyer's Cottage and
see you working for sixpences and shillings because of that.
I shall not do it. I shall do what is more befitting our rank
and education."
  "I am sure your uncle and all of us will approve of that, dear,
and admire you the more for it," said Mrs Davilow, glad of
an unexpected opening for speaking on a difficult subject. "i
didn't mean that you should resign yourself to worse when
anything better offered itself. Both your uncle and aunt have
felt that your abilities and education were a fortune for you,
and they have already heard of something within your reach."
  "What is that, mamma?" Some of Gwendolen's anger
gave way to interest, and she was not without romantic
conjectures.
  "There are two situations that offer themselves. One is in
a bishop's family, where there are three daughters, and the
other is in quite a high class of school; and in both, you
French, and music, and dancing -- and then your manners
and habits as a lady, are exactly what is wanted. Each is a
hundred a-year -- and -- just for the present," -- Mrs Davilow
had become frightened and hesitating, -- "to save you from
the petty, common way of living that we must go to -- you
would perhaps accept one of the two."
  "What] be like Miss Graves at Madame Meunier's? No."
  "I think, myself, that Dr Mompert's would be more suitable.
There could be no hardship in a bishop's family."
  "Excuse me, mamma. There are hardships everywhere for
a governess. And I don't see that it would be pleasanter to
be looked down on in a bishop's family than in any other.
Besides, you know very well I hate teaching. Fancy me shut
*X276
up with three awkward girls something like Alice] I would
rather emigrate than be a governess."
  What precisely was to emigrate, Gwendolen was not
called on to explain. Mrs Davilow was mute, seeing no
outlet, and thinking with dread of the collision that might
happen when Gwendolen had to meet her uncle and aunt.
There was an air of reticence in Gwendolen's haughty
resistant speeches, which implied that she had a definite
plan in reserve; and her practical ignorance, continually
exhibited, could not nullify the mother's belief in the effectiveness
of that forcible will and daring which had held the
mastery over herself.
  "I have some ornaments, mamma, and I could sell them"
said Gwendolen. "They would make a sum: I want a little
sum -- just to go on with. I daresay Marshall at Wancester
would take them: I know he showed me some bracelets
once that he said he had bought from a lady. Jocosa might
go and ask him. Jocosa is going to leave us, of course. But
she might do that first."
  "She would do anything she could, poor dear soul. I have
not told you yet -- she wanted me to tke all her savings --
her three hundred pounds. I tell her to set up a little
school. It will be hard for her to go into a new family now
she has been solong with us."
  "Oh, recommend her for the bishop's daughters," said
Gwendolen, with a sudden gleam of laughter in her face. "I
am sure she will do better than I should."
  "Do take care not to say such things to your uncle," said
Mrs Davilow. "He will be hurt at your despising what he
has exerted himself about. But I daresay you have something
else in your mind that he might not disapprove, if
you consulted him."
  "There is some one else I want to consult first. Are the
Arrowpoints at Quetcham stilll, and is Herr Klesmer there?
But I daresay you know nothing about it, poor dear
mamma. Can Jeffries go on horseback with a note?"
  "Oh, my dear, Jeffries is not here, and the dealer has
taken the horses. But some one could go for us from Leek's
farm. The Arrowpoints are at Quetcham, I know. Miss

*X277
Arrowpoint left her card the other day: I could not see
her, But I don't know about Herr Klesmer. Do you want to
send before to-morrow?"
  "Yes, as soon as possible. I will write a note," said Gwendolen,
rising.
  "What can you be thinking of, Gwen?" said Mrs Davilow,
relieved in the midst of her wonderment by signs of
alacrity and better humour.
  "Don't mind what, there's a dear good mamma," said
Gwendolen, reseating herself a moment to give atoning
caresses. "I mean to do something. Never mind what, until
it is all settled. And then you shall be comforted. The dear
face] -- it is ten years older in these three wekks. Now, now,
now] -- don't cry" -- Gwendolen, holding her mamma's head
with both hands, kissed the trembling eyelids. "But mind
you don't contradcit me or put hindrances in my way. I
must decide for myself. I cannot be dictated to by my uncle
or any one else. My life is my own affair. And I think" --
here her tone took an edge of scorn -- "I think I can do
better for you than let you live in Sawyer's Cottage."
  In uttering this last sentence,Gwendolen again rose, and
went to a desk where she wrote the following note to
Klesmer:-
  "Miss Harleth presents her compliments to Herr Klesmer and
ventures to request of him the very great favour that he will call
upon her, if possible to-morrow. Her reason for presuming so far
on his kindness is of a very serious nature. Unfortunate family
circumstances have obliged her to take a course in which she
can only turn for advice to the great knowledge and judgment
of Herr Klesmer."
  "Pray get this sent to Quetcham at once, mamma," said
Gwendolen, as she addressed the letter. "The man must be
told to wait for an answer. Let no time be lost."
  For the moment, the absorbing purpose was to get the
letter despatched; but when she had been assured on this
point, another anxiety arose and kept her in a state of
uneasy excitement. If Klesmer happened not to be at
Quetcham, what could she do next? Gwendolen's belief in
her star, so to speak, had had some bruises. Things had

*X278
gone against her. A splendid marriage which presented
itself within reach had shown a hideous flaw. The chances
of roulette had not adjusted themselves to her claims; and
a man of whom she knew nothing had thrust himself
between her and her intentions. The conduct of those uninteresting
people who managed the business of the world
had been culpable just in the points most injurious to her
in particular. Gwendolen Harleth, with all her beauty and
conscious force, felt the close threats of humiliation: for
the first time the conditions of this world seemed to her
like a hurring roaring crowd in which she had got astray,
no more cared for and protected than a myriad of other
girls, in spite of its being a peculiar hardship to her. If
Klesmer were not at Quetcham -- that would be all of a
piece with the rest: the unwelcome negative urged itself as
a probability, and set her brain working at desperate
alternatives which might deliver her from Sawyer's Cottage
of the ultimate necessity of "taking a situation," a phrase
that summed up for her the disagreeables most wounding
to her pride, most irksome to her tastes; at least so far as
her experience anabled her to imagine disagreeables.
  Still Klesmer might be there, and Gwendolen thought of
the result in that case with a hopefulness which even cast a
satisfactory light over her peculiar troubles, as what might
well enter into the biography of celebrities and remarkable
persons. And if she had heard her immediate acquaintances
cross-examined as to whether they thought her remarkable,
the first who said "No" would have surprised her.

*C22
˛We please our fancy with ideal webs˛
˛Of innovation, but out life meanwhile˛
˛Is in the loom, where busy passion plies˛
˛The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds˛
˛The accustomed pattern.˛

Gwendolen's note, coming "pat betwixt too early and too
late," was put into Klesmer's hands just when he was

*X279
leaving Quetcham, and in order to meet her appeal to his
kindness he with some inconvenience to himself spent the
night at Wancester. There were reasons why he would not
remain at Quetcham.
  That magnificent mansion, fitted with regard to the
greatest expense, had in fact become too hot for him, its
owners having, like some great politicians, been astonished
at an insurrection against the established order of things,
which we plain people after the event can perceive to have
been prepared under their very noses.
  There were as usual many guests in the house, and
among them one in whom Miss Arrowpoint foresaw a new
pretender to her hand: a political man of good family who
confidentely expected a peerage, and felt on public grounds
that he required a larger fortune to support the title
properly. Heiresses vary, and persons interested in one of
them beforehand are prepared to find that he is too yellow
or too red, tall and toppling or short and square, violent
and capricious or moony and insipid; but in every case it is
taken for granted that she will consider herself an
appendage to her fortune, and marry where others think
her fortune ought to go. Nature, however, not only accommodates
herself ill to our favourite practices by making
"only children" daughters, but also now and then endows
the misplaced daughter with a clear head and a strong will.
The Arrowpoints had already felt some anxiety owing to
these endowments of their Cathrine. She would not accept
the view of her social duty which required her to marry a
needy nobleman or a commoner on the ladder towards
nobility; and they were not without uneasiness concerning
her persistence in declining suitable offers. As to the possibility
of her being in love with Klesmer they were not at all
uneasy -- a very common sort of blindness. For in general
mortals have a great power of being astonished at the
presence of an effect towards which they have done everything,
and at the absence of an effect towards which they
have done nothing but desire it. Parents are astonished at
the ignorance of their sons, though they have used the
most time-honoured and expensive means of securing it;

*X280

husbands and wifes are mutually astonished at the loss of
affection which they have taken no pains to keep; and all
of us in our turn are aopt to be atonished that our neighbours
do not admire us. In this way it happensthat the
truth seems highly improbable. the truth is something different
from the  habitual lazy combinations begotten by
our wishes. The Aroowpoints' hour of astonishment was come.
  When there is a passsion between an heiress and a proud
independentspirited man, it is difficult for them to cometo
an understanding; but the difficulties are likely ti be overcome
unless the proud man secures himself by a constant
˛alibi.˛ Brief meeting after studied absence are potent in
disclosure: but more potent still is frequent companionship,
with full simpathy in taste, and admirable qualities
on both sides; especially where the one is in the position of
teacher, and the other is delightedly conscious of receptive
ability which also gives the teacher delight. The situation is
famous in history, and has no less charm now that it had
in the days of Abelard.
  But this kind of comparison had not occured to the
Arrowpoints when they first engaged Klesmer to come
down to Quetcham. To have a firstrate musician in your
house is a privilege of wealth; Catherine's musical talent
demanded every advantage; and she is particularly desired to
use the quieter time in the country for more thorough
study. Klesmer was not yet a Liszt, understood to be
adored by ladies of all European countries with thwe exception
of Lapland: and even with the understanding it did
not follow that he would make proposals to an heiress. No
musician of honour would do so. Still less was it concivable
that Catherine would give him the slightest pretext
for such daring. The large cheque that Mr Arrowpoint was
to draw in Klesmer's name seemed to make him as safe an
inmate as a footman. Where marriage is inconceivable, a
girl's sentiments are safe.
  Klesmer was eminently a man of honour, but marriages
rarely begin with proposals, and moreover,
Catherine's limit of the conceivable did not exactly correspond
with her mother's.
  Outsiders might have been more apt to think that
Klesmer's position was dangerous for himself if Miss Arrowpoint
had been an acknowledged beauty; not taking
into account that the most powerful of all beauty is that
which reveals itself after sympathy and not before it. There
is a charm of eye and lip which comes with every little
phrase that certifies delicate perception of fine judgment,
with every unostentatious word or smile that shows a heart
awake to others; and no sweep of germent or turn of figure
is more satisfying than that which enters as a restoration of
confidence that one person is present on whom no intention
will be lost. What dignity of meaning goes on gathering in
frowns and laughs which are never observed in the wrong
place; what suffused adorableness in a human frame where
hands that can execute finely] The more obvious beauty,
also adorable sometimes -- one may say it without blasphemy --
begins by being an apology for folly, and ends like
other apologies in becoming tiresome by iteration; and that
Klesmer, though very susceptible to it, should have a passionate
attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a
paradox than any other triunph of a manifold sympathy
over a monotonous attraction. We object less to be taxed
with the enslaving excess of our passions than with our
deficiency in wider passion; but if the truth were known,
our reputed intensity is often the dulness of not knowing
what else to do with ourselves. Tannhauser, one suspects,
was a knight of illfurnished imagination, hardly a larger
discourse than a heavy Guardsman; Merlin had certainly
seen his best days, and was merely repeating himself, when
he fell into that hopeless captivity; and we know that
Ulysses felt so manifest an ˛ennui˛ under similar circumstances
that Calypso herself furthered his departure. There
is indeed a report that he afterwads left Penelope; but
since he was habitually absorbed in worsted work, and it
was probably from her that Telemachus got his mean,

*X282

pettifogging disposition, always anxious about the property
and the daily consumption of meat, no inference can be
drawn from this already dubious scandal as to the relation
between companioahip and constancy.
  Klesmer was as versatile and fashinating as a young
Ulysses on a sufficient acquaintance -- one whom nature
seemed to have first made generously and then to have
added music as a dominant power using all the abundant
rest, and, as in Mendelssohn, finding expression for itself not
only in highest finish of execution, but in that fervour
of creative work and theoretic belief which pierces the
whole future of a life with the light of congruous
devoted purpose. His foibles of arrogance and vanity did not exceed
such as may be found in the best English families; and
Catherine Arrowpoint had no corresponding restlessness to
clash with his: notwithstanding her native kindliness she
was perhaps too cooly firm and selfsustained. But she was
one oof those satisfactory creatures whose intercourse has
the charm of discovery; whose integrity of faculty and
expression begets a wish to know what they will say on all
subjects, or how they will perform whatever they undertake;
so that they end by raising not only a continual
expectation but a continual sense of fulfilment -- the systole
and diastole of blissful companionship. In such cases the
outwad presentment easily becomes what the image
is to the worshipper. It was not long before the two became
aware that each was interesting to the other; but the "how
far" remained a matter of doubt. Klesmer did not conceive
that Miss Arrowpoint was likely to think of him as a
possible lover, and she was not accustomed to think of
herself as likely to stir more than a friendly regard, or to
fear the expression of more from any man who was not
enamoured of her fortune. Each was content to suffer some
unshared sense of denial for the sake of loving the other's
society a little too well; and under these conditions no need
had been felt to restrict Klesmer's visits for the last year
either in country or in town. He knew very well that if Miss
Arrowpoint had been poor he would have made ardent love
to her instead of sending a storm through the piano,

*X283

or folding his arms and pouring out a hyperbolical tirade
about something as impersonal as the north pole; and she
was not less aware that if it had been possible for Klesmer
to wish for her hand she would have found overmastering
reasons for giving it to him. Here was the safety of full cups,
which are as secure from overflow as the halfempty, always
supposing no disturbance. Naturally, silent feeling had not
remained at the same point any more than the stealthy dialhand,
and in the present visit to Quetcham, Klesmer had
begun to think that he would not come again; while
Catherine was more sensitive to his frequent ˛brusquerie,˛
which she rather resented as a needless effort to assert his
footing of superior in every sense except the conventional.
  Meanwhile enters the expectant peer, Mr Bult, an
esteemed party man who, rather neutral in private life, had
strong opinions concerning the districts of the Niger, was
much at home also in the Brezils, spoke with decision of
affairs in the South Seas, was studious of his parliamentary
and itinerant speeches, and had the general
solidity and suffusive pinkness of a healthy Briton on the
central tableland of life. Catherine, aware of a tacit understanding
that he was an undeniable husband for an heiress,
had nothing to say against him but tha he was thoroughly
tiresome to her. Mr Bult was amiably confident, and had
no idea that his insensibility to counterpoint could ever be
reckoned against him. Klesmer he hardly regarded in the
light of a serious human being who ought to have a vote;
and he did not mind Miss Arrowpoint's addiction to music
any more than her probable expenses in antique lace. He
was consequently a little amazed at an afterdinner outburst
of Klesmer's on the lack of idealism in English
politics, which left all mutuality between distant races to be
determined simply by the need of a market: the crusades,,
to his mind, had at least this excuse, that they had a
banner of sentiment round which generous feelings could
rally: of course, the scoundrels rallied too, but what then?
they rally in equal force round your advertisement van of
"Buy cheap, sell dear." On this theme Klesmer's eloquence,
gesticulatory and other, went on for a little while like stray

*X284

fireworks accidentally ignited, and then sank into immovable
silence. Mr Bult was not surprise that Klesmer's
opinions should be flightly, but was astonished at his command
of English idiom and his ability to put a point in a
way that would have told at a constituents' dinner -- to be
accounted for probably by his being a Pole, or a Czech, or
something of that fermenting sort, in a state of political
refugeeism which had obliged him to make a profession of
his music; and that evening in the drawingroom he for the
first time went up to Klesmer at the piano, Miss Arrowpoint
being near, and said --
  "I had no idea before that you were a political man.
  " I had no idea before that you were a political man."
  Klesmer's only answer was to fold his arms, put out his
nether lip, and state at Mr Bult.
  "You must have been used to public speaking. You speak
uncommonly well, though I don't agree with you. From what
you said about sentiment, I fancy you are a Panslavist."
  "No; my name is Elijah. I am the wandering Jew, said
Klesmer, flashing a smile at Miss Arrrowpoint, and
suddenly making a mysterious windlike rush backwards and
forwards on the piano. Mr Bult felt this buffoonery rather
offensive and Polish, but -- Miss Arrowpoint being there --
did not like to move away.
  "Herr Klesmer has cosmopolitan ideas," said Miss Arrowpoint,
trying to make the best of the situation. "He looks
forward to a fusion of races."
  "With all my heart," said Mr Bult, willing to be gracious,
"I was sure he had too much talent to be a mere musician."
  "Ah, sir, you are under some mistake there," said Klesmer,
firing up. "No man has too much talent to be a musician.
Most men have tto little. A creative artist is no more a
mere musician than a great statesman is a mere politician.
We are not ingenious puppets, sir, who live in a box and
look out on the world only when it is gaping for amusement.
We help to rule the nations and make the age as
much as any other public men. We count ourselves on level
benches with legislators. And a man who speaks effectively
through music is compelled to something more difficult
than parliamentary eloquence."

*X285

  With the last word Klesmer wheeled the piano and
walked away.
  Miss arrowpoint coloured, and Mr Bult observed with
his usual phlegmatic solidity, "Your pianist does not
think small beer of himself."
  "Herr Klesmer is something more than a pianist," said
Miss Arrowpoint, apologetically. "He is a great musician in
the fullest sense of the word. He will rank with Schubert
and Mendelssohn."
  "Ah, you ladies understand these things," said Mr Bult,
none the less convinced that these things were frivolous
because Klesmer had shown himself a coxcomb.
  Catherine, always sorry when Klesmer gave himself airs,
found an opportunity the next day in the musicroom to
say, "Why were you so heated last night with Mr Bult? He
meant no harm."
  "You wish me to be complaisant to him?" said Klesmer,
rather fiercely.
  "I think it is hardly worth your while to be other than
civil."
  "You find no difficulty in tolerating him, then? -- you
have a respect for a political platitudinarian as insensible as
an ox to everything hr can't turn into political capital. You
think his monumental obtuseness suited to the dignity of
the English gentleman."
  "I did not say that."
  "You mean that I acted without dignity and you are
offended with me."
  "Now you are slightly nearer the truth," said Catherine,
smiling.
  "Then I had better put my burialclothes in my portmanteau
and set off at once."
  "I don't see that. If I have to bear your criticism of my
operetta, you should not mind my criticism of your impatience."
  "But I do mind it. You would have wished me to take his
ignorant impertinence about a "mere musician" without
letting him know his place. I am to hear my gods blasphemed
as well as myself insulted. But I beg pardon. It is

*X286

impossible you should see the matter as I do. Even you
can't understand the wrath of the artist: he is of another
caste for you."
  "That is true," said Catherine, with some betrayal of feeling.
"He is of caste to which I look up -- a caste above mine."
  Klesmer, who had been seated at a table looking over
scores, started up and walked to a little distance, from
which he said --
  "That is finely felt -- I am grateful. But I had better go, all
the same. I have made up my mind to go, for good and all.
You can get on exceedingly well without me: your
operetta is on wheels -- it will go of itself. And your Mr
Bult's campany fits me "wie die Faust ins Auge." I am
neglecting my engagements. I must go off to St Petersburg."
  There was no answer.
  "You agree with me that I had better go? said Klesmer,
with some irritation.
  "Certainly; if that is what your business and feeling
prompt. I have only to wonder that you have consented to
give us so much of  your time in the last year. There must
be treble interest to you anywhere alse. I have never thought
of your consenting to come here as anything else
than a sacrifice."
  "Why should I make the sacrifice?" said Klesmer, going to
seat himself at the piano, and touching the keys so as to
give with the delicacy of an echo in the far distance a
melody which he had set to Heine's "ich hab" dich geliebet
und liebe dich noch."
  "That is the mystery," said Catherine, not wanting to
affect anything, but from mere agitation. From  the same
cause she was tearing a piece of paper into minute morsels, as
if at a task of utmost multiplication imposed by a cruel fairy.
  "You can conceive no motive?" said Klesmer, folding his
arms.
  "None that seems in the least probable."
  "Then I shall tell you. It is because you are to me the chief
woman in the world -- the throned lady whose colours I
carry between my heart and my armour."
  Catherine's hands trembled so much that she could no

*X287

longer tear the paper: still less could her lips utter a word.
Klesmer went on --
  "This would be the last impertinence in me, if I meant to
found anything upon it. That is out of question. I
mean no such thing. But you once said it was your doom to
suspect every man who courted you of being an adventurer,
and what made you  angriest was men's imputing to you
the folly of believing that they courted you for your own
sake. Did you not say so?"
  "Very likely," was the answer, in a low murmour.
  "It was a bitter word. Well, at least one man who has seen
women as plenty as flowers in May has lingered about you
for your own sake. And since he is one whom you can
never marry, you will believe him. This is an argument in
favour of some other man. But don't give yourself for a
meal to a minotaur like Bult. I shall go now and pack. I
shall make my excuses to Mrs Arrowpoint." Klesmer rose as
he ended, and walded quickly towards the dor.
  "You must take this heap of manuscript, then," said Catherine,
suddenly making a desperate effort. She had risen  to
fetch the heap from another table. Klesmer came back, and
they had the length of the folio sheets between them.
  "Why should I not marry the man who loves me, if I love
him?2 said Catherine. To her the effort was something like
the leap of a woman from the deck into the lifeboat.
  "It would be too hard -- impossible -- you could not carry
it through. I am not worth what you would have to encounter.
I will not accept the sacrifice. It would be thought
a ˛mesalliance˛ for you, and I should be liable
to the worst accusations."
  "Is it the accusations you are afraid of? I am afraid of
nothing but that we would miss the passing of our lives
together."
  The decisive word had been spoken: there was no doubt
concerning the end willed by each: there only remained
the way of arriving at it, and Catherine determined to take
the straightest possible. She went to her father and mother
in the library, and told them that she had promised to marry Klesmer.

*X288

  Mrs Arrowpoint's state of mind was pitiable. Imagine
Jean Jacques, after his essay on the corrupting influence of
the arts, waking up among children of nature who had no
idea of grilling the raw bone they offered him for breakfast
with the primitive ˛couvert˛ of a flint; or Saint Just, after
fervidly denouncing all recognition of preeminence, receiving
a vote of thanks for the unbroken mediocrity of his
speech, which warranted the dullest patriots in delivering
themselves at equal length. Something of the same sort
befell the authoress of "Tasso", when what she had safely
demanded of the dead Leonora was enacted by her own
Catherine. It is hard for us to live up to our own eloquence,
and keep pace with our winged words, while we are treading the solid
earth and are liable to heavy dining. Besides,
it has long been understood that the proprieties of literature
are not  those of practical life. Mrs Arrowpoint
naturally wished for the best of everything. She not only
liked to feel herself at a higher level of literary sentiment
than the ladies with whom she associated; she wished not
to be below them in any point of social consideration.
While Klesmer was seen in the light of a patronised
musician, his peculiarities were picturesque and acceptable;
but to see him by a sudden flash in the light of her soninlaw
gave her a burning sense of what the world would say.
And the poor lady had been used to represent her
Catherine as a model of excellence.
  Under the first shock she forgot everything but her
anger, and snatched at any phrase that would serve as a
weapon.
  "If Klesmer has presumed to offer himself to you, your
father shall horsewhip him off the premises. Pray, speak,
Mr Arrowpoint."
  The father took his cigar from his mouth, and rose to
the occasion by saying, "This will never do Cath."
  "Do] cried Miss Arrowpoint; "who in their senses ever
thought it would do? You might as well say poisoning and
strangling will not do. It is a comedy you have got up,
Catherine. Else you are mad."
  "I am quite sane and serious, mamma, and Herr Klesmer

*X289

is not to blame. He never thought of my marrying him. I
found out that he loved me, and loving him, I told him I
would marry him."
  "leave that unsaid, Catherine," said Mrs Arrowpoint, bitterly.
 Every one else will say it for you. You will be a public
fable. Every one will say that you must have made the
offer to a man who has been paid to come to the house --
who is nobody knows what -- a gypsy, a Jew, a mere bubble
of the earth."
  "Never mind, mamma," said Catherine, indignant in her
turn. "We all know he is a genius -- as Tasso was."
  "Those times were not these, nor is Klesmer Tasso," said
Mrs Arrowpoint, getting more heated. "There is no sting in
˛that˛ sarcasm, except the sting of undutifulness."
  "I am sorry to hurt you, mamma. But I will not give up
the happiness of my life to ideas that I don't believe in and
customs I have no respect for."
  "You have lost all sense of duty, then? You have forgotten
that you are our only child -- that it lies with you to
place a great property in the right hands?"
  "What are the right hands? My grandfather gained the
property in trade."
  "Mr Arrowpoint, ˛will˛ you sit and hear this without
speaking?"
  "I am a gentleman, Cath. We expect you to marry a
gentleman," said the father, exerting himself.
  "And a man connected with the institutions of this country,"
said the mother. "A woman in your position has
serious duties. Where duty and inclination clash, she must follow
duty."
  "I don't deny that," said Catherine, getting colder in proportion
to her mother's heat. "But one may say very true things
and apply them falsely. People can easily take the sacred
word duty as a name for what they desire any one else to do."
  "Your parents desire makes no duty for you, then?"
  "Yes, within reason. But before I give up the happiness of
my life--"
  "Catherine, Catherine, it will not be your hapiness," said
mrs Arrowpoint, in her most ravenlike tones.

*X290

  "Well, what seems to me my happiness -- befor I give it
up, iI must see some better reason than the wish that I
should marry a nobleman, or a man who votes with a party
that  he may be turned into a nobleman. I feel at liberty to
marry the man I love and think worthy, unless some
higher duty forbids."
  "And so it does, Catherine, though you are blinded and
cannot see it. It is a woman's duty not to lower herself. You
are lowering yourself. Mr Arrowpoint, will you tell your
daughter what is her duty?"
  "You must see, Catherine, that Klesmer is not the man
for you," said Mr Arrowpoint. "He won't do at the head of
estates. He has a deuced foreign look -- is an unpractical
man."
  "I really can't see what that has to do with it, papa. The
land of England has often passed into the hands of foreigners --
Dutch soldiers, sons of foreign women of bad
character: -- if our land were sold tomorrow it would very
likely pass into the hands of some foreign merchant on
to 'Change. It is in everybody's mouth
that successful swindlers may buy up half the land in the country. How can I stem that tide?"
  "It will never do to argue about marriage, Cath," said Mr
Arrowpoint. It's no use getting up the subject like a parliamentary
question. We must do as other people do. We
must think of a nation and the public good."
  "I can't see any public good concerned here, papa," said
Catherine. "Why is it to be expected of an heiress that she
should carry the property gained in trade into the hands of
a certain class? That seems to me a ridiculous mishmash
of superannuated customs and false ambition. I should call
it a public evil. People had better make a new sort of
public good by changing their ambitions."
  "That is mere sophistry, Catherine," said Mrs Arrowpoint.
"because you don't wish to marry a nobleman, you are not
obliged to marry a mountebank or a charlatan."
  "I cannot understand tha application of such words,
mamma."
  "No, I daresay not," rejoined Mrs Arrowpoint, with significant

*X291

scorn. "You have got to a pitch at which we are not
likely to understand each other."
  "It can't be done, Cath," said Mr Arrowpoint, wishing to
substitute  a betterhumoured reasoning for his wife's impetuosity.
"A man like Klesmer can't marry such a property
as yours. It can't be done."
  "It certainly will not be done," said Mrs Arrowpoint,
imperiously. "Where is the man? Let him be fetched."
  "I cannot fetch him to be insulted," said Catherine. "Nothing
will be achieved by that."
  "I suppose you would wish him to know that in marrying
you he will not marry your fortune," said Mrs Arrowpoint.
  "Certainly; if it were so, I should wish him to know it."
  "Then you had better fetch him."
 Catherine only went into the musicroom and said,
"Come;" she felt no need to prepare Klesmer.
  "Herr Klesmer," said Mrs Arrowpoint, with a rather contemptuous
stateliness, "it is unnecessary to repeat what has
passed between us and our daughter. Mr Arrowpoint will
tell you our resolution."
  "You marrying is quite out of the question," said Mr
Arrowpoint, rather too heavily wighted with his task, and
standing in an embarrassment unrelieved by a cigar.
"It ia a wild scheme altogether. A man has been called out for lesss."
"You have taken a base advantage of our confidence,"
burst Mrs Arrowpoint, unable to carry out her purpose
and leave the burthen of speech to her husband.
  Klesmer made a low bow in silent irony.
  "The pretension is ridiculous. You had better give up
and leave the house at once," continued Mr Arrowpoint. He
wished to do without mentioning the money.
  "I can give up nothing without reference to your daughter's
wish," said Klesmer. "My engagement is to her."
  "It is useless to discuss the question," said Mrs Arrowpoint.
"We shall never consent to the marriage. If Catherine
disobeys us we shall disinherit her. You will not marry her
fortune. It is right you should know that."
  "Madam, her fortune has been the only thing I have

*X292

had to regret about her. But I must ask her if she will not
think the sacrifice greater than I am worthy of."
  "It is no sacrifice to me," said Catherine, "except that I am
sorry to hurt my father and mother. I have always felt my
fortune to be a wretched fatality of my life."
  "You mean to defy us, then?" said Mrs Arrowpoint.
  "I mean to marry Herr Klesmer," said Cetherine, firmly.
  "He had better not count on our relenting," said Mrs
Arrowpoint, whose manners suffered from that impunity in
insult which has been reckoned among the privileges of
women.
  "Madam," said Klesmer, "certain reasons forbid me to
retort. But understand that I consider it out of the power
either of you or of your fortune to confer on me anything
that I value. My rank as an artist is of my own winning,
and I would not exchange it for any other. I am able to
maintain your daughter, and I ask for no change in my life
but her companionship."
  "You will leave the house, however," said Mrs Arrowpoint.
  "I go at once," said Klesmer, bowing and quitting the
room.
  "Let there be no misunderstanding, mamma," said
Catherine; "I consider myself engaged to Herr Klesmer, and
I intend to marry him."
  The mother turned her head away and waved her hand
in sign of dismissal.
  "It's all very fine," said Mr Arrowpoint, when Catherine
was gone; "but what the deuce are we to do with the
property?"
  "There is Harry Brendall. He can take the name."
  "Harry Brendall will get through it all in no time," said
Mr Arrowpoint, relighting his cigar.
  And thus with nothing settled but the determination of
the lovers, Klesmer had left Quetcham.

*X293

*C23

Among the heirs of Art, as at the division of the promised land,
each has to win his portion by hard fighting: the bestowal is
after the manner of prophecy, and it is a title
without possession. To carry the map of an ungotten estate in your
pocket is a poor sort of copyhold. And in fancy to cast his shoe over
Edom is little warrant that a man shall ever set the sole of his foot
on an acre of his own there.


The most obstinate beliefs that mortals entertain about themselves
are such as they have no evidence for beyond a constant,
spontaneous pulsing of their selfsatisfaction -- as it were a
hidden seed of madness, a confidence that they can move the
world without precise notion of standingplace or lever.

"Pray tgo to church, mamma," said Gwendolen the next
morning, "I prefer seeing Herr Klesmer alone." (He had
written in reply to her note that he would be with her at
eleven.)
  "That is hardly correct, I think," said Mrs Davilow,
anxiously.
  "Our affairs are too serious for us to think of such nonsensical
rules," said Gwendolen, contemptuously. "They are
insulting as well as ridiculous."
  "You would not mind Isabel sitting with you? She would
be reading in a corner."
  "No, she could not: she would bite her nails and stare. It
would be too irritating. Trust my judgment, mamma. I
must be alone. Take them all to church."
  Gwendolen had her way, of course; only that Miss Merry
and two of the girls stayed at home, to give the house a
look of habitation by sitting at the diningroom windows.
  It was a delicious Sunday morning. The melancholy
waning sunshine of autumn rested on the leafstown grass
and came mildly through the windows in slating bands of
brightness over the old furniture, and the glass panel that
reflected the furniture; over the tapestried chairs with their
fadad flowerwreths, the dark enigmatic pictures, the superannuated
organ at which Gwendolen had pleased herself

*X294

with acting Saint Cecilia on her first joyous arrival, the
crowd of pallid, dusty knickknacks seen through the open
doors of the antechamber where she had achieved the
wearing of her Greek dress as Hermione. This last memory was just
now very busy in her; for had not Klesmer then
been struck with admiration of her pose and expression?
Whatever he had said, whatever she imagined him to have
thought, was at this moment pointed with keenest interest
for her: perhaps she had never before in her life felt so
inwardly dependent, so consciously in need of another
person's opinion. There was a new fluttering of spirit
within her, a new element of deliberation in her selfestimate
which had hitherto been a blissful gift of intuition.
Still it was the recurrent burthen of her inward soliloquy
that Klesmer had seen but little of her, and any
unfavourable conclusion of this must have too narrow a
foundation. She reaaly felt clever enough for anything.
  To fill up the time she collected her volumes and pieces
of music, and laying them on the top of the piano, set
herself to classify them. Then catching the reflection of her
movements in the glass panel, she was diverted to the
contemplation of the image there and walked towards it.
Dressed in black, without a single ornament, and with the
warmwhiteness of her skin set off between her lighbrown
coronet of hair and her squarecut bodice, she might
have tempted an artist to try again the Roamn trick of a
statue in black, white, and tawny marble. Seeing her image
slowly advancing, she thought, "I ˛am˛ beautiful" -- not exultingly,
but with grave decision. Being beautiful was after all
the condition on which she most needed external testimony.
If anyone objected to the turn of her nose or the
form of her neck and chin, she had not the sense that she
could presently show her power of attainment in these
branches of feminine perfection.
  There was not much time to fill up in this way before the
sound of wheels, the loud ring, and the opening doors,
assured her that she was not  by any accident to be disappointed. This slightly increased her
]]] inward flutter. In spite
of her selfconfidence, she dreaded Klesmer as part of that

*X295

unmanageable world which was independent of her wishes
- -- something vitriolic that would not cease to burn because
you smiled or frowned at it. Poor thing] she was at a higher
crisis of her woman's fate than in her past experience with
Grandcourt. The questioning then, was whether she sould
should take a particular man as a husband. The inmost fold of her
questioning now, was whether she need take a husband at
all -- whether she could not achieve substantiality for herself
and know gratified ambition without bondage.
  Klesmer made his most deferential bow in the wide doorway
of the antechamber -- showing also the deference of
the finest grey kerseymere trousers and perfect gloves (the
"masters of those who know" are happily altogether human).
Gwendolen met him with unusual gravity, and holding
out her hand, said, "It is most kind of you to come,
Herr Klesmer. I hope you have not thought me
presumptuous."
  "I took your wish as a command that did me honour," said
Klesmer, with answering gravity. He was really putting
by his own affairs in order to give his utmost attention
to what Gwendolen might have to say; but his temperament
was still in a state of excitation from the events of
yesterday, likely enough to give his expressions a more
than usually biting edge.
  Gwendolen for once was under  too great a strain of
feeling to remember formalities. She continued standing
near the piano, and Klesmer took his stand at the other
end of it, with his back to the light and his terribly amniscent
eyes upon her. No affextation was of use, and she
began without delay.
  "I wish to consult you, Herr Klesmer. We have lost all
our fortune; we have nothing. I must get my own bread,
and I desire to provide for mamma, so as to save her
from any hardship. The only way I can think of -- and I
should like it better than anything -- is to be an actress -- to
go on the stage. But of course I should like to take a high
position, and I thought -- if you thought I could," -- here
Gwendolen became a little more nervous, -- "it would be
better for me to be a singer -- to study singing also."

*X296

  Klesmer put down his hat on the piano, and folded his
arms as if to concentrate himself.
  "I know," Gwendolen resumed, turning  from pale to pink
and back again -- "I know that my method of singing is very
defective; but I have been ill taught. I could be better taught;
I could study. And you will understand my wish: -- to sing
and toact too, like Grisi, is a much higher position. Naturally,
I should wish to take as high a rank as I can. And I can rely
on your judgment. I am sure you will tell me the truth."
  Gwendolen somehow had the convinction that now she
made this serious appeal the truth would be favourable.  Still Klesmer did not speak. He drew off
]]] his gloves
quickly, tossed them into his hat, rested his hands on his
hips, and walked to the other end of the room. He was
filled with compassion for this girl: he wanted to put a
guard on his speech. When he turned again, he looked at
her with a mild frown of inquiry, and said with gentle
though quick utterance, "You have never seen anything, I
think, of artists and their lives? -- I mean of musicians,
actors, artists of that kind?"
  "Oh no," said Gwendolen, not perturbed by the reference to
this obvious fact in the history of a young lady hitherto
well provided for.
  "You are, -- pardon me," said Klesmer, again pausing near
the piano -- "in coming to a conclsion on such a matter as
this, everything must be taken into consideration, -- you are
perhaps twenty?"
  "I am twentyone," said gwendolen, a slight fear rising in
her. "Do you think I am too old?"
  Klesmer pouted his under lip and shook his long fingers
upward in a manner totally enigmatic.
  "Many persons begin later than others," said Gwendolen,
betrayed by her habitual consciousness of having valuable
information to bestow.
  Klesmer took no notice, but said with more studied
gentleness than ever, "You have probably not thought of an
artistic career until now: you did not wish yourself an
actress, or anything of that sort, till the present trouble?"
  "Not exactly; but I was fond of acting. I have acted: you
saw me, if you remember -- you saw me here in charades,
and as Hermione," said Gwendolen, really fearing that
Klesmer had forgotten.
  "Yes, yes," he answered quickly, "I remember -- I remember
perfectly," and again walked to the other end of the room.
it was difficult for him to refrain from this kind of movement
when he was in any argument either audible or
silent.
  Gwendolen felt that she was being weighed. The delay was
unpleasant. But she did not yet conceive that the scale could
dip on the wrong side, and it seemed to her only graceful to say,
""I shall be very much obliged to you for talking the
  "I shall be very much obliged to you for taking the
trouble to give me your advice, whatever it may be."
  "Miss Harleth," said Klesmer, turning towards her and
speaking with a slight increase of accent, "I will veil nothing
from you in this matter. I should reckon myself guilty
if I put a false visage on things -- made them too black or
too white. The gods have a curse for him who willingly
tells another the wrong road. And if I misled one who is so
young, so beautiful -- who, I trust, will find her happiness
along the right road, I should regard myself as a --
˛Bosewicht."˛ In the last word Klesmer's voice had dropped
to a loud whisper.
  Gwendolen felt a sinking of heart under this unexpected
solemnity, and kept a sort of fascinated gaze on Klesmer's
face, while he went on.
  "You are a beautiful young lady -- you have been brought
up in ease -- you have done what you would -- you have not
said to yourself, "I must know this exactly," I must understand
this exactly," "I must do this exactly"" -- in uttering
these three terrible ˛musts,˛ Klesmer lifted up three long
fingers in succession. "In sum, you have not been called
upon to be anything but a charming young lady, whom it
is an impoliteness to find fault with."
  He paused an instant; then resting his fingers on his hips
again, and thrusting out his powerful chin, he said --
  "Well, then, with that preparation, you wish to try the life
of the artist; you wish to try a life of arduous, unceasing

*X298

work, and -- uncertain praise. Your praise would have to
be earned, like your bread; and both would come slowly,
scantily -- what do I say? -- they might hardly come at all."
  This tone of discouragement, which Klesmer half hoped
might suffice without anything more unpleasant, roused
some resistance in Gwendolen. With a slight turn of her
head away from him, and an air of pique, she said --
  "I thought that you, being an artist, would consider the
life one of the most honourable and delightful. And if I
can do nothing better? -- I suppose I can put up with the
same risks as other people do."
  "Do nothing better?" said Klesmer, a little fired. "No, my
dear Miss Harleth, you could do nothing better -- neither
man or woman could do anything better -- if you could do what was best or good of its kind. I am
]]] not decrying the
life of the true artist. I am exalting it. I say, it is out of the
reach of any but choice organisations -- natures framed to
love perfection and to labour for it; ready, like all true
lovers, to endure, to wait, to say, I am not yet worthy, but
she -- Art, my mistress -- is worthy, and I will live to merit
her. An honourable life? Yes. But the honour comes from
the inward vocation and the hardwon achievement: there
is no honour in donning the life as a livery."

  Some excitement of yesterday had revived in Klesmer
and hurried him  into speech a little aloof from his immediate
friendly purpose. He had wished as delicately as
possible to rouse in Gwendolen a sense of her unfitness for
a perilous, difficult course; but it was his wont to be angry
with the pretentions of incompetence, and he was in
danger of getting chafed. Conscious of this he paused suddenly.
But Gwnedolen's chief impression was that he had
not yet denied her the power of doing what would be good
of its kind. Klesmer's fervour seemed to be a sort of
glamour such as he was prone to throw over things in
general; and what she desired to assure him of was that she
was not afraid of some preliminary hardship. The belief
that to present herself in public on the stage must produce
an effect such as she had been used to feel certain of in
private life, was like a bit of her flesh -- it was not to be

*X299

peeled off readily, but must come with blood and pain. She
said, in a tone of some instance --
  "I am quite prepared to bear hardships at first. Of courseno one can become celebrated all at
]]] once. And it is not necessary
that every one should be firstrate -- either actresses or
singers. If you would be so kind to tell me what steps I
should take, I shall have the courage to take them. I don't
mind going up hill. It will be easier than the dead level of
being a governess. I will take any steps you recommend."
  Klesmer was more convinced now that he must speak
plainly.
  "I will tell you the steps, not that I recommend, but that
will be forced upon you. It is all one, so far, what your goal
may be -- excellence, celebrity, second, third rateness -- it is
all one. You must go to town under the protection of your
mother. You must put yourself under training -- musical,
dramatic, theatrical: -- whatever you desire to do you have
to learn --" here Gwendolen looked as if she were going to
speak, but Klesmer lifted up his hand and said
decisively, "I know. You have exercised your talents -- you recite -- you
sing -- from the drawingroom ˛standpunkt˛. My dear
Fraulein, you must unlearn all that. You have not yet
conceived what excellence is: you must unlearn your mistaken
admirations. You must know what you have to stive
for, and then you must subdue your mind and body to
unbroken discipline. You mind, I say. For you must not be
thinking of celebrity: -- put the candle out of your eyes,
and look only at excellence. You would of course earn
nothing -- you could get no engagement for a long while.
You would need money for yourself and your family. But
that," here Klesmer frowned and shook his fingers as if so
to dismiss a triviality -- "that could perhaps be found."
  Gwendolen turned pink and pale during this speech. Her
pride had felt a terrible knifeedge, and the last sentence
only made the smart keener. She was conscious of appearing
moved, and tried to escape from her weakness by
suddenly walking to a seat and pointing out a chair to
Klesmer. He did not take it, but turned a little in order to
face her and leaned against the piano. At that moment she

*X300

wished that she had not sent for him: this first experience
of being taken on some other ground than that of her
social rank and her beauty was becoming bitter to her.
Klesmer, preoccupied with a serious purpose, went on
without change of tone.
  "Now what sort of issue might be fairly expected from
all this selfdenial? You would ask that. It is right that
your eyes should be open to it. I will tell truthfully.
The issue would be uncertain and -- most probably -- would
not be worth much."
  At these relentless words Klesmer put out his lip and
looked through his spectacles with the air of a
monster impenetrable by beauty.
  Gwendolen's eyes began to burn, but the dread of showing
weakness urged her to added selfcontrol. She sompelled
herself to say in a hard tone --
  "You think I want talent, or am too old to begin."
  Klesmer made a sort of hum and then descended on an
emphatic "Yes] The desire and the training should have
begun seven years ago -- or a good deal earlie. A mountebank's
child who helps her father to earn shillings when
she is six years old -- a child that inherits a singing throat
from a long line of choristers and learns to sing as it learns
to talk, has a likelier beginning. Any great achievement in
acting or in music grows with the growth. Whenever
an artist has been able to say, " I came, I saw, I conquered," it
has been at the end of patient practice. Genius at first is
a little more than a great capacity for receiving discipline.
Singing and acting, like the fine dexerity of the juggler
with his cups and balls, require a shaping of the organs
towards a finer and finer certainty of effect. Your muscles --
your whole frame -- must go like a watch, true, true, true,
to a hair. That is the work of springtime, before habits
have been determined."
  "I did not pretend to genius," said Gwendolen, still feeling
that she might somehow do what Klesmer wanted to represent
as impossible. "I only supposed that I might have a
little talent -- enough to improve."
  "I don't deny that," said Klesmer. "If you had been put in

*X301

the right track some years ago and had worked well, you
might have made a public singer,though I don't think your voice
would have counted for much in public. For the
stage your personal charms and intelligence might then
have told without the present drawback of inexperience --
lack of discipline -- lack of instruction."
  Certainly Klesmer seemed cruel, but his feeling was
the reverse of cruel. Our speech even when we are most singleminded
can never take its line absolutely from one impulse;
but Klesmer's was as far as possible directed by
compassion for poor Gwendolen's ignorant eagerness to
enter on a course of which he saw all the miserable details
with a definetess which he could not if he would have
conveyed to her mind.
  Gwendolen, however, was not convinced. Her selfopinion
rallied, and since the counsellor whom she had called in
gave a decision of such severe peremptoriness, she was
tempted ti think that his judgment was not only fallible
but biassed. It occured to her that a simpler and wiser step
for her to have taken would have been to send a letter
through the post to the mamager of a London theatre,
asking him to make an appointment. She would make no
further reference to her singing: Klesmer, she saw, had set
himself against her singing. But she felt equal to arguing
with him about her going on the stage, and she answered
in a resistant tone --
  "I understand, of course, that no one can be finished
actress at once. It may be impossible to tell beforehand
whether I should succeed; but that seems to me a reason
why I should try. I should have thought that I might have
taken an engagement at a theatre meanwhile, so as to earn
money and study at the same time."
  "Can't be done, my dear Miss Harleth -- I speak plainly --
it can't be done, I must clear your mind of these notions,
which have no more resemblance to reality than a pantomime.
Ladies and gentlemen think that when they have
made their toilet and drawn on their gloves they are as
presentable on the stage as in a drawingroom. No
manager thinks that. With all your grace and charm,if

*X302

you were to present yourself as an aspirant to the stage, a
manager would either require you to pay as an amateur for
being allowed to perform, or he would tell you to go and be
taught -- trained to bear yourself on the stagee, as a horse
however beautiful, must be trained for the circus; to say
nothing of that study which would enable you to personate
a character consistency, and animate it with the natural language
of face, gesture, and tone. For you to get an engagement
fit for you straight away is out of the question."
  "I really cannot understand that," said Gwendolen, rather
haughtily -- then, checking herself, she added in another
tone -- "I shall be obliged to you if you will explain how it is
that such poor actresses get engaged. I have been to the
theatre several times, and I am sure there were actresses who
seemed to me to act not at al well and who were wuite plain."
  "Ah, my dear Miss Harleth, that is the easy criticism of
the buyer. We who buy slippers toss away this pair and the
other as clumsy; but there went an apprenticeship to the
making of them. Excuse me: you could not at present
teach one of those actresses; but there is certainly much
that she could teach you. For example, she can pitch her
voice so as to be heard: ten to one you could not do it till
after many trials. Merely to stand and move on the stage is
an art -- requires practice. It is understood that we are not
now talking of a ˛comparse˛ in a petty theatre who earns the
wages of a neddlewoman. That is out of the question for you."
  "Of course I must earn more than that," said Gwendolen,
with a sense of wincing rather than of being refuted; "but I
think I could soon learn to do tolerably well all those little
things you have mentioned. I am not so very stupid. And
even in Paris I am sure I saw two actresses playing important
ladies's parts who were not at all ladies and quite
ugly. I suppose I have no particular talent, but I ˛must t!
think it is an advantage, even on the stage, to be a lady
and not a perfect fright."
  "Ah, let us understand each other," said Klesmer, with a
flash of new meaning. "I was speaking of what you would
have to go through if you aimed at becoming a real artist --
if you took music and the drama as a higher vocation in

*X303
which you would strive after excellence. On that head
what I have said stands fast. You would find -- after your
education in doing things slackly for oneandtwenty years
-- great difficulties in study: you would find mortifications
in the tratment you would get when you presented yourself
on the ffoting of skill. You would be subjected to tests;
people would no longer feign not to see your blunders. You
would at first only be accepted on trial. You would have to bear
what I may call a  glaring insignificance: any success
must be won by utmost patience. You would have to
keep your place in a crowd, and after all it is likely you
would lose it and get out of signt. If you determine to face
these hardships and still try, you will have the dignity of a
high purpose, even though you may have chosen unfortunately,.
You will have some merit, though you may win no
prize. I don't pretend to speak absolutely; but measuring
probabilities, my judgment is: -- you will hardly
achieve more than mediocrity."
  Klesmer had delivered himself with emphatic rapidity,
and now paused a moment. Gwendolen was motionless,
looking at her hands, which lay over each other on her lap,
till the deeptoned, longdrawn ˛"But,"˛ with which he
resumed, had a startling effect, and made her look at him
again.
  "But there are certainly other ideas, other dispositions
with which a young lady may take up an art that will bring
her before the public. She may rely on the unquestioned
power of her beauty as a passport. She may desire to
exhibit herself to an admiration which dispenses with skill.
This goes a certain way on the stage: not in music: but on
the stage, beauty is taken when there is nothing more
commanding to be had. Not without some drilling, however:
as I have said before, technicalities have in any case to
be mastered. But these excepted, we have here nothing to do
with art. The woman who takes up this career is not an artist:
she is usually one who thinks of entering on a luxurious life
by a short and easy road -- perhaps by marriage -- that is her
most brilliant chance, and the rarest. Still, her career will not

*X304

be luxurious to begin with: she can hardly earn her own
poor bread indipendently at once, and the indignities she
will be liable to are such as I will not speak of."
  "I desire to be independent," said Gwendolen, deeply
stung and confusedly apprehending some scorn for herself
in Klesmer's words. "That was my reason for asking
whether I could not get an immediate engagement. Of
course I cannot know how things go on about theatres. But
I thought that I could have made myself independent. I
have no money, and I will not accept help from any one."
  Her wounded pride could not rest without making this
disclaimer. It was intolerable to her that Klesmer should
imagine her to have expected other help grom him than
advice.
  "That is hard saying from your friends," said Klesmer,
recovering the gentleness of tone with which he had begun
the conversation. "I have given you pain. That was inevitable.
I was bound to put the truth, the unvarnished truth
before you. I have not said -- I will not say -- you will do
wrong to choose the hard, climbing path of an endeavouring
artist. You have to compare its difficulties with  those of
any less hazardous -- any more private course which opens
itself to you. If you take that more courageous resolve I
wiil ask leave to shake hands with you on the strength of
our freemasonry, where we are all vowed to the service of
Art, and s to serve her by helping every fellowservant."
  Gwendolen was silent, again looking at her hands. She
felt herself very far away from taking the resolve that
would enforce acceptance; and after waiting an instant ot
two, Klesmer went on with deepened seriousness.
  Where there is the duty of service there must be the
duty of accepting it. The question is not one of personal
obligation. And in relation to practical matters immediately
affecting your future -- excuse my permitting myself
to mention in confidence an affair of my own. I am expecting
an event which would make it easy for me to exert
myself  on your behalf in furthering your opportunities of
instructiona and residence in London -- under the care, that
is, of your family -- without need for anxiety on your part.

*X305

If you resolve to take art as a breadstudy, you need only
undertake the study at first; the bread will be found without
trouble. The event I mean is my marriage, -- in fact --
you will receive this as a matter of confidence, -- my
marriage with Miss Arrowpoint, which will more than
double such right as I have to be trusted by you as a friend.
Your friendship will have greatly risen in value for ˛her˛ by
your having adopted that generous labour."
  Gwendolen's face begun to burn. That Klesmer was
about to marry Miss Aroowpoint caused her no surprise,
and at another moment she would have amused herself in
quickly imagining the scenes that must have occured at
Quetcham. But what engrossed her feeling, what filled her
imagination now, was the  panorama of her own immediate
future that Klesmer's words seemed to have unforded. The
suggestion of Miss Arrowpoint as  a
patroness was only another detail added to its repulsiveness:
Klesmer's proposal to help her seemed an additional irritation after the
humiliating judgment he had passed on her cababilities.
His words had really bitten into her selfconfidence and
turned into the pain of a bleeding wound: and the idea
of presenting herself before other judges was now poisoned
with the dread that they also might be harsh: they also
would not recognise the talent she was conscious of. But she
controlled herself, and rose from her seat before she made
any answer. It seemed natural that she should pause. She
wento  to the piano and looked absently at leaves of music,
pinching up the corners. At last she turned towards Klesmer
and said, with almost her usual air of proud equality,
which in this interview had not been hitherto perceptible --
  "I congratulate you sincerely, Herr Klesmer. I think I
never saw any one more admirable than Miss Arrowpoint.
And I have to thank you for every sort of kindness this
morning. But I can' decide now. If I make the resolve you
have spoken of, I will use your permission -- I will let you
know. But I fear the obstacles are too great. In any case, I
am deeply obliged to you. It was very bold of me to ask you
to take this trouble."
  Klesmer's inward remark was, "She will never let me

*X305

know." But with the most thorough respect in his manner,
he said, "Command me at any time. There is an address on
this card which will always find me with little delay."
  When he had taken up his hat and was going to make
his bow, Gwendolen's better self, conscious of an ingratitude
which the clearseeing Klesmer must have penetrated
made a desperate effort to find its way above the stifling
layers of egoistic disappointment and irritation. Looking at
him with a glance of the old gaiety, she put out her hand,
and said with a smile, "If I make the wrong road, it will not
be because of your flattery."
  "God forbid that you should take any road but one where
you will find and give happiness]" said Klesmer, fervently.
The, in foreign fashion, he touched her fingers lightly
with his lips, and in another minute she heard the sound of
his departing wheels getting more distant on the gravel.
  Gwendolen had never in her life felt so miserable. No sob
came, no compassion of tears, to relieve her. Her eyes were
burning; and the noonday only brought into more dreary
clearness the absence of interest from her life. All
memories, all objects, the pieces of music  displayed, the
open piano -- the very reflection of herself in the glass --
seemed no better than the packedup shows of a departing
fair. For the first time since her consciousness began, she
was having a vision of herself on the common level, and
had lost the innate sense that there were reasons why she
should not be slighted, albowed, jostled -- treated like
a passenger with a thirdclass ticket, in spite of private objections
on her own part. She did not move about; the prospects
begotten by disappointment were too oppresively preoccupying
; she trew herself into the shadiest corner of a
settee, and pressed her fingers over her burning eyelids.
Every word that Klesmer had said seemed to have been
branded into her memory, as most words are which bring
with them a new set of impressions and make an epoch for
us. Only a few hours before, the dawning smile of self-
contentmwnt rested on her lips as she vaguely imagined a
future suited to her wishes: it seemed but the affair of a
year or so for her to become the most approved Juliet of

*X307

the time; or if Klesmer encouraged her idea of being a
singer, to proceed by more gradual steps to her place in the
opera, while she won money and applause by occasional
performances. Why not? At home, at school, among
acquaintances, she had been to have her conscious
superiority admitted; and she had moved in a society where
everything, from low arithmetic to high art, is of the
amateur kind politely supposed to fall short of perfection
only because gentlemen and ladies are not obliged to do
more than they like -- otherwise they would probably give forth
abler writings and show themselves more commanding artists
than any the world is at present abliged to put
up with. The selfconfident vision that had beguiled her
up with. The selfconfident visions that had beguiled her
were not of a highly exceptional kind; and she had at least
shown some rationality in consulting the person who knew
the most and  had  flattered her the least.
In asking Klesmer's advice, however, she had rather been borne up
by a belief in his latent admiration than bent
on knowing anything more unfavourable that might have lain behind
his slight objections to her singing; and the truth she had
asked for with an expectation that it would be agreeable,
had come like a lacerating thong.
  "Too old -- should have begun seven years ago -- you will
not, at best, achieve more than mediocrity -- hard, incessant
work, uncertain praise -- bread coming slowly, scantily, perhaps
not at all -- mortifications, people no longer feigning
not to see your blunders -- glaring insignificance" -- all these
phrases rankled in her; and even more galling was the hint
that she could only be accepted on the stage as a beauty
who hoped to get a husband. The "indignities" that she
might be visited with had no very definite form for her, but
the mere association of anything called "indignity" with
herself, roused a resentful alarm. And along with the
vaguer images which were raised by those biting words,
came the more precise conception of disagreeables which
her experience enabled her to imagine. How could she take
her mamma and  the four sisters to London, if it were not
possible for her to earn money at once? And as for submitting
to be a ˛protegee,˛ and asking her mamma to submit

*X308

with her to the humiliation of being supportedby Miss Arrowpoint
-  that was as bad as being a governess; nay,
worse; for suppose the end of all her study to be as worthless
as Klesmer clearly expected it to be, the sense of favours
received and never repaid, would embitter the miseries of
disappointment. Klesmer doubtless had magnificent ideas
about helping srtists; but how could he know the feelings
of ladies in such matters? It was all over: she had entertained
a mistaken hope; and there was an end of it.
  "An end of it]" said Gwendolen, aloud, starting from her
seat as she heard the steps and voices of her mamma and
sisters coming in from church. She hurried to the piano
and began gathering together her pieces of music with
assumed diligence, while the expression on her pale face
and in her burning eyes was what would have suited a
woman enduring a wrong which she might not resent, but
would probably revenge.
  "Well, my darling," said gentle Mrs Davilow, entering, "I
see by the wheelmarks that Klesmer has been here. Have
you been satisfied with the interview?" She had some
guesses as to its object, but felt timid about implying them.
  "Satisfied, mamma? oh yes," said Gwendolen, in a high
hard tone, for which she must be excused, because she
dreaded a scene of emotion. If she did not set herself
resolutely to feign proud indifference, she felt that she
must fall into a passionate outburst of despair, which would
cut her mamma more deeply than all the rest of their
calamities.
  "Your uncle and aunt were disappointed at not seeing
your uncle and aunt were disappointed at not sseing
you," said Mrs Davilow, coming near the piano, and watching
Gwendolen's movements. "I only said that you wanted rest."
  "Quite right, mamma," said Gwendolen, in the same tone,
turning to put away some music.
  "Am I not to know anything now, Gwendolen? Am I
always to be in the dark?" said Mrs Davilow, too keenly
sensitive to her daughter's manner and expression not to
fear that something painful had occured.
  "There is really nothing to tell now, mamma," said
Gwendolen, in a still higher voice. "I had  a mistaken idea

*X309

about something I could do. Herr Klesmer has undeceived
me. That is all."
  "Don't look and speak in that way, my dear child: I
cannot bear it," said Mrs Davilow, breaking down. She felt
an undefinable terror.
  Gwendolen looked at her a moment in silence, biting her
inner lip; then she went up to her, and putting her hands
on her mamma's shoulders, said, with a drop of her voice
to the lowest undertone, "Mamma, don't speak to me now.
It is useless to cry and waste our strength over what can't
be altered. You will live at Sawyer's Cottage, and I am
going to the bishop's daughters. There is no more to be
said. Things cannot be altered, and who cares? It makes no
difference to any one else what we do. We must try not to
care ourselves. We must not give way. I dread giving way.
Help me to be quiet."
  Mrs Davilow was like a frightened child under her
daughter's face and voice: her tears were arrested and she
went away in silence.

*C24


                       "I question things and do not find
                        One that will answer to my mind;
                        And all the world appears unkind."

                                            -- Wordsworth.


Gwendolen was glad that she had got through her interview
with Klesmer before meeting her uncle and aunt. She
had made up her mind now that there were only disagreeables
before her, and she felt able to maintain a dogged
calm in the face of any humiliation that might be proposed.
  The meeting did not happened until Monday, when
Gwendolen went to the rectory with her mamma. They
had called at Sawyer's Cottage by the way, and had seen
every cranny of the narrow rooms in a midday light,

*X310

unsoftened by the blinds and curtains; for the furnishing to be
done by gleanings from the rectory had not yet begun.
  "How ˛shall˛ you endure it, mamma?" said Gwendolen, as
they walked away. She had not opened her lips while they
were looking round at the bare walls and floors, and the
little garden with the cabbagestalks, and the yew arbour
all dust and cobwebs within. "You and the four girls all in
that closet  of a room, with the green and yellow paper
pressing on your eyes? And without me?"
  "it will be some comfort that you have not to bear it too,
dear."
  "If it were not that I must get some money, I would
rather be there than go to be a governess."
  "Don't set yourself against it beforehand, Gwendolen. If
you go to the palace you will have every luxury about you.
And you know how much you have always care for that.
You will not find it so hard as going up and down those
steep narrow stairs, and hearing the crockery rattle through
the house, and the dear girls talking."
  "It is like a bad dream," said Gwendolen, impetuously. "I
cannot believe that my uncle will let you go to such a
place. He ought to have taken some other steops."
  "Don't be unreasonable, dear child. What could he have
done?"
  "That was for him to find out. It seems to me a very
extraordinary world if people in our position must sink in
this way all at once," said Gwendolen, the other worlds with
which she was conversant being constructed with a sense of
fitness that arranged her own future agreeably.
  It was her temper that framed her sentences under this
entirely new pressure of evils: she could have spoken more
suitably on the vicissitudes in other people's lives, though it
was never her aspiration to express herself virtuously so
much as cleverly -- a point to be remembered in extenuation
of her words, which were usually worse than she was.
  And, notwithstanding the keen sense of her own bruises,
she was capable of some compunction when her uncle and
aunt received her with a more affectionate kindness than
they had ever shown before. She could not but  be struck by

*X311

the dignified cheerfulness with which they talked of the
necessary economies in their way of living, and in the
education of the boys. Mr Gascoigne's worth of character, a
little obscured by wordly opportunities -- as the poetic
beauty of women is obscured by the demands of fashionable
dressing -- showed itself to great advange under this
sudden reduction of fortune. Prompt and methodical, he
had set himself not only to put down his carriage, but to
reconsider his worn suits of clothes, to leave off meat for
breakfast, to do without periodicals, to get Edwy from
school and arrange hours of study for the boys under
himself, and to order the whole establishment on the
sparest footing possible. For all healthy people economy
has its pleasures; and the Rector's spirit  had spread
through the household. Mrs Gascoigne and Anna, who always made
papa their model, really did not miss anything they cared
about themselves, and in all sincerity felt that the
saddest part of the family losses was the change for Mrs
Davilow and her children.
  Anna for the first time could merge her resentment on
behalf of Rex in her sympathy for Gwendolen; and Mrs
Gascoigne was disposed to hope that trouble would have a
salutary effect on her niece, without thinking it her duty to
add any bitters by way of increasing the salutariness. They
had both been busy devising how to get blinds and curtains
for the cottage out of the household stores; but with
delicate feeling they felt these matters in the background,
and talked at first of Gwendolen's journey, and the comfort
it was to her mamma to have her at home again.
  In fact there was nothing for Gwendolen to take as a
justification for extending her discontent with events to the
persons immediately around her, and she felt shaken into a
more alert attention, as if by a call to drill that everybody
else was obeying, when her uncle began in a voice of firm
kindness to talk to her of the efforts she had been making to
get her a situation which would offer her as many
advantages as possible. Mr Gascoigne had not forgotten
Grandcourt, but the possibility of further advances from
that quarter was something too vague for a man of his

*X312

good sense to be determined by it: uncertainties of that
kind must not now slaken his action in doing the best he
could for his niece under actual conditions.
  "I felt that there was no time to be lost,  Gwendolen; -- for a
position in a good family where you will have some consideration
is not to be had at a moment's notice. And
however long we waited we could hardly find one where
you would be better off than at Bishop Mompert's. I am
known to both him and Mrs Mompert, and that of course
is an advantage for you. Our correspondence has gone on
favourably; but I cannot be surprised that Mrs Mompert
wishes to see you before making an absolute engagement.
She thinks of arranging for you to meet her at Wancester
when she is on her way to town. I daresay you will feel the
interview rather trying for you, my dear; but you will have
a little time to prepare your mind."
  "Do you know ˛why˛ she wants to see, me, uncle?" said
Gwendolen, whose mind had quickly gone over various
reasons that an imaginary Mrs Mompert with three
daughters might be supposed to entertain, reasons all of a
disagreeable kind to the person presenting herself for
inspection.
  The Rector smiled. "Don't be alarmed, my dear. She
would like to have a more precise idea of you than my
report can give. And a mother is naturally scrupulous
about a companion for her daughters. I have told her you
are very young. But she herself exercises a close supervision
over her daughter's education, and that makes her less
anxious as to age. She is a woman of taste and also of strict
principle, and objects to having a French person in the
house. I feel sure that she will think your manners and
accomplishments as good as she  is likely to find; and over
the religious and moral tone of the education she, and
indeed the bishop himself, will preside."
  Gwendolen dared not answer, but the repression of her
decided dislike to the whole prospect sent an unusually
deep flush over her face and neck, subsiding as quickly as it
came. Anna, full of tender fear, put her little hand into
her cousin's, and Mr Gascoigne was too kind a man noyt to

*X313

conceive something of the trial  which this sudden change
must be for a  girl like Gwendolen. Bent on giving a cheerful
view of things, he went on in an easy tone of remark,
not as if answering supposed objections --
  "I think so highly of the position, that I should have been
tempted to try and get it for Anna, if she had been at all
likely to meet Mrs Mompert's wants. It is really a home,
with a continuance of education in the highest sense:
"governess" is a misnomer. The bishop's views are of a
more decidedly Low Church colour than my own -- he is a
close friend of Lord Grampian's; but though
privately strict, he is not by any means narrow in public matters. Indeedhe has created as little
]]] dislike in his diocese as any bishop on
the bench. He has always remained friendly to me, though
before his promotion, when he was an incumbent of this
 diocese, we had a little controversy about the Bible Society."
  The Rector's Words were too pregnant with satisfactory
meaning to himself for him to imagine the effect they
produced on the mind of his niece. "Continuance of education" --
"bishop's views' -- "privately strict" -- "Bible Society", --
it was as if he had introduced a few snakes at large for the
instruction of ladies who regarded them as all alike furnished
with poisonbags, and biting or stinging according
to convenience. To Gwendolen, already ahrinking from the
prospect opened to her, such phrases came like the growing
heat of a burning glass -- not at all as the links of persuasive
reflection which they formed for the good uncle. She
began desperately to seek an alternative.
  "There was another situation, I think, mamma spoke of?"
she said, with determined selfmastery.
  "Yes," said the Rector, in rather a depreciatory tone; "but
that is in a school. I should not have the same satisfaction
in your taking that. It would be much harder work, you are
aware, and not so good in any other respect. Besides, you
have not an equal chance of getting it."
  "Oh dear no," said Mrs Gascoigne, "it would be much
harder for you, my dear -- much less appropriate. You
might not have a bedroom to yourself." And Gwendolen's
memories of school suggested other particulars which

*X314

forced her to admit to herself that this alternative would be
no relief. She turned to her uncle again and said, apparently
in acceptance of his ideas --
  "When is Mrs Mompert likely to send for me?"
  "That is rather uncertain, but she has promised not to
entertain any other proposal till she has seen you. She has
entered with much feeling into your position. It will be
within the next fortnight, probably. But I must be off now,
I am going to let part of my glebe uncommonly well."
  The Rector ended very cheerfully, leaving the room with
the satisfactory convinction that Gwendolen was going to
adapt herself to circumstances like a girl of good sense.
Having spoken appropriately, he naturally supposed that
the effects would be appropriate; being accustomed as a
household and parish authority to be asked to "speak to"
refractory persons, with the understanding that the
measure was morally coercive.
  "What a stay Henry is to us all]" said Mrs Gascoigne,
when her husband had left the room.
  "He is indeed," said Mrs Davilow, cordially. "I think
cheerfulness is a fortune in itself. I wish I had it."
  "And Rex is just like him," said Mrs Gascoigne. "I must
tell you the comfort we had in a letter from him. I
must read you a little bit," she added, taking the letter from
her pocket, while Anna looked rather frightened -- she did
not know why, except that it had been a rule with her not
to mention Rex before Gwendolen.
  The proud mother ran her eyes over the letter, seeking
for sentences to read aloud. But apparently she had found
it sown with what might seem to be closer allusions than
she desired to the recent past, for she looked up, folding
the letter, and saying --
  "However, he tells us that our trouble has made a man of
him; he sees a reason for any amount of work: he means
to get a fellowship, to take pupils, to set one of his brothers
going, to be everything that is most remarkable. The letter
is full of fun -- just like him. He says, "Tell mother she has
put out an advertisment for a jolly good hardworking
son, in time to hinder me from taking ship; and I offer

*X315

myself for the place." The letter came on Friday. I never
saw my husband so much moved by anything since Rex
was born. It seemed  a gain to balance our loss."
  This letter, in fact, was what had helped both Mrs Gascoigne
and Anna to show Gwendolen an unmixed kindliness;
and she herself felt very amiably about it, smiling, at
Anna and pinching her chin as much as to say, "Nothing is
wrong with you now, is it?" She had no gratuitously
illnatured feeling, egoistic pleasure in making men miserable.
She only had an intense objection to their making her
miserable.
  But when the talk turned on furniture for the cottage,
Gwendolen was not roused to show even a languid interest.
She thought that she had done as much as could be
expected of her this morning, and indeed felt at an heroic
pitch in keeping to herself the struggle that was going on
within her. The recoil of her mind from the only definite
prospect allowed her, was stronger than even she had
imagined beforehand. The idea of presenting herself before
Mrs Mompert in the first instance, to be approved or disapproved,
came as pressure on an already painful bruise:
even as a governess, it appeared she was to be tested and
was liable to rejection. After she had done herself the
violence to accept the bishop and his wife, they were still to
consider whether they would accept her; it was at her peril
that she was to look, speak, or to be silent. And even when she
had entered on her dismal task of selfconstraint in the
society of three girls whom she was bound incessantly to
edify, the same process of inspection was to go on: there
was always to be Mrs Mompert's supervision; always something
or  other would be expected of her to which she had
not the slighest inclination; and perhaps the bishop would
examine her on serious topics.  Gwendolen, lately
used to the social successes of a handsome girl, whose lively
venturesomeness of talk has the effect of wit, and who six
weeks before would have pitied the dulness of the bishop
rather than have been embarrassed by him, saw the life
before as an entrance into a penitentiary. Wild
thoughts of running away to be an actress, in spite of

*X316

Klesmer, came to her with the lure of freedom; But his
words still hung heavily on her soul; they had alarmed her
pride and even her maidenly dignity: dimly she conceived
herself getting amongst vulgar people who would treat her
with rude familiarity -- odious men, whose grins and smirks
would not be seen through the strong grating of polite
society. Gwendolen's daring was not in the least that of the
adventuress; the demand to be held a lady was in her very
marrow; and when she had dreamed that she might be the
heroine of the gamingtable, it was with the understanding
that no one should treat her with the less consideration, ot
presume to look at her with irony as Deronda had done. To
be protected and petted, and to have her susceptibilities
consulted in every detail, had gone along with her food and
clothing as matters of course in her life: even without any
such warning as Klesmer's she could not  have thought it
an attractive freedom to be thrown in solitary dependence
on the doubtful civility of strangers. The endurance of the
episcopal penitentiary was less repulsive than that; though
here too she would certainly never be petted or have her
susceptibilities consulted. Her rebellion against this hard
necessity which had come just to her of all people in the
world -- to her whom all circumstances had concurred in
preparing for something quite different -- was exaggerated
instead of diminished as one hour followed another, filled
with the imagination of what she might have expected
in her lot and what it was actually to be. The family troubles,
she thought, were easier for every one than for her -- even
for poor dear mamma, because she had always used herself
to not enjoying. As to hoping that if she went to the
Momperts' and was patient a little while, things might get
better -- it would be stupid to entetain hopes for herself
after all that had happened: her talents, it appeared, would
never be recognised as anything remarkable, and there was
not a single direction in which probability seemed to flatter
her wishes. Some beautiful girls who, like her, had red
read romances where even plain governesses are centres of
attraction and are sought in marriage, might have solaced
themselves a little by transporting such pictures into their

*X317

own future; but even if Gwendolen's experience had led her
to dwell on lovemaking and marriage as her elysium, her
heart was too much oppressed by what was near to her, in
both the past and the future, for her to project her anticipations
very far off. She had a  worldnausea upon her, and
saw no reason all through her life why she should wish to
live. No religious view of trouble helped her: her troubles
had in her opinion all been caused by other's people disagreeable
or wicked conduct; and there was really nothing
pleasant to be counted on in the world: that was her
feeling; everything else she had heard said about trouble
was mere phasemaking not attractive enough for her to
have caught it up and repeated it. As to the sweetness of
labour and fulfilled claims; the interest of inward and
outward activity; the impersonal delights of life as a perpetual
discovery; the dues of courage, fortitude, industry,
which it is mere baseness not to pay towards the common
burthen; the supreme worth of the teacher's vocation; --
these, even if they had been eloquently preached to her,
could have been no more than faintly apprehended
doctrines: the fact which wrought upon her was her invariable
observation that for a lady to become a governess
 -- to "take a situation" -- was to descend in life and to be
treated at best with a compassionate patronage. And poor
Gwendolen had never dissociated happiness from personal
preeminence and ˛eclat.˛ That where these threatened to
forsake her, she should take life to be hardly worth
the having, cannot make her so unlike the rest of us, men or
women, that we should cast her out of our compassion; our
moments of temptation to a mean opinion of things in
general being usually dependent on some susceptibility
about ourselves ans ome dulness to subjects which every
one else would consider more important. Surely a young
creature in pitiable who has athe labyrinth of life before her
and no clue -- to whom distrust in herself and her good
fortune has come as a sudden shock, like a rent across
the path that she was treading carelessly.
  In spite of her healthy frame, her irreconciliable repugnance
affected her even physically: she felt a sort of numbness
*X318

and could set about nothing; the last urgency, even that
she should take her meals, was an irritation to her; the
speech of others on any subject seemed unreasonable, because
it did not include her feeling and was an ignorant
claim on her. It was not in her nature to busy herself with
the fancies of suicide to which disappointed young people
are prone: what occupied and exasperated her was the
sense that there was nothing for her but to live in a way
she hated. She avoided going to the rectory again: it was
too intolerable to have to look and talk as if she were
compliant; and she uld not exert herself to show interest
about the furniture of that horrible cottage. Miss Merry
was staying on purpose to help, and such people as Jocosa
liked that sort of thing. Her mother had to make excuses for
her not appearing, even when Anna came to see her. For
that calm which Gwendolen had promised herself to maintain
had changed into sick motivelessness: she thought, "I
suppose I shall begin to pretend byandby, but why should I do
it now?"
  Her mother watched her with silent distress; and, lapsing
into the habit of indulgent tenderness, she began to think
what she imagined that Gwendolen wa  was thinking, and to
wish that everything should give way to the possibility of
making her darling less miserable.
  One day when she was in the black and yellow bedroom
and her mother was lingering there under the pretext of
considering and arranging Gwendolen's articles of dress,
she suddenly roused herself to fetch the casket which contained her ornaments.
  "Mamma," she began, glancing over the upper layer, "I
had forgotten these things. Why didn't you remind me of
them? Do see about getting them sold. You will not mind
about parting with them. You gave them all to me long
ago."
  She lifted the upper tray and looked below.
  "If we can do without them, darling, I would rather keep
them for you.]" said Mrs Davilow, seating herself beside
Gwendolen with a feeling of relief that she was beginning
to talk about something. The usual relation between them

*X319

had become reversed. It was now the mother who tried to
cheer the daughter. "Why, how came you to put that
pockethandkerchief in here?"
  It was the handkerchief with the corner torn off which
Gwendolen had thrust in with the turqoise necklace.
  "It happened to be with the necklace -- I was in a hurry,"
said Gwendolen, taking the handkerchief away and putting
it in her pocket. "Don't sell the necklace, mamma," she
added, a new feeling having come over her about that
rescue of it which had formerly been so offensive.
  "No, dear, no; it was made out of your dear father's
chain. And I should prefer not selling the other things.
None of them are of any great value. All my best ornaments
were taken from me long ago."
  Mrs Davilow coloured. She usually avoided any reference
to such facts about Gwendolen's stepfather as that he had
carried off his wife's jewellery and disposed of it. After a
moment's pause she went on --
"And these things have not been reckoned on for any
expenses. Carry them with you."
  "Tha would be quite useless, mamma, " said Gwendolen,
coldly. "Governesses don't wear ornaments. You had better
get me a grey frieze livery and a straw poke, such  as my
aunt's charity children wear."
  "No, dear, no; don't take that view of it> I feel sure the
Momperts will like you the better for being graceful and elegant."
  "I am not at all sure what the Momperts will take me
  "I am not at all sure what the Momperts will like me to
be. It is enough that I am expected to be what they like,"
said Gwendolen, bitterly.
If there is anything you would object to less -- anything
that could be done -- instead of your going to the bishop's, do
say so, Gwendolen. Tell me what is in you Your heart. I will try
for anything you wish," said the mother, beseechingly. "Don't
keep things away from me. Let us bear them together."
  "Oh mamma, there is nothing to tell. I can't do anything
better. I must think myself fortunate if they will have me. I
shall get some money for you. That is the only thing I
have to think of. I shall not spend any money this year:

*X320

you will have all the eighty pounds. I don't know how far
that will go in housekeeping; but you need not stitch  your
poor fingers to the bone, and stare away all the sight that
the tears have felt in your dear eyes."
  Gwendolen did not give any caresses with her words as
she had been used to do. She did not even look at her
mother, but was looking at the turqoise necklace as she
turned it over her fingers.
  "Bless you for your tenderness, my good darling]" said
Mrs Davilow, with tears in her eyes. "Don't despair because
there are clouds now. You are so young. There may be
great happiness in store for you yet."
  "I don' see any reason for expecting it, mamma," said
Gwendolen, in a hard tone; and Mrs Davilow was silent,
thinkingas she had often thought before -- "What did
pappen between her and Mr Grandcourt?"
  I ˛will˛ kepp this neckless, mamma," said Gwendolen, laying
it apart and then closing the casket. "But do get the
other things sold even if they will not bring much. Ask my uncle
what to do with them. I shall certainly not use them
again. I am going to take the veil. I wonder if all the poor
wretches who have ever taken it felt as I do."
  "Don't exaggerate evils, dear."
  "How can any one know that I exaggerate, when I am
speaking of my own feeling? I did not say what any one
else felt."
  She took out the torn handkerchief from her pocket again, wrapt
it deliberately round the necklace. Mrs
Davilow observed the action with some surprise, but the tone
of the last words discouraged her from asking any question.
  The "feeling" Gwendolen spoke of with an air of tragedy
was not to be explained by the mere fact that she was
going to be a governess: she was possessed by a spirit of
general disappointment. It was not simply that she had a
distaste for what she was called on to do: the distaste
spread itself over the world outside her penitentiary, sice
she saw nothing very pleasant in it that seemed attainable
by her even if she were free. Naturally her greviances
did not seem to her smaller than some of her male

*X321

contemporaries held theirs to be when they felt a profession
too narrow for their powers, and had an ˛a˛ ˛priori˛ convinction
that it was not worth while to put forth their latent abilities.
Because her education had been less expensive than
thairs, it did not follow that she should have wider emotions
or a keener intellectual vision. Her griefs were
feminine; but to her as a woman they were not the less
hard to bear, and she felt an equal right to the Promethean
tone.
  But the movement of mind which led her to keep the
necklace, to fold it up in the handkerchief, and rise to put
it in her ˛necessaire,˛ where she had first placed it when it
had been returned to her, was more peculiar, and what
would be called less reasonable. It came from the streak of
superstition in her which attached itself both to her confidence
and her terror -- a superstition which lingers in an
intense personality even in spite of theory and science; any
dread of hope for self being stronger than all reasons for or
against it. Why she should suddenly determine not to part
with the necklace was not much clearer to her than why
she should sometimes have been frightened to find herself
in the fields alone: she had a confused state of emotion
about Deronda -- was it wounded pride and resentment, or
a certain awe and exceptional trust? It was something
vague and yet mastering, which impelled her to this action
about the necklace. There is a great deal of unmapped
country within us which would have to be taken into
account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.

*X322

*c25

How trace the why and wherefore in a mind reduced to the
barrennes of a fastidious egoism, in which all direct desires are
dulled, and have dwindled from motives into a vacillating expectation
of motives: a mind made up of moods, where a fitful
impulse springs here and there conspicuously rank amid the
general weediness? 'Tis a condition apt to befall a life too much
at large , unmoulded by the pressure of obligation. Nam!
˛deteriores˛ ˛omnes ˛sumus˛ ˛licentiae,˛ saith Terence; or as a morefamiliar tongue might deliver
]]] it, "As you like" ia s bad fingerpost.

Potentates make known their intentions and affect the
funds at a  small expense of words. So, when
Greandcourt, after learning that Gwendolen had left Leubronn, incidentally
pronounced that resort of fashion a beastly hole worse
than Baden, the remark was conclusive to Mr Lush that his
patron intended straightway to return to Diplow. The execution was sure to be the slower than the
]]] intention, and in fact
Grandcourt did loiter through the next day without giving
any distinct orders about departure -- perhaps because he
discerned that Lush was expecting them: he lingered over his toilet,
and certainly came down with a faded aspect of
perfect distinction which made fresh complexions, and
hands with the blood in them, seem sign of row vulgarity;
he lingered on  the terrace, in the gamblingrooms, in the
readingroom, occupying himself in being indifferent to
everybody and everything around him. When he met Lady
Mallinger, however, he took some trouble -- raised his hat,
paused, and proved that he listened to her recommendation
of the waters by replying, "Yes; I heard somebody say how
providential it was that there always happened to be
springs at gambling places.
  "Oh, that was a joke," said innocent Lady Mallinger,
misled by Grandcourt's languid seriousness, "in imitation of
the old one about the towns and the rivers, you know."
  "Ah, perhaps," said Grandcourt, without change of expression.
Lady Mallinger thought this worth telling to Sir

*X323

Hugo, who said, "Oh, my dear, he is not a fool. You must
not suppose that he can't see a joke. He can play his cards
as well as most of us."
  "he has never seemed to me a very sensible man," said
Lady Mallinger, in excuse of herself. She had a secret
objection to meeting Grandcourt, who was little else to her
than a large living sign of what she felt to be her failure as
a wife -- the not having presented Sir Hugo with a son. Her
constant reflection was that her husband might fairly regret
his choice, and if he had not been very good might
have treated her with some roughness in consequence, gentlemen
naturally disliking to be disappointed.
  Deronda, too had a recognition from Grandcourt, for
which he was not grateful, though he took care to return it
with perfect civility. No reasoning as to the foundations of
custom could do away with the earlyrooted feeling that his
birth had been attended with injury for which his father
was to blame; and seeing that but for this injury Grandcourt's
prospect might have been his, he was proudly resolute
not to behave in any way that might be interpreted
into irritation on that score. He saw a very easy descent
into mean unreasoning rancour and triumph in others'
frustration; and being determined not to go down that
ugly pit, he turned his back on it, clinging to the kindlier
affections within him as a possession. Pride certainly helped
him well -- the pride of not recognising a disadvantage for
one's self which vulgar minds are disposed to exaggerate,
such as the shabby equipage of poverty: he would not
have a man like Grandcourt suppose himself envied by
him. But thereis no guarding against interpretation.
Grandcourt did believe that Deronda, poor evil, who he
had no doubt was his cousin by the father's side, inwardly
winced under their mutual position; wherefore the presence
of that less lucky person was more agreeable to him than it
would otherwise have been. An imaginary envy, the idea
that others feel their comparative deficiency, is the
ordinary ˛cortege˛ of egoism; and his pet dogs were not the
only beings that Grandcourt liked to feel his power over
in making them jalous. Hence he was civil enough to

*X324

exchange several words with Deronda on the terrace about
the hunting round Diplow, and even said, "You had better
come over for a run or two when the season begins."
  Lush, not dispeased with delay, amused himself very
well, partly in gossiping with Sir Hugo and in answering
his questions about Grandcourt's affairs so far as they
might effect his willingness to part with his interest in
Diplow. Also about Grandcourt's personal entanglements,
the baronet knew enough already for Lush to feel released
from silence on a sunny autumn day, when there was
nothing more agreeable to do in lounging promenades
than to speak freely of a tyrannous patron behind his back.
Sir Hugo willingly inclined his ear to a little good-
humoured scandal, which he was fond of calling ˛traits ˛ ˛de˛
˛moeurs;˛ but he was strict in keeping such communications
from hearers who might take them too seriously. Whatever
knowledge he had of his nephew's secrets, he had never
spoken of it to Deronda, who considered Grandcourt a paleblooded
mortal, but was far from wishing to hear how the
red corpuscles had been washed out of him. It was Lush's
policy and inclination to gratify everybody when he had no
reason to the contrary; and the baronet always treated him
well, as one of those easyhandled personages who, frequenting
the society of gentlemen, without being exactly
gentlemen themselves, can be the more serviceable, like the
secondbest articles of our wardrobe, which we use with a
comfortable freedom from anxiety.
  "Well, you will let me know the turn of events," said Sir
Hugo, "is this marriage seems likely to come off after all, or
if anything else happens to make the want of money more
pressing. My plan would  be much better for him than
burthening Ryelands."
  "That's true," said Lush, "only it must not be urged on him --
just placed in his way that the scent may tickle him.
Grandcourt is not a man to be always led by what makes
for his own interest; especially if you let him see that it
makes for your interest too. I'm attached to him, of course.
I'have given up everything else for the sake of keeping by
him, and it has lasted a good fifteen years now. He would

*X325

 not easily get any one else to fill my place. He's a peculiar
character, is Henleigh Grandcourt, and it has been growing
on him of late years. However, I'm of constant disposition
and I have been a sort of guardian to him since he was
twenty: an uncommonly fascinating fellow he was then, to
be sure -- and could be now, if he liked. I'm attached to him;
and it would be a good deal worse for him if he
missed me at his elbow."
  Sir Hugo did not think it needful to express his symphathy
or even assent and perhaps Lush himself did not
expect this sketch of his motives to be taken as exact. But
how can a man avoid himself as a subject in conversation?
And he must make some sort of decent toilet in words, as
in cloth and linen. Lush's listener was not severe:
a member of Parliament could allow for the necessities of
verbal toilet; and the dialogue went on without any change
of mutual estimate.
  However Lush's easy prospect of indefinite procastination
was cut off the next morning by Grandcourt's saluting
him with the question --
  "Are you making all the arrangements for our starting by
the Paris train?"
  "I didn' know you meant to start," said Lush, not exactly
taken by surprise.
  "You might have known," said Grandcourt, looking at the
burnt length of his cigar, and speaking in that lowered
tone which was usual with him when he meant to express
disgust and be peremptory. "Just see to everything, will
you? and mind no brute gets into the same carriage with
us. And leave my P.P.C. at the Mallingers."
  In consequence they were at Paris the next day; but here
Lush was gratified by the proposal or command that he
should go straight on to Diplow and see that everything
was right, while Grandcourt and the valet remained
behind, and it was not until several days later that Lush
received the telegram ordering the carriage to the Wancester
station.
  He had used the interim actively, not only in carrying
out Grandcourt's orders about the stud and household, but

*X326

in learning all he could about Gwendolen, and how things
were going at Offendene. What was the probable effect
that the news of the family misfortunes would have on
Grandcourt's fitful obstinacy he felt to be quite incalculable.
So far as the girl's poverty might be an argument
that she would accept an offer from him now in spite of
any previous coyness, it might remove that bitter objection
to risk a repulse which Lush divined to be one of Grandcourt's
deterring motives; on the other hand, the certainty
of acceptance was just "the sort of thing" to make him lapse
hither and thither with no more apparent will than a moth.
Lush had had his patron under close observation for many
years, and knew him perhaps better than he knew any
other subject; but to know Grandcourt was to doubt what
he would do in any particular case. It might happen that
he would behave with an apparent magnanimity, like the
hero of a modern French drama, whose sudden start into
moral slpendour after much lying and meanness, leaves
you little confidence as to any part of his career that may
follow  the fall of the curtain. Indeed, what attitude would
have been more honourable for a final scene than that of
declining to seek an heiress for her money, and determining
to marry the attractive girl who had none? But Lush
had some general certainties about Grandcourt, and one
was, that of all inward movements those of generosity were
the least likely to occur in him. Of what use, however, is a
general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head
hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of
inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a
network of possible paths? Thus Lush was much at fault as
to the probable issue between Grandcourt and Gwendolen,
when what he desired was  a perfect confidence that they
would never be matried. He would have consented willingly that
Grandcourt should marry an hieress, or that he
should marry Mrs Glasher: in the one match there would
have been the immediate abundance that prospective heirship
could not supply, in the order there  would have been
the security of the wife's gratitude, for Lush had always
been Mrs Glasher's friend; and that the future Mrs

*X327

Grandcourt should not be socially received could not affect
his private comfort. He would not have minded, either, that
there should be no marriage in question at all; but he felt
himself justified in doing his utmost to hinder a marriage
with a girl who was likely to bring nothing but trouble
to her husband -- not to speak of annoyance if not ultimate
injury to her husband's old companion, whose future Mr
Lush earnestly wish to make as easy as possible, considering
that he had well deserved such compensation for leading
a dog's life, though that of a dog who enjoyed many
tastes undisturbed, and who profited by a large establishment.
He wished for himself what he felt to be good, and
was not conscious of wishing harm to any one else; unless
perhaps it were just now a little harm to the inconvenient
and impertinent Gwendolen. But the easiesthumoured
amateur of luxury and music, the toadeater the least liable
to nausea, must be expected to have his susceptibilities.
And Mr Lush was accustomed to be treated by the world
in general as an apt, agreeable fellow: he had not made up
his mind to be insulted by more than one person.
  With this imperfect preparation of a war policy, Lush
was awaiting Grandcourt's arrival, doing little more than
wondering how the campaign would begin. The first day
Grandcourt was much occupied with the stables, and
amongst other things he ordered a groom to put a side-
saddle on Criterion and let him review the Hhorse's paces.
This marked indication or purpose set Lush on considering
over again whether he should incur the ticklish consequences
of speaking first, while he was still sure that no
compromising step had been taken; and he rose the next
morning almost resolved that if Grandcourt seemed in as
good humour as yesterday and entered at all into talk, he
would let drop the interesting facts about Gwendolen and
her family, just to see how they would work, and to get
some guidance. But Grandcourt did not enter into talk, and
in answer to a question even about his own convenience, no
fish could have maintained a more inwinking silence.
After he had read his letters he gave various orders to be
executed or transmitted by Lush., and then thrust his

*X328

shoulders towards that useful person, who accordingly rose
to leave the room. But before he was out of the dorr,
Grandcourt turned his head slightly and gave a broken
languid "Oh."
  "What is it?" said Lush, who it must have been observed,
did not take his dusty puddings with a respectful air.
  "Shut the door, will you? I can't speak into the corridor."
  Lush closed the door, came forward, and chose to sit
down.
  After a little pause Grandcourt said, "Is Miss Harleth at
Offendene?" He was quite certain that Lush had made it
his business to inquire about her, and he had some pleasure
in thinking that Lush did not want ˛him˛ to inquire.
  "Well I hardly know," said Lush, carelessly. "The family's
utterly done up. They and the Gascoignes too have lost all
their money. It's owing to some rascally banking business.
The poor mother hasn't a ˛sou,˛ it seems. She and the girls
have to huddle themselves into a little cottage like a
labourer's."
  "Don't lie to me, if  you please," said Grandcourt, in his
lowest audible tone. "It's not amusing, and it answers no
other purpose."
  "What do you mean?" said Lush, more nettled than was
common with him -- the prospect before him being more
than commonly disturbing.
  "Just tell me the truth, will you?"
  "It's no invention of mine. I have heard the story from
several -- Bazley, Brackenshaw's man, for one. He is getting
a new tenant for Offendene."
  "I don't mean that. Is Miss Harleth there, or id she not?"
said Grandcourt, in his former tone.
  "Upon my soul, I can't tell," said Lush, rather sulkily. "She
may have left yesterday. I heard she had taken a situation
as governess; she may be gone to it for what I know. But if
you wanted to see her no doubt the mother would send for
her back." This sneer slipped off his tongue without strict
intention.
  "Send Hutchins to inquire whether she willl be there tomorrow."

*X329

  Lush did not move. Like many persons who have
thought over beforehand what they shall say in given cases
he was impelled by an unexpected irritation to say some of
those prearranged things before the cases were given. Grandcourt,
in fact, was likely to get into a scrape so tremendous,
that it was impossible to let him take the first step towards
it without remonstrance. Lush retained enough caution to
use a tone of rational friendliness; still he felt his own value
to his patron, and was prepared to be daring.
  "It would be as weel for you to remember, Grandcourt,
that you are coming under closer fire now. There can be
none of the ordinary flirting done, which may mean everything
or nothing. You must make up your mind whether
you wish to be accepted; and more than that, how you
would like  being refused. Either one or the other. You can't
be philandering after her again for six weeks."
  Grandcourt said nothing, but pressed the newspaper
down on his knees and began to light another cigar. Lush
took this as a sign that he was willing to listen, and was the
 more bent on using the opportunity; he wanted if possible
to find out which would be the more potent cause of hesitation --
probable acceptance or probable refusal.
  "Everything has a more serious look now than it had
before. There is her family to be provided for. You could
not let your wife's mother live in beggary. It will be a
confoundedly hampering affair. Marriage will pin you
down in a way you haven't been used to; and in point of
 money you have not too much elbowroom. And after all,
what will you get by it? You are master over your estates,
present or future, as far as choosing your heir goes; it's a
pity to go on encumbering them for a mere whim, which
you may repent of in a twelvemonth. I should be sorry to
see you making a mess of your life in that way. If there
were anything solid to be gained by the marriage, that
would be a different affair."
  Lush's tone had gradually become more and more
unctuous in its friendliness of remonstrance, and he was
almost in danger of forgetting that he was merely
gambling in argument. When he left off, Grandcourt took

*X330

Lush did not move. Like many persons who have
thought over beforehand what they  shall his cigar out of his mouth, and looking steadily at the
moist end while he adjusted the leaf with his delicate
fingertips, said --
  "I knew before that you had an objection to my marrying
Miss Harleth." Here he made a little pause, before he
continued, "But I never considered that a reason against it."
  "I never supposed you did," answered Lush, not
unctuously, but dryly. "It was not ˛that˛ I urged as a reason. I
should have thought it might have been a reason against
it, after all your experience, that you would be acting like
the hero of a ballad, and making yourself absurd -- and all
for what? You know you couldn't make up your mind
before. It's impossible you can care much about her. And
as for the tricks she is likely to play, you may judge of that
from what you heard at Leubronn. However, what I
wished to point out to you was, that there can be no shilly-
shally now."
  "Perfectly," said Grandcourt, looking round  at Lush and
fixing him with narrow eyes; "I don't intend that there
should be. I daresay it's disagreeable to you. But if you
suppose I care a damn for that, you are most stupendously
mistaken."
  "Oh, well," said Lush, rising with his hands in his pockets,
and feeling some latent venom still within him, "if you
have made up your mind] -- only there's another aspect of
the affair. I have been speaking on the supposition that it
was absolutely certain she would accept you, and that destitution
would have no choice. But I am not so sure that the
young lady is to be counted on. She is kittle cattle to shoe, I
think. And she had her reasons for running away before."
Lush had moved a step or two till he stood nearly in front
of Grandcourt, though at some distance from him. He did
not feel himself much restrained by consequences, being
aware that the only strong hold he had on his present
position was his serviceableness; and even after a quarrel,
the want of him was likely sooner or later to recur. He
foresaw that Gwendolen would cause him to be ousted for
a time, and his temper at this moment urged him to risk a
quarrel.

*X331
  "She had her reasons," he repeated, more significantly.
  "I had come to that conclusion before," said Grandcourt,
with contemptuous irony.
  "Yes, but I hardly think you know what her reasons were."
  "You do, apparently," said Grandcourt, not betraying by
so much as an eyelash that he cared for the reasons.
  "Yes, and you better know too, that you may judge
of the influence you have over her, if she swallows her
reasons and accepts you. For my own part, I would take
odds against it. She saw Lydia in Cardell Chase and heard
the whole story."
  Grandcourt made no immediate answer, and only went
on smoking. He was so long before he spoke, that Lush
moved about and looked out of the windows, unwilling to
go away without seeing some effect of his daring move. He
had expected that Grandcourt would tax him with having
contrived the affair, since Miss Glasher was then living at
Gadsmere a hundred miles off, and he was prepared to
admit the fact: what he cared about was  that Grandcourt
should be staggered by the sense that his intended
advances must be made to a girl who had that knowledge
in her mind and had been scared by it. At length Grandcourt
seeing Lush turn towards him, looked at him again
and said, contemptuously, "What follows?"
  Here certainly was a "mate" in answer to Lush's "check;"
and though his exasperation with Grandcourt was perhaps
stronger than it had ever been before, it would have been
mere idiocy to act as if any further move could be useful.
He gave a slight shrug with one shoulder and was going to
walk away, when Grandcourt, turning on his seat towards
the table, said, as quietly as if nothing had occured,
"Oblige me by pushing that pen and paper here, will you?"
  No thunderous, bullying superior could have exercised
the imperious spell that Grandcourt did. Why, instead of
being obeyed, he had never been told to go to a warmer
place, was perhaps a mystery to several who found themselves
obeying him. The pen and paper were pushed to
him, and as he took them he said, "Just wait for this
letter."

*X332
  He scrawled with ease, and the brief note was quickly
addressed. "Let Hutchins go with it at once, will you?" said
Grandcourt, pushing the letter away from him.
  As Lush had expected, it was addressed to Miss Harleth,
Offendene. When his irritation had cooled down he was
glad there had been no explosive quarrel; but he felt sure
that there was a notch made against him, and that somehow
or other he was intended to pay. It was also clear to
him that the immediate effect of his revelation had been to
harden Grandcourt's previous determination. But as to the
particular movements which made this process in his
baffling mind, Lush could only toss up his chin in dispair
of a theory.
*C26

     He brings white asses laden with the freight
     Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold, and balm,
     To bribe my will: I'll bid tham chase him forth,
     Nor let him breathe the taint of his surmise
     On my secure resolve.
                              Ay,"tis secure;
     And therefore let him come to spread his freight.
     For firmness hath its appetite and craves
     The stronger lure, more strongly to resist;
     Would know the touch of gold to fling it off;
     Scent wine to feel its lip the soberer;
     Behold soft byssus, ivory, and plumes
     To say, "They're fair, but I will none of them,"
     And flout Enticement in the very face.

Mr Gascoigne one day came to Offendene with what he
felt to be the satisfactory news that Mrs Mompert had
fixed Tuesday in the following week for her interview with
Gwendolen at Wancester. He said nothing of his having
incidentally heard that Mr Grandcourt had returned to
Diplow; knowing no more than she did that Leubronn had
been the goal of her admirer's journeying, and feeling that
*X333
it would be unkind uselessly to revive the memory of a
brilliant prospect under the present reverses. In his secret
soul he thought of his niece's unintelligible caprice with
regret, but he vindicated her to himself by considering that
Grandcourt had been the first to behave oddly, in suddenly
walking away when there had been the best opportunity
for crowning his marked attentions. The Rector's practical
judgment told him that his chief duty to his niece now was
to encourage her resolutely to face the change in her lot,
since there was no manifest promise of any event that
would avert it.
  "You will find an interest in varied experience, my dear,
and I have no doubt you will be a more valuable woman
for having sustained such a part as you are called to."
  "I cannot pretend to believe that I shall like it," said
Gwendolen, for the first time showing her uncle some
petulance. "But I am quite aware that I am obliged to bear
it."
  She remembered having submitted to his admonition  on
a different occasion, when she was expected to like a very
different prospect.
  "And your good sense will teach you to behave suitably
under it," said Mr Gascoigne, with a shade m more gravity. "I
feel sure that Mrs Mompert will be pleased with you. You
will know how to conduct yourself to a woman who holds
in all senses the relation of superior to you. This trouble
has come on you young, but that makes it in some respects
easier, and there is benefit in all chastisement if we adjust
our minds to it."
  This was precisely what Gwendolen was unable to do;
and after her uncle was gone, the bitter tears, which had
rarely come during the late trouble, rose and fell slowly as
she sat alone. Her heart denied that the trouble was easier
because she was young. When was she to have any happiness,
if it did not come while she was young? Not that her
visions of possible happiness for herself were as unmixed
with necessary evil as they used to be -- not that she could
still imagine herself plucking the fruits of life without
suspicion of their core. But this general disenchantment
*X334

with the world -- nay, with herself, since it appeared that
she was not made for easy preeminence -- only intensified
her sense of forlornness: it was a visibly sterile distance
enclosing the dreary path at her feet, in which she had no
courage to tread. She was in that first crisis of passionate
youthful rebellion against what is not fitly called pain, but
rather the absence of joy -- that first rage of disappointment
in life's morning, which we whom the years have subdued
are apt to remember but dimly as part of our own experience,
and so to be intolerant of its selfenclosed unreasonableness
and ompiety. What passion sees more absurd,
when we have got outside it and looked at calamity as a
collective risk, than this amazed anguish that I and not
Thou, He, or She, should be just the smitten one? Yet
perhaps some who have afterwards made themselves a
willing fence before the breast of another, and have carried
their own heartwound in heroic silence -- some who have
made their latter deeds great, nevertheless began with his
angry amazement at their own smart, and on the mere
denial of their fantastic desires raged as if under the sting
of wasps which reduced the universe for them to an unjust
infliction of pain. This was nearly poor Gwendolen's condition.
What though such a reverse as hers had often
happened to other girls? The point she had been all
her life learning to care for was, that it had happened to
˛her:˛ it was what ˛she˛ felt under Klesmer's demonstration
that she was not remarkable enough to command fortune
by force of will and merit; it was what ˛she˛ would feel under
the rigours of Mrs Mompert's constant expectation, under
the dull demand that she should be cheerful with three
Miss Momperts, under the necessity of showing herself
entirely submissive, and keeping her thoughts to herself.
To be a queen disthroned is not so hard as some other
downstepping: imagine one who had been made to believe
in his own divinity finding all homage withdrawn, and
himself unable to perform a miracle that would recall
the homage and restore his own confidence. Something
akin to this illusion and this helplessness had befallen
the poor spoiled child, with the lovely lips and eyes and the

*X335
majesticfigure -- which seemed now to have no magic in them.
  She rose from the low ottoman where she had been
sitting purposeless, and walked up and down the drawing-
room, resting her elbow on one palm while she leaned
down her cheek on the other, and a slow tear fell. She
thought, "I have always, ever since I was little, felt that
mamma was not a happy woman; and now I daresay I shall
be more unhappy than she has been." Her mind dwelt for a
few moments on the picture of herself losing her youth and
ceasing to enjoy -- not minding whether she did this or
that: but such picturing inevitably brought back the
image of her mother. "Poor mamma] it will be still worse for
her now. I can get a little money for her -- that is all I shall
care about now." And then with an entirely new movement
of her imagination, she saw her mother getting quite old
and white, and herself no longer young but faded, and
their two faces meeting still with memory and love, and she
knowing what was in her mother's mind -- "Poor Gwen too
is sad and faded now" -- and then for the first time she sobbed,
not in anger but with a sort of tender misery.
  Her face was towards the door, and she saw her mother
enter. She barely saw that; for her eyes were large with
tears, and she pressed her handkerchief against them hurriedly.
Before she took it away she felt her mother's arms
round her, and this sensation, which seemed a prolongation
of her inward vision, overcame her will to be reticent: she
sobbed anew in spite of herself, as they pressed their cheeks
together.
  Mrs Davilow had brought something in her hand which
had already caused her an agitating anxiety, and she dared
not speak until her darling had become calmer. But Gwendolen,
with whom weeping had always been a painful
manifestation to be resisted if possible, again pressed her
handkerchief against her eyes, and with a deep breath drew
her head backward and looked at her mother, who was pale
and tremulous.
  "It was nothing, mamma," said Gwendolen, thinking that
her mother had been moved in this way simply by finding
her distress. "It is all over now."

*X336

  But Mrs Davilow had withdrawn her arms, and Gwendolen
perceived a letter in her hand.
  "What is that letter? -- worse news still?" she asked, with a
touch of bitterness.
  "I don't know what you will think it, dear," said Mrs
Davilow, keeping the letter in her hand. "You will hardly
guess where it comes from."
  "Don't ask me to guess anything," said Gwendolen, rather
impatiently, as if a bruise were being pressed.
  "It is address to you dear."
  Gwendolen gave the slightest perceptible toss of the
head.
  "It comes from Diplow," said Mrs Davilow, giving her the
letter.
  She knew Grandcourt's  indistinct handwriting, and her
mother was not surprise to see her blush deeply; but
watching her as she read, and wondering much what was
the purport of the letter, she saw the colour die out.
Gwendolen's lips even were pale as she turned the open
note towards her mother. The words were few and formal.

  "Mr Grandcourt presents his compliments to Miss Harleth,
and begs to know whether he may be permitted to call at Offendene
tomorrow after two, and to see her alone. Mr Grandcourt
has just returned from Leubronn, where he had hoped to find
Miss Harleth."

  Mrs Davilow read, and then looked at her daughter
inquiringly, leaving the note in her hand. Gwendolen let it
fall on the floor, and turned away.
  "It must be answered, darling," said Mrs Davilow, timidly.
"The man waits."
  Gwendolen sank on the settee, clasped her hands, and
looked straight before her, not at her mother. She had the
expression of one who had been starled by a sound
andwas listening to know what would come of it. The sudden
change of the situation was bewildering. A few minutes
before she was looking along an inescapable path of repulsive
 monotony, with hopeless inward rebellion against the
imperious lot which left her no choice: and lo, now, a

*X337
moment of choice was come. Yet -- was it triumph she felt
most or terror? Impossible for Gwendolen not to feel some
triumph in a tribute to her power at a time when she was
first tasting the bitterness of insignificance: again she
seemed to be getting a sort of empire over her own life. But
how to use it? Here came the terror> Quick, quick, like
pictures in a book beaten open with a sense of hurry, came
back vividly, yet in fragments, all that she had gone
through in relation to Grandcourt -- the allurements, the
vacillations, the resolve to accede, the final repulsion; the
incisive face of that darkeyed lady with the lovely boy; her
own pledge (was it a pledge not to marry him?) -- the new
disbelief in the worth of men and things for which that
scene of disclosure had become a symbol. That unalterable
experience made a vision at which in the first agitated
moment, before tempering reflections could suggest themselves,
her native terror shrank.
  Where was the good of choice coming again? What did
she wish? Anything different? No] and yet in the dark
seedgrowths of consciousness a new wish was forming
itself -- "I wish I had never known it]" Something, anything
she wished for that would have saved her from the dread
to let Grandcourt come.
  It was not long while -- yet it seemed long to Mrs Davilow,
before she thought it well to say gemtly --
  "It will be necessary for you to write, dear. Or shall I
write an answer for you -- which you will dictate?"
  "No, mamma," said Gwendolen, drawing a deep breath.
"But please lay me out the pen and paper."
  That was gaining time. Was she to decline Grandcourt's
visit -- close the shutters -- not even look out on what would
happen? -- though with the assurance that she should
remain just where she was? The young activity within her
made a warm current through her terror and stirred
towards something that would be an event -- towards an
opportunity in which she could look and speak with the
former effectiveness. The interest of the morrow was no
longer at a deadlock.
  "There is really no reason on earth why you should be so

*X338
alarmed at the man's waiting a few minutes, mamma," said
Gwendolen, remonstrantly, as Mrs Davilow, having prepared
the writing material, looked towards her expectantly.
"Servants expect nothing else than to wait. It is not to
be supposed that I must write on the instant."
  "No, dear," said Mrs Davilow, in the tone of one corrected,
turning to sit down and take up a bit of work that lay
at hand; "he can wait another quarter of an hour, if you like."
  It was very simple speech and action on her part, but it
was what might have been subtly calculated. Gwendolen
felt a contradictory desire to be hastened: hurry would
save her from deliberate choice.
  "I did not mean him to wait long enough for that
needlework to be finished,"  she said, lifting her hands to
stroke the backward curves of her hair, while she rose from
her seat and stood still.
  "But if you don't feel able to decide?" said Mrs Davilow,
sympathisingly.
  "I ˛must˛ decide," said Gwendolen, walking to the writing-
table and seating herself. All the while there was a busy
undercurrent in her, like the thought of a man who keeps
up a dialogue while he is considering how he can slip away.
Why should she not let him come? It bound her to
nothing. He had been in Leubronn after her: of course he
meant a direct unmistakable renewal of the suit which
before had been only implied. What then? She could reject
him. Why was she to deny herself the freedom of doing
this -- which she would like to do?
  "if Mr Grandcourt has only just returned from Leubronn,"
said Mrs Davilow, observing that Gwendolen
leaned back in her chair after taking the pen in her hand --
"I wonder whether he had heard of our misfortunes."
  "That could make no difference to a man in his position,"
said Gwendolen, rather contemptuously.
  "it would, to some men," said Mrs Davilow. "They would
not like to take a wife from a family in a state of beggary
almost, as we are. Here we are at Offendene with a great shell
over us as usual. But just imagine his finding us at
Sawyer's Cottage. Most men are afraid of being bored or

*X339

taxed by a wife's family. If Mr Grandcourt did know, I
think it is a strong proof of his attachment to you."
  Mrs Davilow spoke with unusual emphasis: it is the
first time she had ventured to say anything about Grandcourt
which would necessarily seem intended as an argument
in favour of him, her habitual impression being that
such arguments would certainly be useless and might be
worse. The effect of her words now was stronger than she could
imagine: they raised a new set of possibilities in
Gwendolen's mind -- a vision of what Grandcourt might do
for her mother if she, Gwendolen, did -- what she was not
going to do. She was so moved by a new rush of ideas, that
like one conscious of being urgently called away, she felt
that the immediate task must be hastened: the letter must
be written, alse it might be endlessly deferred. After all, she
acted in a hurry as she had wished to do. To act in a hurry
was to have a reason for keeping away from an absolute
decision, and to leave open as many issues as possible.
  She wrote: "Miss Harleth presents her compliments to
Mr Grandcourt. She will be at home after two o' clock
tomorrow."
  Before addressing the note she said, "Pray ring the bell,
mamma, if there is any one to answer it." She really did not
know who did the work of the house.
  It was not till after the letter had been taken away and
Gwendolen had risen again, stretching out one arm and
then resting it on her head, with a long moan which had a
sound of relief in it, that Mrs Davilow ventured to ask --
  "What did you say, Gwen?"
  "I said that I should be at ahome," answered Gwendolen,
rather loftily. Then, after a pause, "You must not expect,
because Mr Grandcourt is coming, that anything is going
to happen, mamma.
  I don't allow myself to expect anything, dear. I desire
you to follow your own feeling. You have never told me
what that was."
  "What is the use of telling?" said Gwendolen, hearing a
reproach in that true statement. "When I have  anything
pleasant to tell, you may be sure I will tell you."
*X340

  "But Mr Grandcourt will consider that you have already
accepted him, in allowing him to come. His note tells you
plainly enough that he is coming to make you an offer."
  "Very well; and I wish to have the pleasure of refusing
him."
  Mrs Davilow looked up in wonderment, but Gwendolen
implied her wish not to be questioned further by saying --
  "Put down that detestable needlework, and let us walk in
the avenue. I am stifled."

C
27

           Desire had trimmed the sails, and Circumstance
           Brings but breeze to fill them.

While Grandcourt on his beautiful black Yarico, the
groom behind him on Criterion, was taking the pleasant
ride from Diplow to Offendene, Gwendolen was seated
before the mirror while her mother gathered up the
lengthy mass of lightbrown hair which she had been
carefully brushing.
*X341
"Then that will be because I refuse it beforehand," said
Gwendolen. "It comes to the same thing."
  There was a proud little toss of her head as she said this;
and when she walked downstairs in her long black robes,
there was just that firm poise of head and elasticity of form
which had lately been missing, as in a parched plant. Her
mother thought, "She is quite herself again. It must be
pleasure in his coming. Can her mind be really made up
against him?"
  Gwendolen would have been rather angry if that
thought had been uttered; perhaps all the more because
through the last twenty hours, with a brief interruption of
sleep, she had been so occupied with perpetually alternating
images and arguments for and against the possibility of
her marrying Grandcourt, that the conclusion which she
had determined on beforehand ceased to have any hold on
her consciousness: the alternate dip of counterbalancing
thoughts begotten of counterbalancing desires had brought
her into a state in which no conclusion could look fixed to
her. She would have expressed her resolve as before; but it
was a form out of which the blood had been sucked -- no
more a part of quivering life than the "God's will be done"
of one who is eagerly watching chances. She did not mean
to accept Grandcourt; from the first moment of receiving
his letter she had meant to refuse him; still, that could not
hinder her imagination from filling out her knowledge in
various ways, some of which seemed to change the aspect
of what she knew. By dint of looking at a dubious object
with a constructive imagination, one can give it twenty
different shapes. Her indistinct grounds of hesitation before
the interview at the Whispering Stones, at present counted
for nothing; they were all merged in the final repulsion. If
it had not been for that day in Cardell Chase, she said to
herself now, there would have been no obstacle to her
marrying Grandcourt. On that day and after it, she had not
reasoned and balanced: she had acted with a force of
impulse against which all questioning was no more than a

*X342
voice against a torrent. The impulse had come -- not only
from her maidenly pride and jealousy, not only from the
shock of another woman's calamity thrust close on her
vision, but -- from her dread of wrong-doing, which was
vague, it is true, and aloof from the daily details of her life,
but not the less strong. Whatever was accepted as consistent
with being a lady she had no scruple about; but from
the dim region of what was called disgraceful, wrong,
guilty, she shrank with mingled pride and terror; and even
apart from shame, her feeling would have made her place
any deliberate injury of another in the region of guilt.
  But now -- did she know exactly what was the state of the
case with regard to Mrs Glasher and her children? She had
given a sort of promise -- had said, "I will not interfere with
your wishes." But would another woman who married
Grandcourt be in fact the decisive obstacle to her wishes, or
be doing her and her boy any real injusry? Might it not be
just as well, nay better, that Grandcourt should marry? For
what could not a woman do when she was married, if
she knew how to assert herself? Here all was constructive
imagination. Gwendolen had about as accurate a conception
of marriage -- that is to say, of the mutual influences,
demands, duties of man and woman in the state of matrimony --
as she had of magnetic currents and the law of
storms.
  "Mamma managed badly," was her way of summing up
what she had seen of her mother's experience: she herself
would manage quite differently. And the trials of matrimony
were the last theme into which Mrs Davilow could
choose to enter fully with this daughter.
  "I wonder what mamma and my uncle would say if they
knew about Mrs Glasher]" thought Gwendolen, in her inward
debating; not that she could imagine herself telling
them, even if she had not felt bound to silence. "I wonder
what anybody would say; or waht they would say to Mr
Grandcourt's marrying some one else and having other children]"
To consider what "anybody" would say, was to be
released from the difficulty of judging where everything
was obscure to her when feeling had ceased to be decisive.

*X343
She had only to collect her memories, which proved to her
that "anybody" regarded illegitimate children as more rightfully
to be looked shy on and deprived of social advantages
than illegitimate fathers. The verdict of "anybody" seemed
to be that she had no reason to concern herself greatly on
behalf of Mrs Glasher and her children.
  But there was another way in which they had caused her
concern. What others might think, could not do away with
a feeling which in the first instance would hardly be too
strongly described as indignation and loathing that she
should have been expected to unite herself with an outworn
life, full of backward secrets which must have been
more keenly felt than any association with ˛her˛. True, the
question of love on her own part had occupied her scrcely
at all in relation to Grnadcourt. The desirability of marraige
for her had always seemed due to other feelings than
love; and to be enamoured was the part of the man, on
whom the advances depended. Gwendolen had found no
objection to Grandcourt's way of being enamoured before
she had had that glimpse of his past, which she resented as
if it had been a deliberate offence against her. His advances
to ˛her˛ were deliberate, and she felt a retrospective disgust
for them. Perhaps other men's lives were of the same kind
-- full of secrets which made the ignorant suppositions of
the woman they wanted to marry a farce at which they
were laughing in their sleeves.
  These feelings of disgust and indigantion had sunk deep;
and though other troublous experience in the last weeks had
dulled them from passion into remembrance, it was chiefly
their reverberating activity which kept her firm to the
understanding with herself, that she was not going to
accept Grandcourt. She had never meant to form a new
determination; she had only been considering what might
be thought or said. If anything could have induced her to
change, it would have been the prospect of making all
things easy for "poor mamma:" that, she admitted, was a
temptation. But no] she was going to refuse him. Meanwhile,
the thought that he was coming to be refused was
inspiriting: she had the white reins in her hands again;

*X344
there was a new current in her frame, reviving her from
the beaten-down consciousness in which she had been left
by the interview with Klesmer. She was not now going to
crave an opinion of her capabilities; she was going to
exercise her power.
  Was this what made her heart palpitate annoyingly
when she heard the horse's footsteps on the gravel? -- when
Miss Merry, who opened the door to Grandcourt, came to
tell her that he was in the drawing-room? The hours of
preparation and the triumph of the situation were apparently
of no use: she might as well have seen Grandcourt
coming suddenly on her in the midst of her despondency.
While walking into the drawing-room she had to concentrate
all her energy in that self-control which made her
appear gravely gracious as she gave her hand to him, and
answered his hope that she was quite well in a voice as low
and languid as his own. A moment afterwards, when they
were both of them seated on two of the wreath-painted
chairs -- Gwendolen upright with downcast eyelids, Grandcourt
about two yards distant, leaning one arm over the
back of his chair and looking at her, while he held his hat
in his left hand -- anyone seeing them as a picture would
have concluded that they were in some stage of love-making
suspense. And certainly the love-making had begun:
she already felt herself being wooed by this silent
man seated at an agreeable distance, with the subtlest
atmosphere of atta of roses and an attention bent wholly
on her. And he also considered himself to be wooing: he
was not a man to suppose that his presence carried no
consequences; and he was exactly the man to feel the
utmost piquancy in a girl whom he had not found quite
calculable.
  "I was disappointed not to find you at Leubronn," he
began, his usual broken drawl having just a shade of amorous
langour in it. "The place was intolerable without you. A
mere kennel of a place. Don't you think so?"
  "I can't judge what it would be without myself," said
Gwendolen, turning her eyes on him , with some recovered
sense of misfhief. "˛With˛ muself I liked it well enough to

*X345
have stayed longer, if I could. But I was obliged to come
home on account of family troubles."
  "It was very cruel of you to go to Leubronn," said Grandcourt,
taking no notice of the troubles, on which Gwendolen --
she hardly kenw why -- wished that there should be
a clear understanding at once. "You must have known
it would spoil everything: you knew you were the heart
and sould of everything that went on. Are you quite reckless
about me?"
  It was impossible to say "yes" in a tone that would be
taken seriously; equally impossible to say "no"; but what
else could she say? In her difficulty , she turned down her
eyelids again and blushed over face and neck. Grandcourt
saw her in anew phase, and believed that she was showing
her inclination. But he was determined that she should show
it more decidedly.
  "Perhaps there is some deeper interest? Some attraction --
some engagement -- which it would have been only fair to
make me aware of? Is there any man who stands between
us?"
  Inwardly the answer framed itself, "No; but there is a
woman." Yet how could she utter this? Even if she had not
promised that woman to be silent, it would have been
impossible for her to enter on the subject with Grandcourt.
But how could she arrest this wooing be beginning to make
a formal speech -- "I perceive your intention -- it is most
flattering, &c"? A fish honestly invited to come and be
eaten has a clear course in declining, but how if it finds
itself swimming against a net? And apart from the network,
would she have dared at once to say anything decisive?
Gwendolen had not time to be clear on that point. As it
was, she felt compelled to silence, and after a pause, Grandcourt
said --
  "Am I to understand that some one else is preferred?"
  Gwendolen, now impatient of her own embarrassment,
determined to rush at the difficulty and free herself. She
raised her eyes again and said with something of her former
clearness and defiance, "No" -- wishing him to understand,
"What then? I may not be ready to take ˛you˛." There

*X346
was nothing that Grandcourt could not understand which
he perceived likely to affect his ˛amour˛ ˛propre˛.
  "The laat thing I would do, is to importune you. I should
not hope to win you be making myself a bore. If there
no hope for me, I would ask you to tell me so at once, that
I might just ride away to -- no matter where."
  Almost to her own astonishment, Gwendolen felt a sudden
alarm at the image of Grandcourt finally riding away.
What would be left her then? Nothing but the former
dreariness. She liked him to be there. She snatched at the
subject that would defer any decisive answer.
  "I fear you are not aware of what has happened to us. I
have lately had to think so much of my mamma's troubles,
that other subjects have been quite thrown into the back-ground.
She has lost all her fortune, and we are going to
leave this place. I must ask you to excuse my seeming
preoccupied."
  In eluding a direct appeal Gwendolen recovered some of
her self-possession. She spoke with dignity and looked
straight at Grandcourt, whose long, narrow, impenetrable
eyes met hers, and mysteriously arrested them: mysteriously,
for the subtly-varied drama between man and
woman is often such as can hardly be rendered in words
put together like dominoes, according to obvious fixed
marks. The word of all work Love will no more express the
myraid modes of mutual attraction, than the word
Thought can inform you what is passing through you
neighbour's mind. It would be hard to tell on which side --
Gwendolen's or Grandcourt's -- the influence was more
mixed. At that moment his strongest wish was to be completely
master of this creature -- this piquant combination
of maidenliness and mischief: that she knew things which
had made her start away from him, spurred him to
triumph over that repugnance; and he was believing that he
should triumph. And she -- ah, pieous equality in the need
to dominate] -- she was overcome like the thirsty one who is
drawn towards the seeming water in the desert, overcome by
the suffused sense that here in this man's homage to her
lay the rescue from helpless subjection to an oppressive lot.

*X347
  All the while they were looking at each other; and
Grandcourt said, slowly and languidly, as if it were of no
importance, other things having been settled --
  "You will tell me now, I hope, that rs Davilow's loss of
fortune will not trouble you further. You will trust me to
prevent it from weighing upon her. You will give me the
claim to provide against that."
  The little pauses and refined drawlings with which this
speech was uttered, gave time for Gwendolen to go throught
the dream of a life. As the words penetrated her, they had
the effect of a draught of wine, which suddenly makes all
things easier, desirable things not so wrong, and people in
general less disagreeable. She had a momentary phantasmal
love for this man who chose his words so well, and who
was a mere incarnation of delicate homage. Regpugnance,
dread. scruples,-- these were dim as remembered pains,
while she was already tasting relief under the immediate
pain of hopelessness. She imagined herself already springing
to her mother, and being playful again. Yet when
Grandcourt had ceased to speak, there was an instant in
which she was conscious of being at the turning of the ways.
  "You are very generous," she said, not moving her eyes,
and speaking with a gentle intonation.
  "You accept what will make such things a matter fof
course?" said Grandcourt, without any new eagerness. "You
consent to become my wife?"
  This time Gwendolen remained quite pale. Something
made her rise from her seat in spite of herself and walk to
a little distance. Then she turned and with her hands
folded before her stood in silence.
  Grandcourt immediately rose too, resting his hat on the
chair, but still keeping hold of it. The evident hesitation of
this destitute girl to take his splendid offer stung him into a
keeness of interest such as he had not know for years.
None the less because he attributed her hesitation entirely
to her knowledge about Mrs Glasher. In that attitude of
preparation, he said --
  "Do you command me to go?" No familiar spirit could
have suggested to him more effective words.

*X348
  "No," said Gwendolen. She could not let him go: that
negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all,
only drifted towards the tremendous decision: -- but drifting
depends on something besides the currents, when the
sails have been set beforehand.
  "You accept my devotion?" said Grandcourt, holding his
hat by his side and looking straight into her eyes, without
other movement. Their eyes meeting in that way seemed to
allow any length of pause; but wait as long as she would,
how could she contradict herself? What had she detained
him for? He had shut out any explanation.
  "Yes," came as gravely from Gwendolen's lips as if she
had been answering to her name in a court of justice. He
received it gravely, and they still looked at each other in
the same attitude. Was there ever before such a way of
accepting the bliss-giving "Yes"? Grandcourt liked better to
be at that distance from her, and to feel under a ceremony
imposed by an indefinable prob^chibition that breated from
Gwendolen's bearing.
  But he did at length lay down his hat and advance to
take her hand, just pressing his lips upon it and letting it
go again. She thought his behavious perfect, and gained a
sense of freedom which made her almost ready to be mischievous.
Her "Yes" entailed so little at this moment, that
there was nothing to screen the reversal of her gloomy
prospects: her vision was filled by her own release from the
Momperts, and her mother's release from Sawyer's Cottage.
With a happy curl of the lips, she said --
  "Will you not see mamma? I will fetch her."
  "Let us wait a little," said Grandcourt, in his favourtie
attitude, having his left fore-finger and thumb in his waistcoat-pocket,
and with his right caressing his whisker, while
he stood near Gwendolen and looked at her -- not unlike a
gentleman who has a felicitous introduction at an evening
party.
  "Have you anything else to say to me?" said Gwendolen,
playfully.
  "Yes. 00 I know having things said to you is a great bore,"
said Grandcourt, rather sympathetically.

*X349
  "Not when they are things I like to hear."
  "Will it bother you to be asked how soon we can be
married?"
  "I think it will, to-day," said Gwendolen. putting up her
chin saucily.
  "No to-day, then, but to-morrow. Think of it before I
come to-morrow. In a fortnight -- or three weeks -- as soon as
possible."
  "Ah, you think you will be tired of my company," said
Gwendolen. "I notice when people are married the husband
is not so much with his wife as when they were engaged.
But perhaps I shall like that better too."
  She laughed charmingly.
  "You shall have whatever you like," said Grandcourt.
  "And nothing that I don't like? -- please say that; because
I think I dislike what I don't like more than I like what I
like," said Gwendolen, finding herself in the woman's paradise
where all her nonsense is adorable.
  Grandcourt paused: these were subtilties in which he
had much experience of his own. "I don't know -- this is
such a brute of a worl, things are always turning up that
one doesn't like. I can't always hinder your being bored. If
you like to hunt Criterion, I can't hinder his coming down
by some chance or other."
  "Ah, my friend Criterion, how is he?"
  "He is outside: I made the groom ride him, that you
might see him. He had the side-saddle on for an hour or
two yesterday. Come to the window and look at him."
  They could see the two horses being taken slowly round
the sweep, and the beautiful creatures, in their fine grooming,
sent a thrill of exultation throught Gwendolen. They
were the symbols of command and luxury, in delightlful
contrast with the ugliness of poverty and jumiliation at
which she had lately been looking close.
  "Will you ride Criterion to-morrow?" said Grandcourt. "If
you will, everything shall be arranged."
  "I should like it of all things," said Gwendolen. "I want to
lose myself in a gallop again. But now I must go and fetch
mamma."

*X350
  "Take my arm to the door, then," said Grandcourt, and
she accepted. Their faces were very near each other, being
almost on a level, and he was looking at her. She thought
his manners as a lover more agreeable than any she had
seen described. She had no alarm lest he meant to kiss her,
and was so much at her ease, that she suddenly paused in
the middle of the room and said, half archly, half earnestly --
  "Oh, while I think of it -- there is something I dislike that
you can save me from. I do ˛not˛ like Mr Lush's company."
  "You shall not have it. I'll get rid of him."
  "You are not fond of him yourself?"
  "Not in the least. I let him hang on me because he has
always been a poor devil," said Grandcourt, in an ˛adagio˛ of
utter indifference. "They got him to travel with me when I
was a lad. He was always that coarse-haired kind of brute --
a sort of cross between a hog and a ˛dillettante."˛
  Gwendolen laughed. All that seemed kind and natural
enough: Grandcourt's fastidiousness enhanced the kindness.
And when they reached the door, his way of opening
it for her was the perfection of easy homage. Really, she
thought, he was likely to be the least disagreeable of
husabnds.
  Mrs Davilow was waiting anxiously in her bedroom
when Gwendolen entered, stepped towards her quickly, and
kissing her on both cheeks said in a low tone, "Come down,
mamma, and see Mr Grandcourt. I am engaged to him."
  "My darling child]" said Mrs Davilow, with a surprise
that was rather solemn than glad.
  "Yes," said Gwendolen, in the same tone, and with a
quickness which implies that it was needless to ask questions.
"Everything is settled. You are not going to Sawyer's
Cottage, I am not going to be inspected by Mrs Mompert,
and everything is to be as I like. So come down with me
immediately."

*X351
*BOOK FOUR
GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE

*X353
*C28
˛"Il est plus aise< de connoitre l'homme en ge<ne<ral que do 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; indded, 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 behavious 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

*X354
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
honour and glory of Gwnedolen, 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 ther are two
livings, one a rectory, in the gift of the Grandcourts. There
may be some burthens 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

*X355
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 the 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 sleept 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 apalled 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
*X356
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 powers. 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 were 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.
  x  "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 little enamelled casket, and inside was a splendid

*X357
diamond ring with a letter which contained a folded bit of
coloured paper and these words:-

  "Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve in sign of our betrothal.
I enclose a cheque 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 cheque was for five hundred pounds, and Gwendolen
turned it towards her mother, with the letter.
  "How very kind and delicate1" said Mrs Davilow, with
much feeling. "Bul 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, deprecatingly.
  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 for her mamma's sake -- that she was drawn
towards the marriage in ways against which stronger
reasons than her mother's renunciation were yet not strong
enough to hinder her. She had walked 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 whic 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 ideads might be
running in her head.

*X358
  "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 towards 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 had 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."

*X359
  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 he 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 Grandcourt7s 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 fressed 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

*X360
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 downstairs.
"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. Sundat 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]"

*X361
  "Let us be married in ten days, then," said Grandcourt,
"and we shall not be bored about the stables."
  "What do woman 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 drame; and
Gwendolen, left at ease, found her spirits rising continually
as she played at reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had seen
more of her in the 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 exhiliration that disposed her to think well of
hastening the marriage which would make her life all of a
piece 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 and 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
injusry, 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

*X362
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 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 background 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."

*X363
  "What] I am to cut and run?" said Lush, prepared to be
good-tempered on the occasion.
  "Something of that kind."
  "The bride obejcts 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, shince she is tohe 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 for me 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 samller
drawing-room, where, with various new publications on the
table, of the kind a gentleman may like to have at hand
without touching, he employed himself (as a philospher

*X364
might have done) in sitting meditatively on a sofa and
abstaining from literature -- political, comic, cynical, or
romantic. In 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
even of a shadowy fulfilment. 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 blond, 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 round-about
course even a gentleman may make of himself a
chancy personage, raising an uncertainty as to what he may
do next, which 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 the central impulse came for the image of Gwendolen;
but the thoughts it stirred would be perfectly
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
*X365
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 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
favoured could be quite indifferent to his personal influence;
and it seemed to him not unlikely that by-and-by
Gwendolen might be more enamoured 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 everyone 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 worde for him that her mother has
lately lost all her fortune, and he will have to find supplies.

*X366
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 it, 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
neighbourhood, 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 humour than having
the lawyers thrust their paper under his nose uninvited.
  "Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has out 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 fited 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 rhough not obtrusive
difference in their notions and tastes. Perhaps it was all the
*X367
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
unapproingly of himself; but he looked at men and
society from aliberal-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, if 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 detailsm while he had a certain inflexibility of
judgment, an 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 suefulness 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, Louisa," he

*X368
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 ply 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 humour, and to let him see plenty of
this place, that he may think the less of Diplow. I don't
know let ehether I shall get him to meet me in this
matter. And if Dan were to go over on a visit there, he

*X369
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 Gandcourt, 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 eill 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 drama 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 repuslion. 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.

*X370
But in the movement which had led him to redeem
Gwendolen's necklace for her, and which was at work in
him still, there was something beyond his habitual compassionate
fervour -- 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
foreshadow that capability of reticence in Deronda that his
imagination was much occupied with two women, to
neither of whom he would 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.
  He wrote without delay to announce the 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 cousing 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.

*X371
*C29
"NOW my cousins are at Diplow," said Grandcourt, "will you
go there? -- to-morrow? The carriage shall come for Mrs
Davilow. You can tell me what you would like done in the
rooms. Things must be put in decent order while we are
away at Ryelands. And to-morrow is the only day."
  He was sitting sideways on a sofa in the drawing-room at
Offendene, one hand and elbow resting on the back, and
the other hand thrust between his crossed knews -- in the
attitude of a man who is much interested in watching the
person next to him. Gwendolen, who had always disliked
needleworfm had taken to it with apparent seal since her
engagement, and now held a piece of white embroidery
which on examination would have shown many false
stitches. During the last eight or nine days their hours had
been chiefly spent on horseback, but some margin had
always been left for this more difficult sort of companionship,
which, however, Gwendolen had not found disagreeable.
She was very well satisfied with Grandcourt. His
answers to her lively questions about what he had seen and
done in his life, bore drawling very well. From the first she
had noticed that he knew what to say; and she was constantly
feeling not only that he had nothing of the fool
in his composition, but that by some subtle means he
communicated to her the impression that all the folly
lay with other people, who did what he did not care to
do. A man who seems to have been able to command the
best, has a sovereign power of depreciation. The Grandcourt's
behaviour as a lover had lardly at all passed the
limit of an amorous homage which was inobtrusive as a
wafted odour of roses, and spent all its effect in a gratified
vanity. One day, indeed, he had kissed not her cheek but
her neck a little below her ear; and Gwendolen, taken by
surprise, had started up with a marked agitation which
made him rise too and say, "I beg your pardon -- did I
annoy you?" "Ohm, it was nothing," said Gwendolen, rather
afraid of herself, "only I cannot bear -- to be kissed under
my ear." She sat down again with a little playful laugh, but
all the while she felt her heart beating with a vague fear:
she was no longer at liberty to folout him as she had flouted
poor rex. Her agitation seemed not uncomplimentary, and
he had been contented not to transgress again.
  To-day a slight rain hindered riding; but to compensate, a
package had come from London, and Mrs Davilow had
just left the room after bringing in for admiration the
beautiful things (of Grandcourt's ordering) which lay scattered about
on the tables. Gwendolen was just then enjoying
the scenery of her life. She let her hands fall on her lap
and said with a pretty air of perversity --
  "Why is to-morrow the only day?"
  "Because the next day is the first with the hounds," said
Grandcourt.
  "And after that?"
  "After that I must go away for a couple of days -- it's a
bore -- but I shall go one day and come back the next."
Grandcourt noticed a change in her face, and releasing his
hand from under his knees, he laid it on hers and said,
"You object to my going away?"
  "It is no use objecting," said Gwendolen, coldly. She was
resisting to the utmost her temptation to tell him that she
suspected to whom he was going -- and the temptation to
make a clean breast, speaking without restraint.
  "Yes it is," said Grandcourt, enfolding her hand. "I will
put off going. And I will travel at night, so as only to be
away one day." He thought that he knew the reason of
what he inwardly called this bit of temper, and she was
particularly fascinating to him at this moment.
  "Then don't put off going, but travel at night," said
Gwendolen, feeling that she could command him, and finding
in this peremptoriness a small outlet for her irritation.
  "Then you will go to Diplow to-morrow?"
  "Oh yes, if you wish it," said Gwendolen, in a high tone of

*X373
careless assent. Her concentration in other feelings had
really hindered her from taking notice that her hand was
being held.
  "How you treat us poor devils of men]" said Grandcourt,
lowering his tone. "We are always getting the worst of it."
  "˛Are˛ you?" said Gwendolen, in a tone of inquiry, looking
at him more naiµvely than usual. She longed to believe this
commonplace ˛badinage˛ as the serious truth about her
lover: in that case, she too was justified. If she knew
everything. Mrs Glasher would appear more blamable than
Grandcourt. "˛Are˛ you always getting the worst?"
  "Yes, Are you as kind to me as I am to you?" said
Grandcourt, looking into her eyes with his narrow gaze.
  Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was conscious of
having received so much, that her sense of command was
checked, and sank away in the perception that, look around
her as she might, she could not turn back: it was as if she
had consented to mount a chariot where another held the
reins; and it was not in her nature to leap out in the eyes of
the world. She had not consented in ignorance, and all she
could say now would be a confession that she had not been
ignorant. Her right to explanation was gone. All she had to
do now was to adjust herself, so that the spikes of that
unwilling penance which conscience imposed should not
gall her. With a sort of mental shiver, she resolutely
changed her mental attitude. There had been a little pause,
during which she had not turned away her eyes; and with a
sudden break into a smile, she said --
  "If I were as kind to you as you are to me, that would
spoil your generosity: it would no longer be as great as it
could be -- and it is that now."
  "Then I am not to ask for one kiss," said Grandcourt,
contented to pay a large price for this new kind of lovemaking,
which introduced marriage by the finest contrast.
  "Not one]" said Gwendolen, getting saucy, and nodding
at him defiantly.
  He lifted her little left hand to his lips, and then released
it respectfully. Clearly it was faint praise to say of him that
he was not disgusting: he was almost charming; and she

*X374
felt at this moment that it was not likely she could ever
have loved another man better than this one. His reticence
gave her some inexplicable, delightful consciouness.
  "Apropos," she said, taking up her work again, "is there
any one besides Captain and Mrs Torrington at Diplow? --
or do you leave them ˛te´te-a>-te´te˛? I suppose he converses in
cigars, and she answers with her chignon."
  "She had a sister with her," said Grandcourt, with his
shadow of a smile, "And there are two men besides -- one of
them you know, I believe."
  "Ah, then, I have a poor opinion of him," said Gwendolen,
shaking her head.
  "You saw him at Leubronn @c-- young Deronda -- a young
fellow with the Mallingers."
  Gwendolen felt as if her heart were making a sudden
gambol, and her fingers, which tried to keep a firm hold on
her work, got cold.
  "I never spoke to him," she said, dreading any discernible
change in herself. "Is he not disagreeable?"
  "No, not particularly," said Grandcourt, in his most languid
way. "He thinks a little too much of himself. I thought
he had been introduced to you."
  "No. Some one told me his name the evening before I
came away: that was all. What is he?"
  "A sort of word of Sir Hugo Mallinger's. Nothing of any
consequence."
  "Oh, poor creature] How very unpleasant for him]" said
Gwendolen, speaking from the lip, and not meaning any
sarcasm. "I wonder if it had left off raining]" she added,
rising and going to look out of the window.
  Happily it did not rain the next day, and Gwendolen
rode to Diplow on Criterion as she had done on that
former day when she returned with her mother in the
carriage. She always felt the more daring for being in her
riding-dress; besides having the agreeab;e belief that she
looked as well as possible in it -- a sustaining consciousness
in any meeting which seems formidable. Her anger towards
Deronda had changed into a superstitious fread -- due,
perhaps, to the coercion he had exercised over her thought

*X375
-- lest that first interference of his in her life might foreshadow
some future influence. It is of such stuff that
superstitions are commonly made: an intense feeling about
ourselves which makes the evening star shine at us with a
threat, and the blessing of a beggar encourage us. And
superstitions carry consequences which often verify their
hope or their foreboding.
  The time before luncheon was taken up for Gwendolen
by going over the rooms with Mrs Torrington and Mr
Davilow; and she thought it likely that if she saw Deronda,
there would hardly be need for more than a bow between
them. She meant to notice him as little as possible.
  And after all she found herself under an inward compulsion
too strong for he pride. From the first moment of
their being in the room together, she seemed to herself
to be doing nothing but notice him; everything else was automatic
performance of an hibitual part.
  When he took his place at lunch, Grandcourt had said,
"Deronda, Miss Marleth tells me you were not introduced to
her at Leubronn?"
  "Miss Harleth hardly remembers me, I imagine," said
Deronda., looking at her quite simply, as they bowed. "She
was intensely occupied when I saw her."
  Now, did he suppose that she had not suspected him of
being the person who redeemed her mechlace?
  "On the contrary. I remeber you very well," said Gwendolen
feeling rather nervous, but governing herself and
looking at him in return with new examination. "You did
not approve of my playing at roulette."
  "How did you come to that conclusion?" said Deronda,
gravely.
  "Oh, you cast an evil eye on my play," said Gwendolen,
with a turn of her head and a smile. "I began to lose as soon
as you came to look on. I had always been winning till then."
  "Roulette in such a kennel as Leubronn is a horrid bore,"
said Grandcourt.
  "˛I˛ found it a bore when I began to lose," said Gwendolen.
Her face was turned toward Grandcourt as she smiled and
spoke, but she gave a sidelong glance at Deronda, and

*X376
say his eyes fixed on her with a look so gravely
pentetrating that it had a keener edge for her than his ironical
smile at he losses -- a keener edge than Klesner's judgment.
She wheeled her neck round ad if she wanted to
listen to what was being said by the rest, while she was only
thinking of Deronda. His face had that disturbing kind of
form and expression which threatens to affect opinion -- as
if one's standard were somehow wrong. (Who has not seen
men with faces of this corrective power till they frustrated
to by speech or action?) His voice, heardnow for the first
time, was to Grandcourt's toneless drawl, which had been
in her ears every day, as the deep notes of a violoncello to
the brojen discourse of poultry and other lazy gentry in
the afternoon sunshine. Grandcourt, she inwardly conjectured,
was perhaps right in saying that Deronda thought
too much of himself: -- a favourite way of explaining a
superiority that humiliates. However, the talk turned on
the rinderpest and Jamaica, and no more was said about
roulette. Grandcourt held that the Jamaican negro was a
beastly sort of baptist Caliban: Deronda said he had always
felt a little with Caliban, who naturally had his own point
of view and could sing a good song; Mrs Davilow observed
that her father had an estate in Barbadoes, but that she
herself had never been in the West Indies; Mrs Torrington
was sure she should never sleep in her bed if she lived
among blacks; her husband corrected her by saying that
the blacks would be manageable enough if it were not for
the half-breeds; and Deronda remarked that the whites had
to thank themselves for the halfreeds.
  While this polite pea$hooting was going on, Gwendolen
trifled with her jelly, and looked at every speaker in turn
that she might feel at ease in looking at Deronda.
  "I wonder what he thinks of me really? He must have
felt interested in me, else he would not have sent me my
necklace. I wonder what he things of my marriage? What
notions has he to make him so grave about things? Why is
he come to Diplow?"
  These questions ran in her mind as the voice of an
uneasy longing to be judged by Deronda with unmixed

*X377
admiration -- a longing which had had its seed in her first
resentment at his critical glance. Why did she care so much
about the opinion of this man who was "nothing of any
consequence"? She had not time to find the reason -- she was
too much enaged in caring. In the drawing-room, when
something had called Grandcourt away, she went quite
unpremeditatedly upt to Deronda, who was standing
at ateble apart, turning over some prints, and said to him --
  "Shall you hunt to-morrow, Mr Deronda?"
  "Yes, I believe so."
  "You don't object to hunting, then?"
  "I find excuses for it. It is a sin I am inclined to -- when I
can't get boating or cricketing."
  "Do you object to my hunting?" said Gwendolen, with a
saucy movement of the chin.
  "I have no right to object to anything you choose to do."
  "You thought you had a ringht to object to my gambling,"
persisted Gwendolen.
  "I was sorry for it. I am not aware that I told you of my
objection," said Deonda, with his usual directness of gaze --
a large-eyed gavity, innocent of any intention. His eyes
had a peculiarity which has drawn many men into trouble;
they were of a dark yet mild intensity, which seemed to
express a special interest in every one on whom he fixed
them, and might easily help to bring on him those claims
which ardently sympathetic people are often creating in the
minds of those who need help. In mendicant fashion, we
,ake the goodness of others a reason for exorbitant demands
on them. That sort of effect was penetrating Gwendolen.
  "You hindered me from gambling again," she answered.
But she had no sooner spoken than she blushed over face and
neck; and Deronda blushed too, conscious that in the little
affair of the necklace he had taken a questionable freedom.
  It was impossible to speak further; and she turned away
to a window, feeling that she had stupidly siad what she
had not meant to say, and yet being rather happy that she
had plunged into this mutual understanding. Deronda also
did not dislike it. Gwendolen seemed more decidedly attractive
than before; and certainly there had been changes

*X378
going on within her since that time at Leubronn: the
struggle of mind attending a conscious error had wakened
something like a new soul, whic had better, but alos
worse, possibilites than her former poise of crude selonfidence:
among the forces she had come to dread was
something within her that troubled satisfaction.

  That evening Mrs Davilow said, "Was it really so, or only
a joke of yours, about Mr Deronda's spoiling your play,
Gwen?"
  Her curiosity had been excited, and she could venture to
ask a question that did not concern Mr Grandcourt.
  "Oh, it merely happened that he was looking on when I
began to lose," said Gwendolen, carelessly. "I noticed him."
  "I don't wonder at that: he is a striking young man. He
puts me in mind of Italian paintings. One would guess, without
being toldm that there was foreign blood in his veins."
  "Is there?" said Gwendolen.
  "Mrs Torrington says so. I asked particularly who he
was, and she told me that his mother was some foreigner of
high rank."
  "His mother?" said Gwendolen, rather sharply, "Then who
was his father?"
  "Well -- every one says he is the son of Sir Hugo Mallinger,
who brought him up; though he passes for a ward.
She says, if Sir Hugo Mallinger could have done as he liked
with his estates, he wouldhave left them to this Mr
Deronda, since he has no legitimate son."
  Gwendolen was silent; but her mother observed so
marked an effect in her face that she was angry with
herself for having repeated Mrs Torrington's gossip. It
seemed, on reflection, unsuited to the ear of her daughter,
for whom Mrs Davilow disliked what is called knowledge
of the world; and indeed she wished that she herself had
not had any of it thrust upon her.
  An image which had immediately arisen in Gwendolen's
mind was that of the unknown mother -- no doubt a dark-eyed
woman -- probably sad. Hardly any face could be less
like Deronda's than that represented as Sir Hugo's in a

*X379
crayon portrait at Diplow. A dark-eyed beautiful woman,
no longer young, had had become "stuff o' the conscience" to
Gwendolen.
  That night when she had got into her little bed, and only
a dim light was burning, she said --
  "Mamma, have men generally children before they are
married?"
  "No, dear, no," said Mrs Davilow. "Why do you ask such a
question?" (But she began to think that she saw the why.)
  "If it were so, I ought to know," said Gwendolen, with
some indignation.
  "You are thinking of what I said about Mr Deronda and
Sir Hugo Mallinger. That is a very unusual case, dear."
  "Does Lady Mallinger know?"
  "She knows enough to satisfy her. That is quite clear,
because Mr Deronda has lived with them."
  "And people think no worse of him?"
  "Well, of course he is under some disadvantage: it is not
as if he were Lady Mallinger's son. He does not inherit the
property, and he is not of any consequence in the world.
But people are not obliged to know anything about his
birth; you see, he is very well received."
  "I wonder whether he knows about it; and whether he is
angry with his father?"
  "My dear child, why should you think of that?"
  "Why?" said Gwendolen, impetuously, sitting up in her
bed. "Haven't children reason to be angry with their
parents? How can they help their parents marrying or not
marrying?"
  But a consciousness rushed upon her, which made her
fall back again on her pillow. It was not only what she
would have felt months before -- that she might seem to be
reproaching her mother for that second marriage of hers;-
what she chiefly felt now was, that she had been led on to a
condemnation which seemed to make her own marriage a
forbidden thing.
  There was no further talk, and till sleep came over her,
Gwendolen lay struggling with the reasons against that
marriage -- reasons which pressed upon her newly now that

*X380
they were ex
expectedly mirrored in the story of a man
whose slight relations with her had, by some hidden
affinity, bitten themselves into the most permanent layers
of feling. It was characteristic that, with all her debating,
she was never troubled by the question whether the indefensibleness
of her marriage did not include the fact that
she had accepted Grandcourt solely as the man whom it was
convenient for her to marry not in the least as one to
whom she would be binding herself in duty. Gwendolen's
ideas were pitiably crude; but many grand difficulties of life
are apt to force themselves on us in our crudity. And to
judge wisely I suppose we must know how things appear to
the unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part
of the world's history.
  In the morning, there was a double excitement for her.
She was going to hunt, from which scrupples about propriety
had threatened to hinder her, until it was found that
Mrds Torrington was horse-woman enough to accompany
her: -- going to hunt for the first time since her escapade
with Rex; and she was going again to see Deronda, in
whom, since last night, her interest had so gathered that
she expected, as people do about revealed celebrities, to see
something in his appearance which she had missed before.
What was he going to be? What sort of life had he before
him -- he being nothing of any consequence? And with
only a little difference in events he might have been as
important as Grandcourt, nay -- her imagination inevitably
went in that direction -- might have held the very estates
which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would
probably some day see her mistress of the Abbey at Topping,
see her bearing the title which would have been his
own wife's. These obvious, futile thoughts of what might
have been, made a new epoch for Gwendolen. She, whose
unquestioning habit it had been to take the best that came
to her for less than her own claim, had now to see the
position which tempted her in a new light, as a hard, unfair
exclusion of others. What she had now heard about
Deronda seemed to her imagination to throw him into one group with
Mrs Glasher and her children; before whom

*X381
she felf herself in an attitude of apology -- she who had
hitherto been surrounded by a group that in her opion
had need to be apologetic to her. Perhaps Deronda himself
was thinking of these things. Could he know of Mrs
Glasher? If he knew that she knew, he would dispise her;
but her could have no such knowledge. Would he, without
that, dispise her for marrying Grandcourt? His possible
judgment of her actions was telling on her as importunately
as Klesmer's judgment of her powers; but she found
larger room for resistance to a disapproval of her marriage,
because it is easier to make our conduct seem justifiable to
ourselves tham ti make our ability strike others. "How can I
help it?" is not our favourite apology for incompetence. But
Gwendolen felt some strength in saying --
  "How can I help what other people have done? Things
would not come right if I were to turn round now and
declare that I would not marry Mr Grandcourt." And such
turning round was out of the question. The horses in the
chariot she had mounted were going at full speed.
  This mood of youthful, elated desperation had a tidal
recurrence. She could dare anything that lay before her
sooner than she could choose to go backward into humiliation;
and it was even soothing to think that there would
now be as much ill-doing in the one as in the other. But
the immediate delightful fact was the hunt, where she
would see Deronda, and where he would see her; for always
lurking ready to obtrude before other thoughts about him
was the impression that he was very much interested in
her. But to-day she was resolved not to repeat her folly
of yesterday, as if she were anxious to say anything to him.
Indeed, the hunt would be too absorbing.
  And so it was for a long while. Deronda was there, and
within her sight very often; but this only added to the
stimulus of a pleasure which Gwendolen had only once
before tasted, and which seemed likely always to give a
delight independent of any crosses, except such as took
away the chance of riding. No accident happened to throw
them together; the rum took them within convenient reach
of home, and in the agreeable sombreness of the grey

*X382
November afternoon, with a long stratum of yellow light
in the west, Gwendolen was returning with the company
from Diplow, who were attending her on the way to Offendene.
Now that the sense of glorious excitement was over
and gone, she was getting irritably disappointed that she
had had no opportunity of speaking to Deronda, whom she
would not see again, since he was to go away in a couple of
days. What was she going to say? That was not wuite
certain. She wanted to speak to him. Grandcourt was by
her side; Mrs Torrington, her husband, and another
gentleman in advance; and Deronda's horse she could hear
behind. The wish to speak to him and have him speaking
to her was becoming imperious; and there was no chance
of it unless she simply asserted her will and defied everything.
Where the order of things could give way to Miss
Gwendolen, it must be made to do so. They had lately
emerged from a wood of pines and beeches, where the
twlight stillness had a repressing effect, which increased
her impatience. The horse-hoofs again heard behind at
some little distance were a growing irritation. She reined in
her horse and looked behind her; Grandcourt, after a few
paces, also paused; but she, waving her whip and nodding
sideways with playful imperiousness, said, "Go on] I want
to speak to Mr Deronda."
  Grandcourt hesitated; but that he would have done after
any proposition. It was an awkward situation for him. No
gentleman, before marriage, could give the emphasis of
refusal to a command delivered in this playful way. He
rode on slowly, and she waited till Deronda came up. He
looked at her with tacit inquiry, and she said at once
letting her horse go alongside of his --
  "Mr Deronda, you must enlighten my ignorance. I want
to know why you thought it wrong for me to gamble. Is it
because I am a woman?"
  "Not altogether; but I regretted it the more because you
were a woman," said Deronda, with an irrepressible smile.
Apparently it must be understood between them now that
it was he who sent the necklace. "I think it would be better
for men not to gamble. It is a besotting kind of taste, likely

*X383
to turn into a disease. And, besides, there is smothing
revolting to me in raking a heap of money together, and
internally chuckling over it, when others are feeling the
loss of it. I should even call it base, if it were more than an
exceptional lapse. There are enough inevitable turns of
fortune which force us to see that our gain is another's
loss: -- that is one of the ugly aspects of life. One would
like to reduce it as much as one could, not get amusement
out of exaggerating it." Deronda's voice had gathered some
indignation while he was speaking.
  "But you do admit that we can't help things," said Gwendolen,
with a drop in her tone. The answer had not been
anything like what she had expected. "I mean that things
are so in spite of us; we can't always helpt it that our gain is
another's loss."
  "Clearly. Because of that, we should help it where we can."
  Gwendolen, biting her lip inside, paused a moment, and
then forcing herself to speak with an air of playfulness
again, said --
  "But why should you regret it more because I am a
woman?"
  "Perhaps because we need that you should be better than
we are."
  "But suppose ˛we˛ need that men should be better than we
are," said Gwendolen, with a little air of "check]"
  "That is rather a difficulty," said Deronda, smiling. "I
suppose I should have said, we each of us think it would be
better for the other to be good."
  "You see, I needed you to be better than I was -- and you
thought so," said Gwendolen, nodding and laughing, while
she put her horse forward and joined Grandcourt, who
made no observation.
  "Don't you want to know what I had to say to Mr
Deronda?" said Gwendolen, whose own pride required her
to account for her conduct.
  "A -- no," said Grandcourt, coldly.
  "Now that is the first impolite word you have spoken --
that you don't wish to hear what I had to say," said Gwendolen,
playing at a pout.

*X384
  "I wish to hear what you say to me -- not to other men,"
said Grandcourt.
  "Then you wish to hear this. I wanted to make him tell
me why he objected to my gambling, and he gave me a
little sermon."
  "Yes -- but excuse me the sermon." If Gwendolen imagined
that Grandcourt cared about her speaking to Deronda,
he wished her to understand that she was mistaken. But he
was not fond of being told to ride on. She saw he was
piqued, but did not mind. She had accomplished her object
of speaking again to Deronda before he raised his hat and
turned with the rest towards Diplow, while her lover
attended her to Offendene, where he was to bid farewell
before a whole day's absence in the unspecified journey.
Grandcourt had spoken truth in calling the journey a
bore: he was going by train to Gadsmere.

*C30

  No penitence and no confessional:
  No priest ordains it, yet they're forced to sit
  Amid deep ashes of their vanished years.

IMAGINE a rambling, patchy house, the best part built of
grey stone, and red-tiled, a round tower jutting at one of
the corners, the mellow darkness of its conical roof surmounted
by a weather-cock making an agreeable object
either amidst the gleams and greenth of summer or the
low-hanging clouds and snowy branches of winter: the
grounds shady with spreading trees: a great cedar flourishing
on one sie, backward some Scotch firs on a broken
bank were the roots hung naked, and beyond, a rookery:
on the other side a pool overhung with bushes, where
the water-fowl fluttered and screamed: all around, a vast
meadow which might be called a park, bordered by an old
plantation and guarded by stone lodges which looked like

*X385
little prisons. Outside the gate the country, once entirely
rural and lovely, now black with coal-mines, was chiefly
peopled by men and brethern with candles stuck in their
hats, ans with a diabolic complexion which laid them
peculiarly open to suspicion in the eys of the children at
Gadsmere -- Mrs Glasher's four beautiful children, who had
dwelt there for about three years. Now, in November,
when the flower-beds were empty, the trees leafless, and the
pool blackly shivering, one might have said that the place
was sombrely in keeping with the black roads and black
mounds which seemed to put the district in mourning; --
except when the children were playing on the gravel with
the dogs for their companions. But Mrs Glasher under her
present circumstances liked Gasmere as well as she would
have liked any other abode. The complete seclusion of the
place, which the unattractiveness of the country secured,
was exactly to her taste. When she drove her two ponires
with a waggonet full of children, there were no gentry in
carriages to be met, only men of business in gigs; at church
there were no eyes she cared to avoid, the for curate's wife
and the curate himself were either ignorant of anything to her
disadvantage, or ignored it: to them she was simply a widow
lady, the tenant of Gadsmere; and the name of Grandcourt
was of little interest in that district compared with the names
of Fletcher and Gawcome, the lessees of the collieries.
  Ir was full ten years since the elopement of an Irish
officer's beautiful wife with young Grandcourt, and a consequent
duel where the bullets wounded the air only, had
made some little noise. Most of those who remembered the
affair now wondered what had become of that Mrs Glasher
whose beauty and brilliancy had made her rather conspicuous
to them in foreign places, where she was known to be
living with yourg Grandcourt.
  That he should have disentangled himself from that
connection seemed only natural and desirable. As to her it
was thought that a woman who was understood to have
foresaken her child along with her husband and probably
sunk lower. Grandcourt had of course got weary of her. He
was much given to the pursuit of women: but a man in his

*X386
position would by this time desire to make a suitable marriage
with the fair young daughter of a noble house. No
one talked of Mrs Glasher now, any more than they talked
of the victim on a trial for manslaughter ten years before:
she was a lost vessel after whom nobody would send out an
expedition of search; but Grandcourt was seen in harbour
with his colours flying, registered as seaworthy as ever.
  Yet  in fact Grandcourt had never disentangled himself
from Mrs Glasher. His passion for her had been the
strongest and most lasting he had ever known; and though
it was now dead as the music of a cracked flute, it had
left a certain dull disposedness, which on the death of her
husband three years before had prompted in him a vacillating
notion of marrying her, in accordance with the understanding
often expressed between them during the days of
his first ardour. At that early time Grandcourt would willingly
have paid for the freedom to be won by a divorce;
but the husband would not oblige him, not wanting to be
married again himself, and not wishing to have his domestic
habits printed in evidence.
  The altered poise which the years had brought in Mrs
Glasher was just the reverse. At first she was comparatively
careless about the possibility of marriage. It was enough
that she had escaped from a disagreeable husband and
found a sort of bliss with a lover who had completely
fascinated her -- young, handsome, amorous, and living in
the best style, with equipage and coversation ˛en˛ ˛suite˛, of
the kind to be expected in young men of fourtune who have
seen everything. She was an impassioned, vivacious woman,
fond of adoration, exasperated by five years of marital
rudeness; and the sense of release was so strong upon her
that it stilled anxiety for more than she actually enjoyed.
An equivocal position was of no importance to her then;
she had no envy for the honours of a dull disregarded
wife: the one spot which spoiled her vision of her new
pleasant world, was the sense that she had left her three-year-old
boy, who died two years afterwards, and whose
first tones saying "mamma" retained a difference from those
of the children that came after. But now the years had

*X387
brought many changes besides those in the contour of her
cheek and throat; and that Grandcourt should marry her
had become her dominant desire. The equivocal position
which she had not minded about for herself was now
telling upon her through her children, whom she loved
with a devotion charged with the added passion of atonement.
She had no repentance except in this dirrection. If
Grandcourt married her, the children would be none the
worse off for what had passed: they would see their mother
in a dignified position, and they would be at no disadvantage
with the world: her son would be made his father's
heir. It was the yearning for this result which gave the
supreme importance to Grandcourt's feeling for her; her
love for him had long resolved itself into anxiety that he
should give her the unique, permanent claim of a wife, and
she expected no other happiness in marriage than the satisfaction
of her maternal love and pride -- including her
pride for herself in the presenceof her children. For the
sake of that result she was prepared even with a tragic
firmness to endure anything quietly in marriage; and she
had had acuteness enough to cherish Grandcourt's flickering
purpose negatively, by not molesting him with passionate
appeals and with scene-making. In her, as in every one
alse who wanted anything of him, his incalculable turns,
and his tendency to harden under beseeching, had created
a reasonable dread: -- a slow discovery, of which no presentiment
had been given in the bearing of a youthful
lover with a fine line of face and the softest manners. But
reticence had necessarily cost something to this impassioned
woman, and she was the bitterer for it. There is no
quailing -- even that forced n the helpless and injured --
which has not an ugly obverse: the withheld sting was
gathering venom. She was absolutely dependent on Grandcourt;
for though he had been always liberal in expenses
for her, he had kept everything voluntary on his part; and
with the goal of marriage befor her, she would ask for
nothing less. He had said that he would never settle anything
except by will: and when she was thinking of alternatives
for the future it often occurred to her that, even if she

*X388
did not become Grandcourt's wife, he might never have a
son who would have a legitimate claim on him, and the
end might be that her son would be made heir to the best
part of his estates. No son at that early age could promise
to have more of his father's ˛physique˛. But her becoming
Grandcourt's wife was so far from being an extravagant
notion of possibility, that even Lush had entertained it,
and said that he would as soon bet on it as on any other
likelihood with regard to his familiar companion. Lush,
indeed, on inferring that Grandcourt had a preconception
of using his residence at Diplow in order to win Miss
Arrowpoint, had thought it well to fan that project, taking
it as a tacit renunciation of the marriage with Mrs Glasher
which had long been a mark for the hovering and wheeling
of Grandcourt's caprice. But both prospects had been negatived
by Gwnedolen's appearance on the scene; and it was
natural enough for Mrs Glasher to enter with eagerness
into Lush's plan of hindering that new danger by setting
up a barrier in the mind of the girl who was being sought
as a bride. She entered into it with an eagerness which had
passion in it as well as purpose, some of the stored-up
venom delivering itself in that way.
  After that, she had heard from Lush of Gwendolen's
departure, and the probability that all danger from her was
got rid of; but there had been no letter to tell her that the
danger had returned and had become a certainty. She had
since then written to Grandcourt as she did habitually, and
he had been longer than usual in answering. She was
inferring that he might intend coming to Gadsmere at the
time when he was actually on the way; and she was not
without hope -- what construction of another's mind is not
strong wishing equal to? -- that a certain sickening from
that frustrated courtship might dispose him to slip the
more easily into the old track of intention.
  Grandcourt had two grave purposes in coming to Gadsmere:
to convey the news of his approaching marriage in
person, in order to make this first difficulty final; and to get
from Lydia his mother's diamonds, which long ago he had
confided to her and wished her to wear. Her person suited

*X389
diamonds and made them look as if they were worth sone
of the money given for them. These particular diamonds
were not mountains of light -- they were mere peas and
haricots for the ears, neck, and hair; but they were worth
some thousands, and Grandcourt necessarily wished to
have them for his wife. Formerly when he had asked Lydia
to put them into his keeping again, simply on the ground
that they would be safer and ought to be deposited at the
bank, she had quietly but absolutely refused, declarding that
they were quite safe; and at last had said, "If you ever
marry another woman I will give them up to her: are you
going to marry another woman?" At that time Grandcourt
had no motive which urged him to persist, and he had this
grace in him, that the disposition to exercise power either
by cowing or disappointing others or exciting in them a
rage which they dared not express -- a disposition which
was active in him as other propensities became languid --
had always been in abeyance before Lydia. A severe interpreter
might say that the mere facts of their relation to
each other, the melancholy position of this woman who
depended on his will, made a standing banquet for his
delight in dominating. But there was something else than
this in his forbearance towards her: there was the surviving
though metamorphosed effect of the power she had
had over him; and it was this effect, the fitful dull lapse
towards solicitations that once had the zest now missing
from life, which had again and again inclined him to
espouse a familiar past rather than rouse himself to the
expectation of novelty. But now novelty had taken hold of
him and irged him to make the most of it.
  Mrs Glasher was seated in the room where she
habitually passed her mornings with her children round
her. It had a square projecting window and looked on
broad gravel and grass, sloping towards a little brook that
entered the pool. The top of a low black cabinet, the old
oak table, the chairs in tawny leather, were littered with
the children's toys, books, and garden garments, at which a
maternal lady in pastel looked down from the walls with
smiling indulgence. The children were all there. The three

*X390
girls, seated round their mother near the window, were
miniature portraits of her -- dark-eyed, delicate-featured
brunettes with a rich bloom on their cheeks, their little
mostrils and euebrows singularly finished as if they were
tiny women, the eldest being barely nine. The boy was
seated on the carpet at some distance, bending his blond
head over the animals from a Noah's ark, admonishing
them separately in a voice of threatening command, and
occasionally licking the spotted one to see if the colours
would hold. Josephine, the eldest, was having her French
lesson; and the others, with their dolls on their laps, sat
demurely enough for images of the Madonna. Mrs
Glasher's toilet had been made very carefully -- each day
now she said to herself that Grandcourt might come in. Her
head, which, spite of emanciation, had an ineffaceable beauty
in the fine profile, crisp curves of hair, and clearly-marked
eyebrows, rose impressively above her bronze-coloured silk
and velvet, and the gold necklace which Grandcourt had
fisr clasped round her neck years ago. Not that she had any
pleasure in her toilet; her chief thought of herself seen in the
glass was, "How changed]" -- but such good in life as remained
to her she would keep. If her chief wish were fulfilled, she
could imagine herself getting the comeliness of a matron fit
for the highest rank. The little face beside her, almost exact
reductions of her own, seemed to tell of the blooming curves
which had once been where now was sunken pallor. But
the children kissed the pale cheeks and never found them
deficient. That love was now the one end of her life.
  Suddenly Mrs Glasher turned away her head from Josephine's
book and listened. "Hush, dear] I think some one is
coming."
  Henleigh the boy jumped up and said, "Mamma, is it the
miller with my donkey?"
  He got no answer, and going up to his mamma's knee
repeated his question in an insistent tone. But the door
opened, and the servant announced Mr Grandcourt. Mrs
Glasher rose in some agitation. Henleigh frowned at him in
disgust at his not being the miller, and the three little girls
lifted up their dark eyes to him timidly. They had none of

*X391
them any particular liking for this friend of mamma's -- in
fact, when he had taken Mrs Glasher's hand and then
turned to put his other hand on Henleigh's head, that
energetic scion began to beat the friend's arm away with
his fists. The little girls sibmitted bashfully to be patted
under the chin and kissed, but on the whole it seemed
better to send them into the garden where they were
presently dancing and chatting with the dogs on the gravel.
  "How far are you come?" said Mrs Glasher, as Grandcourt
put away his hat and overcoat.
  "From Diplow," he answered slowly, seating himself opposite
her and looking at her with an unnoting gaze which she noted.
  "You are tired, then."
  "No, I rested at the Junction -- a hideous hole. These
railway journeys are always a confounded bore. But I had
coffee and smoked."
  Grandcourt drew out his handkerchief, rubbed his face,
and in returning the handkerchief to his pocket looked at
his crossed knee and blameless boot, as if any stranger were
opposite to him, instead of a woman quivering with a
suspense which every word and look of his was to incline
towards hope or dread. But he was really occupied with
their interview and what it was likely to include. Imagine
the difference in rate of emotion between this woman
whom the years had worn to a more conscious dependence
and sharper eagerness, and this man whom they were dulling
into a more and more neutral obstinacy.
  "I expected to see you -- it was so long since I had heard
from you. I suppose the weeks seem longer at Gadsmere
than they do at Diplow," said Mrs Glasher. She had a quick,
incisinve way of speaking that seemed to go with her
features, as the tone and ˛timbre˛ of a violin go with its form.
  "Yes," drawled Grandcourt. "But you found the money
paid into the bank."
  "Ih yes," said Mrs Glasher, curtly, tingling with impatience.
Always before -- at least she fancied so -- Grandcourt
had taken more notice of her and the children than he did
to-day.
  "Yes," he resumed, playing with his whisker, and at first

*X392
not looking at her, "the time has gone on at rather a
rattling pace with me; generally it is slow enough. But
there has been a good deal happening, as you know" -- here
he turned his eyes upon her.
  "What do I know?" said she, sharply.
  He left a pause before he said, without change of manner,
"That I was thinking of marrying. You saw Miss Harleth?"
  "˛She˛ told you that?"
  The pale cheeks looked even paler, perhaps from the
fierce brightness in the eyes above them.
  "No. Lush told me," was the slow answer. It was as if the
thumb$crew and the iron-boot were being placed by creeping
hands within sight of the expectant victim.
  "Good God] say at once that you are going to marry her."
she burst out passionately, her knee shaking and her hands
tightly clasped.
  "Of course, this kind of thing must happen some time or
other, Lydia," said he; really, now the thumb-screw was on,
not wishing to make the pain worse.
  "You didn't always see the necessity."
  "Perhaps not. I see it now."
  In those few indertoned words of Grandcourt's she felt
as absolute a resistance as if her thin fingers had been
pushing at a fast-shut iron door. She knew her helplessness,
and shrank from testing it by an appeal -- shrank from
crying in a dead ear and clinging to dead knees, only to see
the immovable face and feel the rigid limbs. She did not
weep nor speak: she was too hard pressed by the sudden
certainty which had as much of chill sickness in it as of
thought and emotion. The defeated clutch of struggling
hope gave her in these first moments a horrible sensation.
At last she rose with a spasmodic effort, and, unconscious
of everything but her wretchedness, pressed her forehead
against the hard cold glass of the window. The children,
playing on the gravel, took this as a sign that she wanted
them, and running forward stood in front of her with their
sweet faces upturned expectantly. This roused her: she
shook her head at them, waved them off, and overcome
with this painful exertion sank back in the nearest chair.

*X393
  Grandcourt had risen too. He was doubly annoyed -- at
the scene itself, and at the sense that no imperiousness of
his could save him from it; but the task had to be gone
through, and there was the administrative necessity of arranging
things so that there should be as little annoyance
as possible in future. He was leaning against the corner of
the fireplace. She looked up at him and said bitterly --
  "All this is of no consequence to you. I and the children
are importunate creatures. You wish to get away again and
be with Miss Harleth."
  "Don't make the affair more disagreeable than it need be,
Lydia. It is of no use to harp on things that can't be
altered. Of course it's dueucedly disagreeable to me to see you
making yourself miserable. I've taken this journey to tell you
what you must make up you mind ti; -- you and the children
will be provided for as usual; -- and there's an end of it."
  Silence. She dared not answer. This woman with the
intense eager look had had the iron of the mother's anguish
in her soul, and it had made her sometimes capable
of a repression harder than shrieking and struggle. But
underneath the silence there was an outlash of hatred and
vindictiveness: she wished that the marriage might make
two others wretched, besides herself. Presently he went on.
  "It will be better for you. You may go on living here. But
I think of by-and-by settling a good sum on you and the
children, and you can live where you like. There will be
nothing for you to complain of then. Whatever happens,
you will feel secure. Nothing could be done beforehand.
Everything has gone on in a hurry."
  Grandcourt ceased his slow delivery of sentences. He did
not expect her to thank him, but he considered that she
might reasonably be contented; if it were possible for Lydia
to be contented. She showed no change, and after a minute
he said --
  "You have never had any reason to fear that I should be
illiberal. I don't care a curse about the money."
  "If you did care about it, I suppose you would not give it
us," said Lydia. The sarcasm was irrepressible.
  "That's a devilishly unfair thing to say," Grandcourt replied,

*X394
in  a lower tone; "and I advise you not to say that sort of
thing again."
  "Should you punish me by leaving the children in beggary?"
In spite of herself, the one outlet of venom had
brought the other.
  "There is no question about leaving the children in beggary,"
said Grandcourt, still in his low voice. "I advise you
not to say things that you will repent of."
  "I am used to repenting," said she, bitterly. "Perhaps ˛you˛
will repent. You have already repented of loving me."
  "All this will only make it uncommonly difficult for us to
meet again. What friend have you besides me?"
  "Quite true."
  The words came like a low moan. At the same moment
there flashed through her the wish that after promising
himself a better happiness than that he had had with her,
he might feel a misery and loneliness which would drive
him back to her to find some memory of a time when he
was young, glad, and hopeful. But no] he would go scathless;
it was she who had to suffer.
  With this the scorching words were ended. Grandcourt
had meant to stay till evening: he wished to curtail his
visit, but there was no suitable train earlier than the one he
had arranged to go by, and he had still to speak to Lydia
on the second object of his visit, which like a second surgical
operation seemed to require an interval. The hours had
to go by; there was eating to be done; the children came in
again -- all this mechanism of life had to be gone through
with the dreary sense of constraint which is often felt in
domestic quarrels of a commoner kind. To Lydia it was
some slight relief for her stifled fury to have the children
present: she felt a savage glory in their loveliness, as if it
would taunt Grandcourt with his indifference to her and
them -- a secret darting of venom which was strongly imaginative.
He acquitted himself with all the advantage of a
man whose grace of bearing has long been moulded on an
experience of boredom -- nursed the little Antonia, who sat
with her hands crossed and eyes upturned to his bald head,
which struck her as worthy of observation -- and propitiated

*X395
Henleigh by promising him a beautiful saddle and bridle. It was only
the two eldest girls who had known him
as a continual presence; and the intervening years had
overlaid their infantine memories with a bashfulness which
Grandcourt's bearing was not likely to dissipate. He and
Lydia occasionally, in the presence of the servants, made a
conventional remark; otherwise they never spoke; and the
stagnant thought in Grandcourt's mind all the while was of
his own infatuation in having given her those diamonds,
which obliged him to incur the nuisance of speaking about
them. He had an ingrained care for what he held to belong
to his caste, and about prperty he liked to be lordly; also
he had a consciousness of indignity to himself in having to
ask for anything in the world. But however he might assert
his imdependence of Mrs Glashr's past, he had made a past
for himself which was a stronger yoke than any he could
impose. He must ask for the diamonds which he had promised
to Gwendolen.
  At last they were alone again, with the candles above
them, face to face with each other. Grandcourt looked at
his watch, and then said, in an apparently indifferent drawl,
"There is one thing I had to mention, Lydia. My diamonds
-- you have them."
  "Yes, I have them," she answered promptly, rising, and
standing with her arms thrust down and her fingers
threaded, while Grandcourt sat still. She had expected the
topic, and made her resolve about it. But she meant to
carry out her resolve, if possible, without exasperating him.
During the hours of silence she had longed to recall the
words which had only widened the breach between them.
  "They are in this house, I supose?"
  "No; not in this house."
  "I thought you said you kept them by you."
  "When I said so it was true. They are in the bank at
Dudley."
  "Get them away, will you? I must make an arrangement
for your delivering them to some one."
  "Make no arrangement. They shall be delivered to the
person you intended them for. I will make the arrangement."

*X396
  "What do you mean?"
  "What I say. I have always told you that I would give
them up to your wife. I shall keep my word. She is not your
wife yet."
  "This is foolery," said Grandcourt, with undertoned disgust.
It was too irritating that his indulgence of Lydia had
given her a sort of mastery over him in spite of her dependent
condition.
  She did not speak. He also rose now, but stood leaning
against the mantelpeice with his side|ace towards her.
  "The diamonds must be delivered to me before my
marriage," he began again.
  "What is your wedding-day?"
  "The tenth. There is no time to be lost."
  "And where do you go after the marriage?"
  He did not reply except by looking more sullen. Presently
he said. "You must appoint a day before then to get
them from the bank and meet me -- or somebody else I will
commission: -- it's a great nuisance. Mention a day."
  "No; I shall not do that. They shall be delivered to her
safelt. I shall keep my word."
  "Do you mean to say," said Grandcourt, just audibly,
turning to face her, "that you will not do as I tell you?"
  "Yes, I mean that," was the answer that leaped out, while
he eyes flashed close to him. The poor creature was immediately
conscious that if her words had any effect on her
own lot, the effect must be mischievous, and might nullify
all the remaining advantage of her long patience. But the
word had been spoken.
  He was in a position the most irritating to him. He could
not shake her nor touch her hostilely; and if he could, the
process would not bring the diamonds. He shrank from the
only sort of threat that would frightened her -- if she believed
it. And in general, there was nothing he hated more than
to be forced into anything like violence even in words: his
will must impose itself without trouble. After looking at
her for a moment, he turned his side-face towards her
again, leaning as before, and said --
  "Infernal idiots that women are]"

*X397
  "Why will you not tell me where you are going after the
marriage? I could be at the wedding if I liked, and learn in
that way," said Lydia, not skrinking from the one suicidal
form of threat within her power.
  "Of course, if you like, you can play the mad woman,"
said Grandcourt, with ˛sotto˛ ˛voce˛ scorn. "It is not to be
supposed that you will wait to think what good will come
of it -- or what you owe to me."
  He was in a state of disgust and embitterment quite new
in the history of their relation to each other. It was undeniable
that this woman whose life he had allowed to send
such deep suckers unto his had a terrible power of annoyance
in her; and the rash hurry of his proceedings had left
her opportunities open. His pride saw very ugly possiblities
threatening it, and he stood for several minutes in silence
reviewing the situation -- considering how he could act
upon her. Unlike himself she was of a direct nature, with
certain simple strongly-coloured tendencies, and there was
one often-experienced effect which he thought he could
count upon now. As Sir Hugo had said of him, Grandcourt
knew how to play his cards upon occasion.
  He did not speak again, but looked at his watch, rang the
bell, and ordered the vehicle to be brought round immediately.
R-cThen he removed farther from her, walked as if in
expectation of a summons, and remained silent without
turning his eyes upon her.
  She was suffering the horrible conflict of self-reproach
and tenacity. She saw beforehand Grandcourt leaving her
without even looking at her again -- herslef left behind in
lonely uncertainty -- hearing nothing from him -- not knowing
whether she had done her chi;dren harm -- feeling that
she had perhaps made him hate her: -- all the wretchedness
of a creature who had defeated her own motives. And yet she
could not bear to give up a purpose which was a sweet morsel
to her vindictiveness. If she had not been a mother she would
willingly have sacrificed herself to her revenge -- to what she
felt to be the justice of hindering another from getting happiness
by willingly giving her over to misery. The two dominant
passions were at struggle. She must satisfy them both.

*X398
  "Don't let us part in anger, Henleigh," she began, without
changing her place or attitude: "it is a very little thing I
ask. If I were refusing to give anything up that you call
yours, it would be different: that would be a reason for
treating me as if you hated me. But I ask such a little
thing. If you will tell me where you are going on the
wedding-day, I will take care that the diamonds shall be
delivered to her without scandal. Without scandal," she
repeated entreatingly.
  "Such preposterous whims make a woman odious," said
Grandcourt, not giving way in look or movement. "What is
the use of talking to mad people?"
  "Yes, I am foolish -- loneliness has made me foolish --
indulge me." Sobs rose as she spoke. "If you will indulge me
in this one folly, I will be very meek -- I will never trouble
you." She burst into husterical crying, and said again almost
with a scream -- "I will be very meek after that."
  There was a strange mixture of acting and reality in this
passion. She kept hold of her purpose as a child might tighten
its hand over a small stolen thing, crying and denying all the
while. Even Grandcourt was wrought upon by surprise:
this capricious wish, this childish violence, was as unlike
Lydia's bearing as it was incongruous with her person.
Both had always had a stamp of dignity on them. Yet she
seemed more manageable in this state than in her former
attitude of defiance. He came close up to her again, and
said, in his low imperious tone, "Be quiet, and hear what I
tell you. I will never forgive you if you present yourself
again and make a scene."
  She pressed her handkerchief against her face, and when
she could speak firmly said, in the muffled voice that
follos sobbing, "I will not -- if you will let me have my way
-- I promise you not to thrust myself forward again. I have
never broken my word to you -- how many have you
broken to me? When you gave me the diamonds to wear,
you were not thinking of having another wife. And I now
give them up -- I don't reproach you -- I only ask you to let
me give them up in my own way. Have I not borne it well?
Everything is to be taken away from me, and when I ask

*X399
for a straw, a chip -- you deny it me." She had spoken
rapidly, but after a little pause she said more slowly, her
voice freed from its muffled tone: "I will not bear to have it
denied me."
  Grandcourt had a baffling sense that he had to deal with
something like madness; he could only govern by giving
way. The servant came to say the fly was ready. When the
door was shut again, Grandcourt said, sullenly, "We are
going to Ryelands, then."
  "They shall be delivered to her there," said Lydia, with
decision.
  "Very well, I am going." He felt no inclination even to
take her hand: she had annoyed him too sorely. But now
that she had gained her point, she was prepared to humble
herself that she might propitiate him.
  "Forgive me; I will never vex you again," she said, with
beseeching looks. Her inward voice said distinctly -- "It is
only I who have to forive." Yet she was obliged to ask
forgiveness.
  "You had better keep that promise. You have made me
feel uncommonly ill with your folly," said Grandcourt,
apparently choosing this statement as the strongest possible
use of language.
  "Poor thing]" said Lydia, with a faint smile: -- was he
aware of the minor fact that he had made her feel ill this
morning?
  But with the quick transition natural to her, she was now
ready to coax him if he would let her, that they might part
in some degree reconciled. She ventured to lay her hand on
his shoulder, and he did not move away from her: she had
so far succeeded in alarming him, that he was not sorry for
these proofs of returned subjection.
  "Light a cigar," she said, soothingly, taking the case from
his breast-pocket and opening it.
  Amidst such caressing signs of mutual fear they parted.
The effect that clung and gnawed within Grandcourt was a
sense of imperfect mastery.

*X400
*C31
ON the day when Gwendolen Harleth was married and
became Mrs Grandcourt, the morning was clear and bright,
and while the sun was low a slight frost crisped the leaves
The bridal party was worth seeing, and half Pennicote
turned out to see it, lining the pathway up to the church.
An old friend of the Rector's performed the marriage ceremony,
the Rector himself acting as father, to the great
advantage of the procession. Only two faces, it was remarked,
showed signs of sadness -- Mrs Davilow's and
Anna's. The mother's delicate eyelids were pink, as if she
had been crying half the night; and no one was surprised
that, splendid as the match was, she should feel the parting
from a daughter who was the flower of her children and of
her own life. It was less understood why Anna should be
troubled when she was being so well set off by the bridesmaid's
dress. Every one else seemed to reflect the brillancy
of the occasion -- the bride most of all. Of her it was agreed
that as to figure and carriage she was worthy to be a 'lady
o' title:" as to face, perhaps it might be thought that a title
required something more rosy; but the bridegroom himself
not being fresh-coloured -- being indeed, as the millar's wife
observed, very much of her own husband's complexion --
the match was the more complete. Anyhow he must be
very fond of her; and it was to be hoped that he would
mever cast it up to her that she had been going out to
service as a governess, and her mother to live at Sawyer's
Cottage -- vicissitudes which had been much spoken of in
the village. The miller's daughter of fourteen could not
believe that high gentry behaved badly to their wives, but
her mother instructed her -- "Oh, child, men's men: gentle
or simple, they're much of a muchness. I've heard my
mother say Squire Pelton used to take his dogs and a long
whip into his wife's room, and flog 'em there to frighten

*X401
her; and my mother was lady's-maid there at the very
time."
  "That's unlucky talk for a wedding, Mrs Girdle," said the
tailor. "A quarrel may end wi' the whip, but it begins wi'
the tongue, and it's the women have got the most o' that."
  "The Lord gave it 'em to use, I suppose," said Mrs Girdle;
"˛He˛ never meant you to have it all your own way."
  "By what I can make out from the gentleman as attends
to the grooming at Offendene," said the tailor, "this Mr
Grandcourt has wonderful little tongue. Everything must
be done dummy-like without his ordering."
  "Then he's the more whip, I doubt," said Mrs Girdle.
"˛She's˛ got tongue enough, I warrant her. See, there they
come out togehter]"
  "What wonderful long corners she's got to her eyes]" said
the tailor. "She makes you feel comical when she looks at
you."
  Gwendolen, in fact, never showed more elasticity in her
bearing, more lustre in her long brown glance: she had the
brillancy of strong excitement, which will sometimes come
even from pain. It was not pain, however, that she was
feeling: she had wrought herself up to much the same
condition as that in which she stood at the gambling-table
when Deronda was looking at her, and she began to lose.
There was enjoyment in it: whatever uneasiness a growing
conscience had created, was disregarded as an ailment
might have been, amidst the gratification of that ambitious
vanity and desire for luxury within her which it would take
a great deal of slow poisoning to kill. This morning she
could not have said truly that she repented her acceptance
of Grandcourt, or that any fears in hazy perspective could
hinder the glowing effects of the immediate scene in which
she was the central object. That she was doing something
wrong -- that a punishment might be hanging over her --
that the woman to whom she had given a promise and
broken it, was thinking of her in bitterness and misery with
a just reproach -- that Deronda with his way of looking into
things very likely despised her for marrying Grandcourt, as
he had despised her for gambling -- above all, that the cord

*X402
which united her with this lover and which she had hother-to
held by the hand, was now being flung over her meck, --
all this yeasty mingling of dimly understood facts with
vague but deep impressions, and with images half real, half
fantastic, had been disturbing he during the weeks of her
engagement. Was that agitating experience nuffied this
morning? No: it was surmounted and thrust down with a
sort of exulting defiance as she felt herself standing at the
game of life with many eyes upon her, daring everything to
win much -- or if to lise, still with ˛e<clat˛ and a sense of
importance. But this morning a losing destiny for herself
did not press upon her as a fear: she thought that she was
entering on a fuller power of managing circumstance --
with all the official strength of marriage, which some
women made so poor a use of. That intoxication of youthful
egoism out of which she had been shaken by trouble,
humiliation, and a new sense of culpability, had returned
upon her under the mewly-fed strength of the old fumes.
She did not in the least present the ideal of the treatful
tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some had judged
much too forward and instructed in the world's ways]
-- with her erect head and elastic footstep she was walking
amid illusions; and yet, too, there was an under-consciousness
in her that she was a little intoxicated.
  "Thank God you bear it so well, by darling]" said Mrs
Davilow, when she had helped Gwendolen to doff her
bridal white and put on her travelling dress. All the trembling
had been done by the poor mother, and her agitation
urged Gwendolen doubly to take the morning as if it were
a triumph.
  "Why, you might have said that, if I had been going to
Mrs Mompert's, you dear, sad, incorrigible mamma]" said
Gwendolen, just putting her hands to her mother's cheeks
with laughing tenderness -- then retreating a little and
spreading out her arms as if to exhibet herself. "Here am I --
Mrs Grandcourt] what else would you have me, but what I
am sure to be? You know you were ready to die with
vexation when you thought that I would not be Mrs
Grandcourt."

*X403
  "Hush, hush, my childm for heaven's sake]" said Mrs Davilow,
almost in a whisper. "How can I help feeling it when I
am parting from you? But I can bear anything gladly if
you are happy."
  "Not gladly, mamman no]" said Gwendolen, shaking her
head, with a bright smile. "Willingly you would bear it, but
always sorrowfully. Sorrowing is your sauce; you can take
nothing without it." Then, clasping her mother's shoulders
and raining kisses first on one cheek and then of the other
between her words, she said, gaily, "And you shall sorrow
over my having everything at my beck -- and enjoying
everything gloriously -- splendid houses -- and horses -- and
diamonds, I shall hhave diamonds -- and going to court --
and being Lady Certainly -- and Lady Perhaps -- and grand
here -- and tantivy there -- and always loving you better
than anybody else in the world."
  "My sweet child] -- But I shall not be jealous if you love
your husband better; and he will expect to be first."
  Gwendolen thrust out her lips and chim with a pretty
grimace, saying, "Rather a ridiculous expectation. However,
I don't mean to treat him ill, unless he deserves it."
  Then the two dell into a cling embrace, and Gwendolen
could not hinder a rising sob when she said, "I wish you
were going with me, mamma."
  But the slight dew on her long eyelashes only made her
the more charming when she gave her hand to Grandcourt
to be led to the carriage.
  The Rector looked in on her to give a final "Good-bye;
God bless you; we shall see you again before long," and
then returned to Mrs Davilow saying half cheerfully, half
solemnly --
  "Let us be thankful, Fanny. She is in a position well
suited to her, and beyond what I should have dared to
hope for. And few women can have been chosen more
entirely for their own sake. You should feel yourself a
happy mother."

*X404
There was a railway journey of some fifty miles before
the new husband and wife reached the station near Ryelands.
The sky had veiled itself since the morning, and it
was hardly more than twilight when they entered the parkgates,
but still Gwendolen, looking out of the carriage-window
as they drove rapidly along, could see the grand
outlines and the nearer beauties of the scene -- the long
winding drive dordered with evergreens backed by huge
grey stems; then the opening of wide grassy spaces and
undulations studded with dark clumps; till at last came a
wide level where the white house couldbe seen, with a
hanging wood for a background, and the rising and sinking
belustrade ofa terrace in front.
  Gwendolen had been at her liveliest during the journey,
chatting incessantly, ignoring any change in their mutual
position since yesterday; and Grandcourt had been rather
ecstatically quiescent, while she turned his gentle seizure of
her hand into a grasp of his hand by both of hers, with an
increased vivacity as of a kitten that will not sit quiet to be
petted. She was really getting somewhat febrile in her
excitement; and now in this drive through the park her
usual susceptibility to changes of light and scenery helped
to make her heart palpitate newly. Was it at the novelty
simply, or the almost incredible fulfilment about to be
giver to her girlish dreamns of beings "somebody" -- walking
through her own furlong of corridors and under her own
ceilings of an out-of-sight loftiness, where her own painted
Spring was shedding painted flowers, and her own foreshortened
Zephyrs were blowing their trumptets over her;
while her own servants, lackeys in clothing but men in bulk
and shape, were as noght in her presence, and revered the
propriety of her insolence to them: -- being in short the
herione of an admired play without the pains of art? Was
it alone the the closeness of this fulfilment which made her
heart flutter? or was it some dim forecast, the insistent
penetration of suppressed experience, mixing the expectation
of a triumph with the dread of a crisis? Hers was one
of the natures in which exultation inevitably carries an
infusion of dread ready to curdle and declare itself.

*X405
  She fell silent in spite of herself as they approached the
gates, and when her husband said, "Here we are at home]"
and for the first time kissed her on the lips, she hadly
knew of it: it was no more than the passive acceptance of a
greeting in the midst of an absorbing show. Was not all
her hurrying life of the last three months a show, in which
her consciousness was a wondering spectator? After the
half-wilful excitement of the day, a numbness had come
over her personality.
  But there was a brilliant light in the hall -- warmth,
matting, carpets, full-length portraits, Olympian statues,
assiduous servants. Not many servants, however: only a
few from Diplow in addition to those constantly in charge of
the house, and Gwendolen's new maid, who had come with
her, was taken under guidance by the housekeeper. Gwendolen
felt herself being led by Grandcourt along a subtly-scented
corridor, then into an ante-room where she w-csaw an
open doorway sending out a rich glow of light and clour.
  "These are our dens," said Grandcourt. "You will like to be
quiet here till diner. We shall dine early."
  He pressed her had to his lips and moved away, more in
love than he had ever expected to be.
  Gwendolen, yielding up her hat and mantle, threw herself
into a chair by the glowing hearth, and saw herself
repeated in glass panels with all her faint-green satin surroundings.
The housekeeper had passed into this boudior
from the adjoining dressing-room and seemed disposed to
linger, Gwendolen thought, in order to look at the new
mistress of Ryelands, who however, being impatient for
solitude, said to her, "Will you tell Hudson when she has
put out my dress to leave everything? Ishall not want her
again, unless I ring."
  The housekeeper, coming forward, said, "Here is a packet,
madam, which I was ordered to give into nobody's hands
but yours, when you were alone. The person who brought
it said it was a present particularly ordered by Mr Grandcourt;
but he was not to know of its arrival till he saw you
wear it. Excuse me, madam; I felt it right to obey orders."
  Gwendolen took the packet and let it lie onher lap till

*X406
she heard the doors close. It came into her mind that the
packet might contain the diamonds which Grandcourt had
spoken of as being deposited somewhere and to be given to
her on her marriage. In this moment of confused feeling
and creeping luxurious languor she was glad of this diversion --
glad of such an event as having he own diamonds
to try on.
  Within all the seaked apaer coverings was a box, but
within the box there ˛was˛ a jewel-case; and now she flet no
doubt that she had the diamonds. But on opening the case,
in the same istant that she saw their gleam she saw a
letter lying above them. She knew the handwriting of the
address. It was as if an adder had lain on them. Her heart
gave a leap which seemed to have spent all her strength;
and as she opened the bit of thin paper, it shook with the
trembling of her hands. But it was legible as print, and
thrust its words upon her.

  "These diamonds, which were once given with ardent love to
Lydia Glasher, she passes on to you. You have broken your word
to her, that you might posses what was hers. Perhaps you think
of being happy, as she once was, of having beautiful children
such as hers, who will thrust hers aside. God it too just for that.
The man you have married had a withered heart. His best
young love was mine; you could not take that from me when
you took the rest. It is dead, but 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 had made you miserable? You took
him with your eyes open. The willing wrong you have done me
will be your curse."

  It seemed at first as if Gwendolen's eyes were spell-bound
in reading the horrible words of the letter over and over

*X407
again as a doom of penance; but suddenly a new spasm of
terror made her lean forward and stretch out the paper
towards the fire, lest accusation and proof at once should
meet all eyes. It flew like a fether from her trembling
fingers and was caught up in the great draught of flame. In
her movement the casket fell on the floor and the diamonds
rolled out. She took no notice, but fell back in her
chair again helpless. She could not see the reflections of
herself then: they were like so monay women petrified
white; but coming near herself you might have seen the
tremor in her lips and hands. She sat so for a long while,
knowing little more than that she was feeling ill, and that
those written words kept repeating themselves in her.
  Truly here were poisoned gems, and the poison had
entered into this poor young creature.
  After that long while, there was a tap at the door and
Grandcourt entered, dressed for dinner. The sight of him
brought a new nervous shock, and Gwendolen screamed
again and again with hysterical violence. He had expected
to see her dressed and smiling, ready to be led down. He
saw her palid, shrieking as t seemed with terror, the jewels
scattered around her on the floor. Was it a fit of madness?
  In some form or other the Furies had crossed his
threshold.

*X408
*C32

In all ages it hath been a favourite text that a potent love hath
the nature of an isolated fatality, whereto the mind's opinions
and wonted resolves are altogether alien; as, for example, Daphnis
his frenzy, wherein it had little availed him to have been
convinced of Heraclitus his doctrine; or the phitre-bred passion
of Tristan, who, though he had been as deep as Duns Scotus,
would have had his reasoning marred by that cup too much; or
Romeo in his sudden taking for Juliet, wherein any objections
he might have held against Prolemy had made little difference
to his discourse under the balcony. Ye tall love is not such, even
though potent; nay, this passion hath as large scope as any for
allying itself with every operation of the soul: so that it shall
acknowledge an effect from the imagined light of unproven
firmaments, and have its scale set to the grander orbits of what
hath been and shall be.

DERONDA, on his return to town, could assure Sir Hugo
of his having lodged in Grandcourt's mind a distinct
understanding that he could get fifty thousand pounds by
giving up a prospect which was probably distant, and not
absolutely certain; but he had no further sign of Grandcourt's
dispotion in the matter than that he was evidently
inclined to keep up friendly communications.
  "And what did you think of the future bride on a nearer
survey?" said Sir Hugo.
  "I thought better of her than I did at Leubronn. Roulette
was not a good setting for her; it brought out something of
the demon. At Diplow she seemed much more womanly
and attractive -- less hard and self possessed. I thought her
mouth and eyes had quite a different expression."
  "Don't flirt with her too much, Dan," said Sir Hugo,
meaning to be agreeably playful. "If you make Grandcourt
savage when they come to the Abbey at Christmas, it will
interfere with my affairs."
  "I can stay in town, sir."
  "No, no. Lady Mallinger and the children can't do without
you at Christmas. Only don't make mischief -- unless
*X409
you can get up a duel, and manage to shoot Grandcourt,
which might be worth a little inconvenience."
  "I don't think you ever saw me flirt," said Deronda, not
amused.
  "Oh, haven't I, though?" said Sir Hugo, provokingly. "You
are always looking tenderly at the women, and talking to
them in a Jesuitical way. You are a dangerous young fellow
-- a kind of Lovelace who will make the Clarissas run after
you instead of your running after them."
  What was the use of being exasperated at a tasteless
joke? -- only the exasperation comes before the reflection
on utility. Few friendly remarks are more annoying than
the information that we are always seeming to do what we
never mean to do. Sir Hugo's notion of flirting, it was to be
hoped, was rather peculiar; for his own part, Deronda was
sure that he had never flirted. But he was glad that the
baronet had no knowledge about the redemption of Gwendolen's
necklace to feed his taste for this kind of rallying.
  He would be on his guard in future; for example, in his
behaviour at Mrs Meyrick's, where he was about to pay his
first visit since his arrival from Leubronn. For Mirah was
certainly a creature in whom it was difficult not to show a
tender kind of interest both by looks and speech.
  Mrs Meyrick had not failed to send Deronda a report of
Mirah's wellbeing in her family. "We are getting fonder of
her every day," she had written. "At breakfast-time we all
look towards the door with expectation to see her come in;
and we watch er and listen to her as if she were a native
from a new country. I have not heard a word from her lips
that gives me a doubt about her. She is quite contented
and full of gratitude. My daughters are learning from her,
and they hope to get her other pupils; for she is anxious
not to eat the breadof idleness, but to work, like my girls.
Mab says our life had become like a fairy tale, and all she is
afraid of is that Mirah will turn into a nightingale again
and fly away from us. Her voice is just perfect: not @cloud
and strong, but searching and melting, like the thoughts of
what has been. That is the way old people like me feel a
beautiful voice."

*X410
  But Mrs Meyrick did not enter into particulars which
would have required her to say that Amy and Mab, who
had accompanied Mirah to the synagogue, found the
Jewish faith less reconcilable with their wishes in her case
than in that of Scott's Rebecca. They kept silence out of
delicacy to Mirah, with whom her religion was too tender a
subject to be touched lightly; but after a while, Amy, who
was much of a practical reformer, could not restrain a
question.
  "Excuse me, Mirah, but ˛does˛ it seem quite right to you
that the women should sit behind rails in a gallery apart?"
  "Yes, I never thought of anything else," said Mirah, with
mild surprise.
  "And you like better to see the men with their hats on?"
said Mab, cautiously proposing the smallest item of
difference.
  "Ih yes. I like what I have always seen there, because it
brings back to me the same feelings -- the feelings I would
not part with for anything else in the world."
  After this, any criticism, whether of doctrine or of practice,
would have seemed to these generous little people an
inhospitable cruelty. Mirah's religion was of one fibre with
her affections, and had never presented itself to her as a set
of propositions.
  "She says herself she is a very bad Jewess, and does not
half know her people's religion," said Amy, when Mirah
was gone to bed. "Perhaps it would gradually melt away
from he, and she would pass into Christianity like the rest
of the world, if she fot to love us very much, and never
found her mother. It is so strange to be of the Jews'
religion now."
  "Oh, oh, oh]" cried Mab. "I wish I were not such a
hideous Christian. How can an ugly Christiam, who is always
dropping her work, convert a beautiful Jewess, who
has not a fault?"
  "It may be wicked of me," said shrewd Kate, "but I cannot
help wishing that her mother may not be found. There
might be something unpleasant."
  "I don't think it, my dear," said Mrs Meyrick. "I believe

*X411
Mirah is cut ou after the patten of hermother. And what a
joy it would be to her to have such a daughter brought back
again] But a mother's feelings are not worth reckoning, I suppose"
(she shot a mischievous glance at her own daughters),
"and a dead mother is worth more than a living one?"
  "Well, and so she may be, little mother," said Kate; "but
we would rather hold you cheaper, and have you alive."
  Not only the Meyricks, whose various knowledge had
been acquired by the irregular foraging to which clever
girls have usually been reduced, by Deronda himself, with
all his masculine instruction, had been roused by this
apparition of Mirah to the consciousness of knowing
hardly anything about modern Judaism or the inner Jewish
history. The Chosen People have been commonly
treated as a people chosen for the sake of somebody else;
and their thinking as something (no matter exactly what)
that ought to have been entirely otherwise; and Deronda,
like his neighbours, had regarded Judaism as a sort of
eccentric fossilised form, which an accomplished man
might dispense with studying, and leave to specialists. But
Mirah, with her terrified flight from one parent, and her
yearning after the other, had flashed on him the hitherto
neglected reality that Judaism was something still throbbing
in human lives, still making for them the only conceivable
vesture of the world; and in the idling excursion on
which he immediately afterwards set out with Sir Hugo he
began to look for the outsides of synagogues, and the titles
of books about the Jews. This wakening of new interest --
this passing from the supposition that we hold the right
opinions on a subject we are careless about, to a sudden
care for it, and a sense that our opinions were ignorance --
is an effectual remedy for ˛ennui˛, which unhappily cannot
be secured on a physician's prescription; but Deronda had
carried it with him, and endured his weeks of liunging all
the better. It was on this journey that he first entered a
Jewish synagogue -- at Frankfort -- where his party rested
on a Friday. In exploring the Juden-gasse, which he had
seen long before, he remembered well enough its picturesque
old houses; what his eyes chiefly dwelt on now were

*X412

the human types there; and his thought, busily connecting
them with the past phases of their race, stirred that fibre of
historic sympathy which had helped to determine in him
certain traits worth mentioning for those who are interested
in his future. True, when a young man has a fine
person, no eccentricity of manners, the education of a
gentleman, and a present income, it is not customary to
feel a prying curiousity about his way of thinking, or his
peculiar tastes. He may very well be settled in life as an
agreeable clever young fellow without passing a special
examination on those heads. Later, when he is getting
rather slovenly and partly, his peculiarities are more distinctly
discerned, and it is taken as a mercy if theu are not
highly objectionable. But anyone wishing to understand
the effect of after-events on Deronda should know a little
more of what he waas at five-and-twenty than was evident in
ordinary intercourse.
  It happened that the very vividness of his impressions
had often made him the more nigmatic to his friends, and
had contributed to an apparent indefinteness in his sentiments.
His early-wakened sensibility and reflectiveness had
developed into a many-sided sympathy, which threatened
to hinder any persistent course of action: as soon as he
took up any antagonism, though only in thought, he
seemed to himslef like the Sabine warriors in the memorable
story -- with nothing to meet his spear but flesh of his
flesh, and objects that he loved. His imagination had so
wrought itself to the habit of seeing thins are they probably
appeared to others, that a strong partisanship, unless it
were against an immediate oppression, had become an
insincerity for him. His plenteous, flexible sympathy had
ended by falling into one current with that reflective
analysis which tends to neutralise sympathy. Few men were
able to keep themselves clearer of vices than he; yet he
hated vices midly, being used to think of them less in the
abstract than as a part of mixed human natures having an
individual history, which it was the bent of his mind to
trace with understanding and pity. With the same innate
balance he was fervidly democratic in his feeling for the

*X413
multitude, and yet, through hus affections and imagination,
intensely conservative; voracious of speculations on government
and religion, yet loath to part with long-sanctioned
forms which, for him, were quick with memories and sentiments
that no argument could lay dead. We fall on the
leaning side; and Deronda suspected himself of loving too
well the losing causes of the world. Martyrdom changes
sides, and he was in danger of changing with it, having a
strong repugnance to taking up that clue of success which
the order of the world often forces upon us and makes it
treason against the common weal to reject. And yet his
fear of falling into an unreasoning narrow hatred made a
check for him: he apologised for the heirs of priviledge; he
shrank with dislike from the loser's bitterness and the
denunciatory tone of the unaccepted innovator. A too reflective
and diffusive sympathy was in danger of paralysing
in him that indignation against wrong and that selectness
of fellowship which are the conditons of moral force; and
in the last fewyears of confirmed manhood he had become
so keenly aware of this that what he most longed for was
either some external event, or some inward light, that
would urge him into a definite line of action, and compress
his wandering energy. He was ceasing to care for knowledge
-- he had no ambition for practice -- unless they could
both be gathered up into one current with his emitions;
and he dreaded, as if it were a dwelling@c-place of lost souls,
that dead anatomy of culture which turns the universe into
a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and knows not everything,
but enerything else about everything -- as if one
should be ignorant of nothing concerning the scent of
violets except the scent itself for which one had no nostril.
But how and whence was rhe needed event to come? -- the
influence that would justify partiality, and making him
what he longed to be yet was unable to make himself -- an
organic part of social life, instead of roaming in it like a
yearning disembodied spirit, stirred with a vague social
passion, but without fixed local habitation to render fellowship
real? To make a little difference for the better was
what he was not contented to live without; but how make

*X414
it? It is one thing to see your road, another to cut it. He
found some of the fault in his birth and the way he had
been brought up, which had laid no special demands on
him and given him no fixed relationships except one of a
doubtful kind; but he did not attempt to hide from himself
that he had fallen into a meditative numbness, and was
gliding further and farther from that life of practically
energetic sentiment which he would have proclaimed (if he
had been inclined to proclaim anything) to be the best of
all life, and for himself the only life worth living. He
wanted some way of keeping emotion and its progeny of
sentiments -- which make the savours of life -- substantial
and strong in the face of a reflectivenss that threatened to
nullify all difference. To pound the objects of sentiment
into small dust, uet keep sentiment alive and active, was
something like the famous recipe for making cannon -- to
first take a round hole and then enclose it with iron; whatever
you do keeping fast hold of your round hole. Yet how
distinguish what our will may wisely save in its completeness,
from the heaping of cat-mummies and the expensive
cult of enshrined putrefactions?
  Something like this was the common under-current in
Deronda's mind, while he was reading law, or imperfectly
attending to polite conversation. Meanwhile he had not set
about one function in particular with zeal and steadiness.
Not an admirable experience, to be proposed as an ideal;
but a form of struggle before break of day which some
young men since the patriarch have had to pass through,
with more or less of bruising if not laming.
  I have said that under his calm exterior he had a fervour
which made him easily feel the presence of poetry in everyday
events; and the forms fof the Juden-gasse, rousing the
sense of union with what is remote, set him musing on two
elements of our historic life which that sense raises into the
same region of poetry; -- the faint beginnings of faiths and
institutions, and their obscure lingering decay; the dust
and withered remnants with which they are apt to be
covered, only enhancing for the awakened perception the
impressiveness either of a sublimely penetrating life, as in

*X415
the twin green leaves that will become the sheltering tree,
or of a pathetic inheritance in which all the grandeur and
the glory have become a sorowing memory.
  This imaginative stirring, as he turned out of the Juden-gasse,
and continued to saunter in the warm evening air,
meaning to find his way to the synagogue, neutralised the
repellent effect of certain ugly little incidents on his way.
Turning into an old book-shop to ask the exact time of
service at the synagogue, he was affectionately directed by
a precocious Jewish youth, who entered cordially into his
wanting not the fine new building of the Reformed but
the old Rabbinical school of the orthodox; and then
cheated him like a pure Teuton, only with nore amenity,
in his charge for a book quite out of request as one "nicht
so leicht zu bekommen." Meanwhile at the opposite counter
a deaf and grisly tradesman was casting a flinty look at
certain cards, apparently combining advantages of business
with religion, and shouting proposed to him in Jew-dialect
by a dingy man in a tall coat hanging from neck to
heel, a bag in hand, and a broad low hat surmounting his
chosen nose -- who had no sooner disappeared than another
dingy man of the same pattern issued from the backward
glooms of the shop and also shouted in the same dialect. In
fact, Deronda saw various queer-looking Isrealites not altogether
without guile, and just distinguishable from queer-looking
Christians of the same mixed ˛morale˛. In his
anxiety about Mirah's relatives, he had lately been thinking
of vulgar Jews with a sort of personal alarm. But a little
comparison will often diminish our suprise and disgust at
the aberrations of Jews and other dissidents whose lives do
not offer a consistent or lovely pattern of their creed; and
this evening Deronda, becoming more conscious that the
was falling ibto unfairness and ridiculous exaggeration,
began to use that corrective comparison: he paid his thaler
too much, without prejudice to his interest in the Hebrew
destiny, or his wish to find the ˛Rabbinische˛ ˛Schule˛, which
he arrived at by sunset, and entered with a good congregation
of men.
  He happened to take his seat in a line with an elderly

*X416
man from whom he was distant enough to glance at him
more than once as rather a noticable figure -- his ordinary
clothes, as well as the ˛talith˛ or white blue-fringed kind of
blanket which is the garment of prayer, being much owrn;
while his ample white beard and old felt hat framed a
profile of that fine contour which may as easily be Italian
as Hebrew. He returned Deronda's notice till at last their
eyes met: an undesirable chance with unknown persons
and a reason to Deronda for not looking again; but he
immediately found an open prayer-book pushed towards
him and had to bow his thanks. However, the white
˛talithim˛ had mustered, the reader had moounted to the
˛almemor˛ or platform, and the service began. Deronda, having
looked enough at the German translation of the
Hebrew in the book before him to know that he was chiefly
hearing Psalms and Old Testament passages or phrases,
gave himself up to that strongest effect of chanted liturgies
which is independent of detailed verbal meaning -- like the
effect of an Allegri's ˛Miserere˛ or a Palestrina's ˛Magnificat˛.
The most powerful movement of feeling with a liturgy is
the prayer which seeks for nothing special, but is a yearning
to escape from the limitations of our own weakness and
an invocation of all Good to enter and abide with us; or
else a self-oblivious lifting up of gladness, a ˛Gloria˛ ˛in˛ ˛excelsis˛
that such Good exists; both the yearning and the
exultation gathering their utmost force from the sense of
communion in a form which has expressed them both, for
long generations of struggling fellow-men. The Hebrew
liturgy, like others, has its transitions of litany, lyric, proclamation,
dry statement and blessing; but this evening all
were one for Deronda: the chant of the ˛Chazan's˛ or
Reader's grand wide-ranging voice with its passage from
monotony to sudden cries, the outburst of sweet boys'
voices from the little quire, the devotional swaying of
men's bodies backwards and forwards, the very commonness
of the building and shabbiness of the scene where a
national faith, which had penetrated the thinking of half
the world, and moulded the splendid forms of that world's
religion, was finding a remote, obscure echo -- all were blent

*X417
for him as one expression of a binding history, tragic and
yet glorious. He wondered at the strength of his own feeling;
it seemed beyond the occasion -- what one might
imagine to be a divine influx in the darkness, before there
was any vision to interpret. The whole scene was a coherent
strain, its burthen a passionate regret, which, if he had
known the liturgy for the Day of Reconciliation, he might
have clad in its antithetic burthen: "Happy the eye which
saw all these things; but verily to hear only of them afflicts
our soul. Happy the eye that saw our temple and the joy of
our congregation; but verily to hear only of them afflicts
our soul. Happy the eye that saw the fingers when tuning
every kind of song; but verily to hear only of them afflicts
our soul."
  But with the cessation of the devotional sounds and the
movement of many indifferent faces and vulgar figures
before him there darted into his mind the frigid idea that
he had probably been alone in his feeling, and perhaps the
only person in the congregation for whom the service was
more than a dull routine. There was just time for this
chilling thought before he had bowed to his civil neighbour
and was moving away with the rest -- when he felt a
hand on his arm, and turning with the rather unpleasant
sensation which this abrupt sort of claim is apt to bring, he
saw close to him the white-bearded face of that neighbour,
who said to him in German, "Excuse me, young gentleman
-- allow me -- what is your parentage -- your mother's family
-- her maiden name?"
  Deronda had a strongly resistant feeling: he was inclined
to shake off hastily the touch on his arm; but he managed
to slip it away and said coldly, "I am an Englishman."
  The questioner looked at him dubiously still for an instant,
then just lifted his hat and turned away -- whether
under a sense of having made a mistake ir of having been
repulsed, Deronda was uncertain. In his walk back to the
hotel he tried to still any uneasiness on the subject by
reflecting that he could not have acted differntly. How
could he say that he did not know the name of his
mother's family to that total stranger? -- who indeed had

*X418
taken an unwarrantable liberty in the abruptness of his
question, dictated probably by some fancy of likeness such
as often occurs without real significance. The incident, he
said to himself, was trivial; but whatever import it might
have, his inward shrinking on the occasion was too strong
for him to be sorry that he had cut it short. It was a reason
however for his not mentioning the synagogue to the
Mallingers -- in addition to his usual inclination to reticence
on anything that the baronet would have been likely
to call Quixotic enthusiasm. Hardly any man could be
more good-natured than Sir Hugo; indeed in his kindliness
especially to women, he did actions which others would
have called romantic; but he never took a romantic view of
them, and in general smiled at the introduction of motives
on a grand scale, or of reasons that lay very far off. This
was the point of strongest difference between him and
Deronda, who rarely ate his breakfast without some silent
discursive flight after grounds for filling up his day according
to the practice of his contemporaries.
  This halt at Frankfort was taken on their way home, and
its impressions were kept the more actively vibrating in
him by the duty of caring for Mirah's welfare. That question
about his parentage, which if he had not both inwardly
and outwardly shaken it off as trivial, would have
seemed a threat rather than a promise of revelation, had
reinforced his anxiety as to the effect of finding Mirah's
relatives and his resolve to proceed with caution. If he
made any unpleasant discovery, was he bound to a disclosure
that might cast a new net of trouble around her?
  He had written to Mrs Meyrick to announce his visit at
four o'clock, and he found Mirah seated at work with only
Mrs Meyrick and Mab, the open piano, and all the glorious
company of engravings. The dainty neatness of her hair
and dress, the glow of tranquil happiness in a face where a
painter need have changed nothing if he had wanted to put
it in front of the host singing "peace on earth and goodwill
to men," made a contrast to his first vision of her that was
delightful to Deronda's eyes. Mirah herself was thinking of
it, and immediately on their greeting said --

*X419
  "See how different I am from that miserable creature by
the river] -- all because you found me and brought me to
the very best."
  "It was my good chance to find you," said Deronda. "Any
other man would have been glad to do what I did."
  "That is not the right way of thinking about it," said
Mirah, shaking her head with decisive gravity. "I think of
what really was. It was you, and not another, who found
me, and were good to me."
  "I agree with Mirah," said Mrs Meyrick. "Saint Anybody
is a bad saint to pray to."
  "Besides, Anybody could not have brought me to you,"
said Mirah, smiling at Mrs Meyrick. "And I would rather
be with you than with any one else in the world except my
mother. I wonder if ever a poor little bird, that was lost and
could not fly, was taken and put into a warm nest where there
was a mother and sisters who took to it so that everything
came naturally, as if it had been always there. I hardly
thought before that the world could ever be as happy and
without fear as it is to me now." She looked meditative a
moment, and then said, "Sometimes I am a ˛little˛ afraid."
  "What is it you are afraid of>" said Deronda, with
anxiety.
  "That when I am turning at the corner of a street I may
meet my father. It seems dreadful that I should be afraid
of meeting him. That is my only sorrow," said Mirah,
plaintively.
  "It is surely not very probable," said Deronda, wishing
that it were less so; then, not to let the opportunity escape --
"Would it be a great grief to you now, if you were never to
meet your mother?"
  She did not answer immediately, but meditated again,
with her eyes fixed on the opposite wall. Then she turned
them on Deronda and said firmly, as if she had arrived at
the exact truth, "I want her to know that I have always
loved her, and if she is alive I want to comfort her. She
may be dead. If she were, I should long to know where she
was buried; and to know whether my brother lives to say
˛Kaddish˛ in memory of her. But I will try not to grieve. I

*X420
have thought much for so many years of her being dead.
And I shall have her with me in my mind, as I have always
had. We can never be really parted. I think I have never
sinned against her. I have always tried not to do what
would hurt her. Only she might be sorry that I was not a
good Jewess."
  "In what way are you not a good Jewess?" said Deronda.
  "I am ignorant, and we never observed the laws, but lived
among Christians just as they did. But I have heard my
father laugh at the strictness of the Jews about their food
and all customs, and their not liking Christians. I think my
mother was strict; but she could never want me not to like
those who are better to me than any of my own peo-^cple I
have ever known. I think I could obey in other things that
she wished, but not in that. It is so much easier to me to
share in love than in hatred. I remember a play I read in
German -- since I have been here, it had come into my mind --
where the heroine says something like that."
  "Antigone," said Deronda.
  "Ah, you know it. But I do not believe that my mother
would wish me not to love my best friends. She would be
grateful to them." Here Mirah had turned to Mrs Meyrick,
and with a sudden lighting up of her whole countenance
she said, "Oh, if we ever do meet and know each other as
we are now, so that I could tell what would comfort her -- I
should be so full of blessedness, mu soul would know no
want but to love her]"
  "God bless you, child]" said Mrs Meyrick, the words
escaping involuntarily from her motherly heart. But to
relieve the strain of feeling she looked at Deronda and said,
"It is curious that Mirah, who remembers her mother so
well, it is as if she saw her, cannot recall her brother the
least bit -- except the feeling of having been carried by him
when she was tired, and of his being near her when she was
in her mother's lap. It must be that he was rarely at home.
He was already grown up. It is a pity her brother should be
quite a stranger to her."
  "He is good; I feel sure Ezra is good," said Mirah, eagerly.
"He loved my mother -- he would take care of her. I

*X421
remember more of him than that. I remember my mother's
voice once calling, "Ezra]" and then his answering from the
distance, "Mother]"" -- Mirah had changed her voice a little
in each of these words and had given them a loving intonation --
"and then he came close to us. I feel sure he is good. I
have always taken comfort from that."
  It was impossible to answer this either with agreement or
doubt. Mrs Meyrick and Deronda exchanged a quick
glance: about this brother she felt as painfully dubious as
he did. But Mirah went on, absorbed in her memories --
  "Is it not wonderful how I remember the voices better
than anything else? I think they must go deeper into us
than other things. I have often fancied heaven might be
made of voices."
  "Like your singing -- yes," said Mab, who had hitherto
kept a modest silence, and now spoke bashfully, as was her
wont in the presence of Prince Camaralzaman, -- "Ma, do
ask Mirah to sing. Mr Deronda has not heard her."
  "Would it be disagreeable to you to sing now?" said
Deronda, with a more deferential gentleness than he had
ever been conscious of before.
  "Oh, I shall like it," said Mirah. "My voice has come back
a little with rest."
  Perhaps her ease of manner was due to something more
than the simplicity of her nature. The circumstances of her
life has made her think of everything she did as work
demanded from her, in which affectation had nothing to
do; and she had begun her work before self-consciousness
was born.
  She immediately rose and went to the piano -- a somewhat
worn instrument that seemed to get the better of its
infirmities under the firm touch of her small fingers as she
preluded. Deronda placed himself where he could see her
while she sang; and she took everything as quietly as if she
had been a child going to breakfast.
  Imagine her -- it is always good to imagine a human
creature in whom bodily loveliness seems as properly one
with the entire being as the bodily loveliness of those
wondrous transparent orbs of life that we find in the sea --

*X422
imagine her with her dark hair brushed from her temples,
but yet showing certain tiny rings there which had cunningly
found their own way back, the mass of it hanging
behind just to the nape of the little neck in curly fibres
such as renew themselves at their own will after being
bathed into straightness like that of water-grasses. Then
see the perfect cameo her profile makes, cut in a duskish
shell where by some happy fortune there pierced a gem-like
darkness for the eye and eyebrow; the delicate nostrils
defined enough to be ready for sensitive movements, the
finished ear, firm curves of the chin and neck entering
into the expression of a refinement which was not
feebleness.
  She sang Beethoven's "Per pieta> non dirmi addio," with a
subdued but searching pathos which had that essential of
perfect singing, the making one oblivious of art or manner,
and only possessing one with the song. It was the sort of
voice that gives the impression of being meant like a bird's
wooing for an audience near and beloved. Deronda began
by looking at her, but felt himself presently covering his
eyes with his hand, wanting to seclude the melody in
darkness; then he refrained from what might seem oddity,
and was ready to meet the look of mute appeal which she
turned towards him at the end.
  "I think I never enjoyed a song more than that," he said,
gratefully.
  "You like my singing? I am so glad," she said, with a
smile of delight. "It has been a great pain to me, because it
failed in what it was wanted for. But now we think I can
use it to get my bread. I have really been taught well. And
now I have two pupils, that Miss Meyrick found for me.
They pay me nearly two crowns for their lessons."
  "I think I know some ladies who would find you many
pupils after Christmas," said  Deronda. "You would not mind
singing before any one who wished to hear you?"
  "Oh no, I want to do something to get money. I could
teach reading and speaking, Mrs Meyrick thinks. But if no
one would lear of me, that is difficult." Mirah smiled with
a touch of merriment he had not seen in her before. "I

*X423
daresay I should fimd her poor -- I mean my mother. I
should want to get money for her. And I cannot always live
on charity; though" -- here she turned so as to take all three
of her companions in one glance -- "it is the sweetest charity
in all the world."
  "I should think you can get rich," said Deronda, smiling.
"Great ladies will perhaps like you to teach their daughters.
We shall see. But now, do sing again to us."
  She went on willingly, singing with ready memory various
things by Gordigiani and Schubert; then, when she
lad left the piano, Mab said, entreatingly, "Oh Mirah, if
you would not mind singing the little hymn."
  "It is too childish," said Mirah. "It is like lisping."
  "What is the hymn?" said Deronda.
  "It is the Hebrew hymn she remembers her mother singing
over her when she lay in her cot," said Mrs Meyrick.
  "I should like very much to hear it," said Deronda, "if you
think I am worthy to hear what is so sacred."
  "I will sing it if you like," said Mirah, "but I don't sing
real words -- only here and there a syllable like hers -- the
rest is lisping. Do you know Hebrew? because if you do,
my singing will seem childish nonsense."
  Deronda shook his head. "It will be quite good Hebrew to
me."
  Mirah crossed her little feet and hands in her easiest
attitude, and then lifted up her head at an angle which
seemed to be directed to some invisible face bent over her,
while she sang a little hymn of quaint melancholy intervals,
with syllables that really seemed childish lisping to
her audience; but the voice in which she gave it forth had
gathered even a sweeter, more cooing tenderness than was
heard in her other songs.
  "If I were ever to know the real words, I should still go on
in my old way with them," said Mirah, when she had
repeated the hymn several times.
  "Why not?" said Deronda. "The lisped syllables are very
full of meaning."
  "Yes, indeed," said Mrs Meyrick. "A mother hears something
like a lisp in her children's talk to the very last. Their

*X424
words are not just what everybody else says, though they
may be spelt the same. If I were to live till my Hans got
old, I should still see the boy in him. A mother's love, I
often say, is like a tree that has got all the wood in it, from
the very first it made."
  "Is not that the way with friendship, too?" said Deronda,
smiling. "We must not let mothers be too arrogant."
  The bright little woman shook her head over her darning.
  "It is easier to find an old mother than an old friend.
Friendships begin with liking or gratitude -- roots that can
be pulled up. Mother's love begins deeper down."
  "Like what you were saying about the influence of voices,"
said Deronda, looking at Mirah. "I don't think your hymn
would have had more expression for me if I had known the
words. I went to the synagogue at Frankfort before I came
home, and the service impressed me just as much as if I had
followed the words -- perhaps more."
  "Oh, was it great to you? Did it go to your heart?" said
Mirah, eagerly. "I thought none but our people would feel
that. I thought it was all shut away like a river in a deep
valley, where only heaven saw -- I mean --" she hesitated,
feeling that she could not disentangle her thought from its
imagery.
  "I understand," said Deronda. "But there is not really such
a seperation -- deeper down, as Mrs Meyrick says. Our
religion is chiefly a Hebrew religion; and since Jews are
men, their religious feelings must have much in common
with those of other men -- hust as their poetry, though in
one sense peculier, has a great deal in common with the
poetry of other nations. Still it is to be expected that a Jew
would feel the forms of his people's religion more than one
of another race -- and yet " -- here Deronda hesitated in his
turn -- "that is perhaps not always so."
  "Ah no," said Mirah, sadly. "I have seen that. I have seen
them mock. Is it not like mocking your parents? -- like
rejoicing in your parents' shame?"
  "Some minds naturally rebel against whatever they were
brought up in, and like the opposite: they see the faults in
what is nearest to them," said Deronda, apologetically.

*X425
  "But you are not like that," said Mirah, looking at him fixwith unconscious fixedness.
  "No, I think not," said Deronda; "but you know I was not
brought up as a Jew."
  "Ah, I am always forgetting," said Mirah, with a look of
disappointed recollection, and slightly blushing.
  Deronda also felt rather embarrassed, and there was an
awkward pause, which he put an end to by saying playfully --
  "Whichever way we take it, we have to tolerate each
other; for if we all went in opposition to our teaching, we
must end in difference, just the same."
  "To be sure. We should go on for ever in zigzags," said
Mrs Meyrick. "I think it is very weak-minded to make your
creed up by the rule of contrary. Still one may honour
one's parents, without following their notions exactly, any
more than the exact cut of their clothing. My father was a
Scotch Calvinist and my mother was a French Calvinist: I
am neither quite Scotch, nor quite French, nor two Calvinists
rolled into one, yet I honour my parents' memory."
  "But I could not make myself not a Jewess," said Mirah,
insistently, "even if I changed my belief."
  "No, my dear. But if Jews and Jewesses went on changing
their religion, and making no difference between themselves
and Christians, there would come a time when there
would be no Jews to be seen," said Mrs Meyrick, taking that
consummation very cheerfully.
  "Oh, please not to say that," said Mirah, the tears gathering.
"It is the first unkind thing you ever said. I will not
begin that. I will never separate myself from my mother's
people. I was forced to fly from my father; but if he came
back in age and weakness and want, and needed me, should
I say, "This is not my father?" If he had shame, I must
share it. It was he who was given to me for my father, and
not another. And so it is with my people. I will always be a
Jewess. I will love Christians when they are good, like you.
But I will always cling to my people. I will always worship
with them."
  As Mirah had gone on speaking she had become possessed
with a sorrowful passion -- fervent, not violent.

*X426
Holding her little hands tightly clasped and looking at Mrs
Meyrick with beseeching, she seemed to Deronda a personification
of that spirit which impelled men after a long
inheritance of professed Catholicism to leave wealth and
high place, and risk their lives in flight, that they might
join their own people and say, "I am a Jew."
  "Mirah, Mirah, my dear child, you mistake me]" said Mrs
Meyrick, alarmed. "God forbid I should want you to do
anything against your conscience. I was only saying what
might be if the world went on. But I had better have left
the world alone, and not wanted to be over-wise. Forgive
me, come] we will not try to take you from anybody you
feel has more right to you."
  "I would do anything else for you. I owe you my life," said
Mirah, not yet quiet calm.
  "Hush, hush, now," said Mrs Meyrick. "I have been punished
enough for wagging my tongue foolishly -- making
an almanac for the Millennium, as my husband used to say."
  "But everything in the world must come to an end some
time. We must bear to think of that," said Mab, unable to
hold her peace on this point. She had already suffered from
a bondage of tongue which treatened to become severe if
Mirah where to be too much indulged in this inconvenient
susceptibility to innocent remarks.
  Deronda smiled at the irregular, blonde face, brought
into strange contrast by the side of Mirah's -- smiled, Mab
thought, rather sarcastically as he said, "That prospect of
everything coming to an end will not guide us far in
practice. Mirah's feelings, she tells us, are concerned with
what is."
  Mab was confused and wished she had not spoken, since
Mr Deronda seemed to think that she had found fault with
Mirah; but to have spoken once is a tyrannous reason for
speaking again, and she said --
  "I only meant that we must have courage to hear things,
else there is hardly anything we can talk about." Mab felt
herself unanswerable here, inclining to the opinion of
Socrates: "What motive has a man to live, if not for the
pleasures of discourse?"

*X427
  Deronda took his leave soon after, and when Mrs
Meyrick went outside with him to exchange a few words
about Mirah, he said, "Hans is to share my chambers when
he comes at Christmas."
  "You have written to Rome about that?" said Mrs Meyrick
he face lighting up. "How very food and thoughtful
of you] You mentioned Mirah, then?"
  "Yes, I referred to her. I concluded he knew everything
from you>"
  "I must confess my folly. I have not yet written a word
about her. I have always been meaning to do it, and yet
have ended my letter without saying a word. And I told the
girls to leave it to me. However] -- Thank you a thousand
times."
  Deronda divined something of what was in the mother's
mind, and his divination reinforced a certain enxiety
already present in him. His inward colloquy was not soothing.
He said to himself that no man could see this exquisite
creature without feeling it possible to fall in love with her;
but all the fervour of his nature was engaged on the side of
precaution. There are personages who feel themselves
tragic because they march into a palpable morass, dragging
another with them, and then cry out against all the gods.
Deronda's mind was strongly set against imitating them.
  "I have my hands on the reins now," he thought, "and I
will not drop the,. I shall go there as little as possible."
  He saw the reasons acting themselves out before him.
How could he be Mirah's guardian and claim to unite with
Mrs Meyrick, to whose charge he had committed her, if he
showed himself as a lover -- whom she did not love -- whom
she would not marry? And if he encouraged any germ of
lover's feeling in himself it would lead up to that issue.
Mirah's was not a nature that would bear dividing against
itself; and even if love won her consent to marry a man
who was not of her race and religion, she would never be
happy in acting against that strong native bias which
would still reign in her conscience as remorse.
  Deronda saw these consequences as we see any danger of
marring our own work well begun. It was a delight to have

*X428
rescued this child acquainted with sorrow, and to think of
having placed her little feet in protected paths. The
creature we help to savem rough only a half-reared linnet,
bruised and lost by the wayside -- how we watch and fence
it, and dote on its signs of recovery] Our pride becomes
loving, our self is a not-self for whose sake we become
virtuous, when we set to some hidden work of reclaiming a
life from misery and look for our triumph in the secret joy
-- "This one is the better for me."
  "I would as soon hold out my finger to be bitten off as set
about spoiling her peace," said Deronda. "It was one of the
rarest bits of fortune that I should have friends like
the Meyricks to place her with -- generous, delicate friends
without any loftiness in their ways, so that her dependence
on them is not only safety but happiness. There could be no
refuge to replace that, if it were broken up. But what is the
use of my taking the vows and settling everything as it
should be, if that marplot Hans comes and upsets it all?"
  Few things were more likely. Hans was made for mishaps:
his very limbs seemed more breakable than other
people's -- his eyes more of a resort for uninvited flies and
other irritating guests. But it was impossible to forbid
Han's coming to London. He was intending to get a studio
there and make it his chief home; and to propose that he
should defer coming on some ostensible ground, concealing
the real motive of winning time for Mirah's position to
become more confirmed and independent, was impracticable.
Having no other resource Deronda tried to believe
that both he and Mrs Meyrick were foolishly troubling
themselves about one of those endless things called probabilities, which never
occur; but he did not quite succeed in
his trying; on the contrary, he found himself going inwardly
through a scene where on the first discovery of
Han's inclination, he gave him a very energetic warning --
suddenly checked, however, by the suspicion of personal
feeling that his warmth might be creating in Hans. He
could come to no result, but that the position was peculiar,
and that he could make no further provision against
dangers until theu came nearer. Tosave an unhappy Jewess

*X429
from drowning herself, would not have seemed a startling
variation among police reports; but to discover in her so
rare a creature as Mirah, was an exceptional event which
might well bring exceptional consequences. Deronda would
not let himself for a moment dwell on any supposition that
the consequences might enter deeply into his own life.
The image of Mirah had never yet had that penetrating
radiation which would have been given to it by the idea of
her loving him. When this sort of effluence is absent from
the fancy (whether from the fact or not) a man may go far
in devotedness without perturbation.
  As to the search for Mirah's mother and brother,
Deronda took what she had said to-day as a warrant for
deferring any immediate measures. His conscience was not
quite easy in this desire for delay, any more than it was
quite easy inhis not attempting to learn the truth about
his own mother: in both cases he felt that here might be
an unfilled duty to a parent, but in both cases there was an
overpowering repugnance to the possible truth, which
threw a turning weight into the scale of argument.
  "At least, I will look about," was his final determination. "I
may find some special Jewish machinery. I will wait till
after Christmas."
  What should we all do without the calendar, when we
want to put off a disagreeable duty? The admirable arrangements
of the solar system, by which our time is measured,
always supply us with a term before which it is hardly worth
while to set about anything we are disinclined to.

*X430
*C33

"No man," says a Rabbi, by way if indisputable instance, "may
turn the bones of his father and mother into spoons" -- sure that
his hearers felt the checks against that form of economy. The
market for spoons has never expanded enough for any one to
say, "Why not?" and to argue that human progress lies in usch
an application of material. The only check to be alleged is a
sentiment, which will coerce none who do not hold that sentiments
are the better part of the world's wealth.

DERONDA meanwhile took a less fashionable form of
exercise than riding in Rotten Row. He went often rambling
in those parts of London which are most inhabited
by common Jews: he walked tothe synagogues at times of
service, he looked into shops, he observed faces: -- a process
not very promising of particular discovery. Why did he not
address himself to an influential Rabbi or other member of
a Jewish community, to consult on the chances of finding a
mother named Cohen, with a son named Ezra, and a lost
daughter named Mirah? He thought of doing so -- after
Christmas. The fact was, notwithstanding all his sense of
poetry in common things, Deronda, where a keen personal
interest was aroused, could not, more than the rest of us,
continuously escape suffering from the pressure of that
hard unaccommodating Actual, which has never consulted
out taste and is entirely unselect. Enthisiasm, we know,
dwells at ease among ideas, tolerates garlic breathed in the
middle ages, and sees no shabbiness in the official trappings
of classic processions; it gets squeamish when ideals press
upon it as something warmly incarnate, and can hardly
face them without fainting. Lying dreamily in a boat,
imagining one's self in quest of a beautiful maiden's relatives
in Cordova elbowed by Jews in the time of Ibn-Gebirol,
all the physical incidents can be borne without
shock. Or if the scenery of St Mary E
Axe and Whitechapel
were imaginatively transported to the borders of the Rhine
at the end of the eleventh century, when in the ears listening
for the signals of the Messiah, the Hep] Hep] Hep]

*X431
of the Crusaders came like the bay of bloodhounds; and in
the presence of those devilish missionaries with sword and
firebrand the crouching figure of the reviled Jew turned
round erect, heroic, flashing with sublime constancy in the
face of torture and death -- what would the dingy shops
and unbeautiful faces signify to the thrill of comtemplative
emotion? But the fervour of sympathy with which we
contemplate a grandiose martyrdom is feeble compared
with the enthusiasm that keeps unslaked where there is no
danger, no challenge -- nothing but impartial mid-day falling
on commonplace, perhaps half-replusive, objects which
are really the beloved ideas made flesh. Here undoubtedly
lies the chief poetic energy: -- in the force of imagination
that pierces or exalts the solid fact, instead of floating
among cloud-pictures. To glory in a prophetic vision of
knowledge covering the earth, is an easier exercise of believing
imagination than to see its beginning in newspaper
placards, staring at you from a bridge beyond the cornfields;
and it might well happen to most of us dainty people
that we were in the thick of the battle of Armageddon
without being aware of anything more than the annoyance
of a little explosive smoke and struggling on the ground
immediately about us.
  It lay in Deronda's nature usually to contemn the feeble,
festidious sympathy which shrinks from the broad life of
mankind; but now, with Mirah before him as a living
reality whose experience he had to care for, he saw every
common Jew and Jewess in the light of comparison with
her, and had a presentiment of the collision between her
idea of the unknown mother and brother and the discovered
fact -- a presentiment all the keener in him because of a
suppressed consciousness that a not unlike possibility of
collision might lie hidden in his own lot. Not that he would
have looked with more complacency of expectation at
wealthy Jews, outdoing the lords of the Philistines in their
sports; but since there was no likelihood of Mirah's friends
being found among that closs, their habits did not immediately
affect him. In this mood he rambled, without expectation
of a more pregnant result than a little preparation of

*X432
his own mind, perhaps for future theorising as well as
practice -- very mich as if, Mirah being related to Welsh
miners, he had gone to look more closely at the ways of
those people, not without wishing at the same time to get a
little light of detail on the history of Strikes.
  He really did not long to find anybody in particular; and
when, as his habit was, he looked at the name over a shop-door,
he was well content that it was not Ezra Cohen. I
confess, he particularly desired that Ezra Cohen should not
keep a shop. Wishes are held to be ominous; according to
which belief the order of the world is so arranged that if
you have an impious objection to a squint, your offspring is
the more likely to be born with one; also, that if you
happened to desire a squint, you would not get it. This
desponding view of probability the hopeful entirely reject,
taking their wishes as good and sufficient security for all
kinds of fulfilment. Who is absolutely neutral? Deronda
happening one morning to turn into a little side street out
of the noise and obstructions of Holborn, felt the scale dip
on the desponding side.
  He was rather tired of the streets and had paused to hail
a hanson cab which he saw coming, when his attention
was caught by some fine old clasps in chased silver displayed
in the window at his right hand. His first thought
was that Lady Mallinger, who had a strictly Protestant
taste for such Catholic spoils, might like to have these
missal-clasps turned into a bracelet; then his eyes travelled
over the other contents of the window, and he saw that the
shop was that kind of pawnbroker's where the lead is given
to jewellery, lace, and all equivocal objects introduced as
˛bric-a-brac˛. A placard in one corner announced -- ˛Watches˛
˛and˛ ˛Jewellery˛ ˛exchanged˛ ˛and˛ ˛repaired˛. But his survey had
been noticed from within, and a figure appeared at the
door, looking round at him, and saying, in a tone of cordial
encouragement, "Good day, sir," The instant was enough for
Deronda to see the face, unmistakably Jewish, belonged to
a young man about thirty; and wincing from the shop-keeper's
persuasiveness that would probably follow, he had
no sooner returned the "good day", than he passed to the

*X433
other side of the street and beckoned to the cabman to
draw up there. From that station he saw the name over the
shop-window -- ˛Ezra˛ ˛Cohen˛.
  There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered above
shop-windows, but Deronda had not seen them. Probably
the young man interested in a possible customer was Ezra
himself; and he was about the age to be expected in
Mirah's brother, who was grown up while she was still a
little child. But Deronda's first endeavour as he drove
homewards was to convince himself that there was not the
slightest warrantable presumption of this Ezra being
Mirah's brother; and next, that even if, in spite of good
reasoning, he turned out to be that brother, while on inquiry
the mother was found to be dead, it was not his --
Deronda's -- duty to make known the discovery to Mirah.
In inconvenient disturbance of this conclusiob there came
his lately-acquired knowledge that Mirah would have a
religious desire to know of her mother's death, and also to
learn whether her brother were living. How far was he
justified in determining another life by his own notions?
Was it not his secret complaint against the way in which
others had ordered his own life, that he had not open
daylight on all its relations, so that he had not, like other
men, the full guidance of primary duties?
  The immediate relief from this inward debate was the
reflection that he had not yet made any real discovery, and
that by looking into the facts more closely he should be
certified that there was no demand on him for any decision
whatever. He intended to return to that shop as soon as he
could conveniently, and buy the clasps for Lady Mallinger.
But he was hindered for several days by Sir Hugo, who,
about to make an after-dinner speech on a burning topic,
wanted Deronda to forage for him on the legal part of the
question, besides wasting time every day on argument
which always ended in a drawn battle. As on many other
questions, they held different sides; but Sir Hugo did not
mind this, and when Deronda put his point well said, with
a mixture of satisfaction and regret --
  "Confound it, Dan] why don't you make an opportunity

*X434
of saying these things in public? You're wrong, you know.
You won't succeed. You've got the massive sentiment -- the
heavy artillery of the country against you. But it's all the
better ground for a young man to display himself on.
When I was your age, I should have taken it. And it would
be quite as well for you to be in opposition to me here and
there. It would throw you more into relief. If you would
seize an occasion of this sort to make an impression, you
might be in Parliament in no time. And you know that
would gratify me."
  "I am sorry not to do what would gratify you, sir," said
Deronda. "But I cannot persuade myself to look at politics
as a profession."
  "Why not? If a man is not born into public life by his
position in the country, there's no way for him but to
embrace it by his own efforts. The business of the country
must be done -- her Majesty's Government carried on, as
the Old Duke said. And it never could be, my boy, if
everybody looked at politics as if they were prophecy, and
demanded an inspired vocation. If you are to get into
Parliament, it won't do to sit still and wait for a call either
from heaven or constituents."
  "I don't want to make a living out of opinions," said
Deronda: "especially out of borrowed opinions. Not that I
mean to blame other men. I daresay many better fellows
than I don't mind getting on to a platform to praise themselves,
and giving their word of honour for a party."
  "I'll tell you waht, Dan," said Sir Hugo, "a man who sets
his face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered,
impracticable fellow. There's a bad style of humbug,
but there is also a good style -- one that oils the
whees and makes progress possible. If you are to rule men,
you must rule them through their own ideas; and I agree
with the Archbishop at Naples who had a St Januarius
procession against the plague. It's no use having an Order
in Council against popular shallowness. There is no action
possible without a little acting."
  "One may be obliged to give way to an occasional necessity,"
said Deronda. "But it is one thing to say, #In this

*X435
partilcular case I am forced to put on this foolscap and grin,"
and another to buy a pocket foolscap and practise myself in
grinning. I can't see any real public expediency that does
not keep an ideal before it which makes a limit of deviation
from the direct path. But if I were to set up for a public
man I might mistake my own success for public expediency."
  It was after this dialogue, which was rather jarring to
him, that Deronda set out on his meditated second visit to
Ezra Cohen's. He entered the street at the end opposite to
the Holborn entrance, and an inward reluctance slackened
his pace, while his thoughts were transferring what he had
just been saying about public expediency to the entirely
private difficulty which brought him back again into this
unattractive thoroughfare. It might soon become an immediate
practical question with him how far he could call
it a wsie expediency to conceal the fact of close kindred.
Such questions turning up constantly in life are often decided
in a rough and ready way; and to many it will appear
an over-refinement in Deronda that he should make any
great point of a matter confined to his own knowledge. But
we have seen the reasons why he had come to regard
concealment as a bane of life, and the necessity of concealment
as a mark by which lines of action were to be
avoided. The prospect of being urged against the confirmed
habit of his mind was naturally grating. He even paused
here and there before the most plausible shop-windows for
a gentleman to look into, half inclined to decide that he
would not increase his knowledge about that modern Ezra,
who was certainly not a leader among his people -- a hesitation
which proved how, in a man much given to reasoning
a bare possibility may weigh more than the best-clad likelihood;
for Deronda's reasoning had decided that all likelihood
was against this man's being Mirah's brother.
  One of the shop-windows he paused before was that of a
second-hand book-shop, where, on a norrow table outside,
the liturature of the ages was represented in judicious
mixture, from the immortal verse of Homer to the mortal
prose of the railway novel. That the mixture was judicious
was apparent from Deronda's finding in it something that

*X436
he wanted -- namely, that wonderful bit of autobiography,
the life of the Polish Jew, Salomon Maimon; which, as he
could easily slip it into his pocket, he took from its place,
and entered the shop to pay for, expecting to see behind
the counter a grimy personage showing that ˛nonchalance˛
about sales which seems to belong universally to the second-hand
book-business. In most other trades you find generous
men who are anxious to sell you their wares for your own
welfare; but even a Jew will not urge Simson's Euclid on
you with an affectionate assurance that you will have
pleasure in reading it, and that he wishes he had twenty
more of the article, so much is it in request. One is led to
fear that a second-hand bookseller may belong to that
unhappy class of men who have no belief in the good of
what they get their living by, yet keep conscience enough
to be morose rather than unctuous in their vocation.
  But instead of the ordinary tradesman, he saw, on the
dark background of books in the long narrow shop, a figure
that was somewhat startling in its unusualness. A man in
threadbare clothing, whose age was difficult to guess -- from
the dead yellowish flatness of the flesh, something like an
old ivory carving -- was seated on a stool against some bookshelves
that projected beyond the short counter, doing nothing
more remarkable than reading the yesterday's ˛Times˛;
but when he let the paper rest on his lap and looked at the
incoming customer, the thought glanced through Deronda
that precisely such a physiognomy as that might possibly
have been seen in a prophet of the Exile, or in some New
Hebrew poet of the medieval time. It was a finely typical
Jewish face, wrought into intensity of expression apparently
by a strenuous eager experience in which all the
satisfaction had been indirect and far off, and perhaps by
some bodily suffering also, which involved that absence of
ease in the present. The features were clear-cut, not large;
the brow not high but broad, and fully defined by the crisp
black hair. It might never have been a particularly handsome face,
but it must always have been forcible; and now
with its dark, far-off gaze, and yellow pallor in relief on the
gloom of the backward shop, one might have imagined

*X437
*X438
moving further off as he held out the little book, the
stranger said in a tone of distant civility, "I believe Mr Ram
will be satisfied with half-a-crown, sir."
  The effect of this change of Deronda -- he afterwards
smiled when he recalled it -- was oddly embarrassing and
humiliating, as if some high dignitary had found him
deficient and given him his ˛conge<˛. There was nothing
further to be said, however: he paid his half-crown and
carried off his ˛Salomon˛ ˛Maimon's˛ ˛Lebensgescichte˛ with a
mere "good morning."
  He felt some vexation at the sudden arrestof the interview,
and the apparent prohibition that she should know
more of this man, who was certainly something out of the
common way -- as different probably as a Jew could well be
from Ezra Cohen, through whose door Deronda was presently
entering, and whose flourishing face glistening on the
way to fatness was hanging over the counter in negotiation
with someone on the other side of the partition, concerning
two plated stoppers and three teaspoons, which lay spread
before him. Seeing Deronda enter, he called out "Mother]
Mother]" and then with a familiar nod and smile, said,
"Coming, sir -- coming directly."
  Deronda could not help looking towards the door from
the back with some anxiety, which was not soothed when
he saw a vigorous woman beyond fifty enter and approach
to serve him. Not that there was anything very repulsive
about her: the worst that could be said was that she had
that look of having made her toilet with little water, and
by twlight, which is common to unyouthful people of her
class, and of having presumably slept in her large earrings,
if not in her rings and necklace. In fact, what caused a
sinking of heart in Deronda was, her not being so coarse
and ugly as to exclude the idea of her being Mirah's
mother. Any one who has looked at a face to try and discern
signs of known kinship in it will understand his process of
conjecture -- how he tried to think away the fat which had
gradually disguised the outlines of youth, and to discern
what one may call the elmentary expressions of the face.
He was sorry to see no absolute negative to his fears. Just

*X439
as it was conceivable that this Ezra, brought up to trade,
might resemble the scapegrace father in everything but his
knowledge and talent, so it was not impossible that this
mother might have had a lovely refined daughter whose
type of feature and expression was like Mirah's. The eyebrows
had a vexatious similarity of line; and who shall
decide how far a face may be masked when the uncherishing
years have thrust it far onward in the ever new procession
of youth and age? The good-humour of the glance
remained and shone out in a motherly way at Deronda, as
she said, in a mild guttural time --
  "How can I serve you, sir?"
  "I should like to look at the silver clasps in the window,"
said Deronda; "The larger ones, please, in the corner there."
  They were not quite easy to get at from the mother's
station, and the son seeing this called out, "I'll reach 'em,
mother; I'll reach 'em," running forward with alacrity, and
then handing the clasps to Deronda with the smiling remark --
  "Mother's too proud: she wants to do everything herself.
That's why I called her to wait on you, sir. When there's a
particular gentleman customer, sir, I daren't do any other
than call her. But I can't let her do herself a mischief with
stretching."
  Here Mr Cohen made way again for his parent, who
gave a little guttural amiable laugh while she looked at
Deronda, as much as to say, "This boy will be at his jokes,
but you see he's the best son in the world;" and evidently
the son enjoyed pleasing her, though he also wished to
convey an apology to his distinguished customer for not
giving him the advantage of his own exclusive attention.
  Deronda began to examine the clasps as if he had many
points to observe before he could come to a decision.
  "They are only three guineas, sir," said the mother, encouragingly.
  "First-rate workmanship, sir -- worth twice the money;
only I got 'em a bargain from Cologne," said the son,
parenthetically, from a distance.
  Meanwhile two new customers entered, and the repeated

*X440
caal, "Addy]" brought from the back of the shop a group
that Deronda turned frankly to stare at, felling sure that
the stare would be held complimentary. The group consisted
of a black-eyed young woman who carried a black-eyed
little one, its head already well-covered with black
curls, and deposited it on the counter, from which station it
looked round with even more than the usual intelligence of
babies; also a robust boy of six and a younger girl, both
the black eyes and black-ringed hair -- looking more
Semitic than their parents, as the puppy lions show the
spots of far-off progenitors. The young woman answering
to "Addy" -- a sort of paroquet in a bright blue dress, with
coral necklace and earrings, her hair set up in a huge bush
-- looked as complacently lively and unrefined as her husband;
and by a certain difference from the mother deepened
in Deronda the unwelcome impression that the latter
was not so utterly common a Jewess as to exclude her being
the mother of Mirah. While that thought was glancing
through his mind, the boy had run forward into the shop
with an energetic stamp, and setting himself about four
feet from Deronda, with his hands in the pockets of his
miniature knickerbockers, looked at him with a precocious
air of survey. Perhaps it was chiefly with a diplomatic
design to linger and ingratiate himself that Deronda patted
the boy's head, saying --
  "What is your name, sirrah?"
  "Jacob Alexander Cohen," said the small man, with much
ease and distinctness.
  "You are not named after your father, then?"
  "No; after my grandfather. He sells knives and razors
and scissors -- my grandfather does," said Jacob, wishing to
impress the stranger with that high connection. "He gave
me this knife." Here a pocket-knife was drawn forth, and
the small fingers, both naturally and artificially dark,
opened two blades and a cork-screw with much quickness.
  "Is not that a dangerous plaything?" said Deronda, turning
to the grandmother.
"˛He'll˛ never hurt himself, bless you]" said she, contemplating
her grandson with placid rapture.

*X441
  "Have ˛you˛ got a knife?" says Jacob, coming closer. His
small voice was hoarse in its glibness, as if it belonged to an
aged commercial soul, fatigued with bargaining through
many generations.
  "Yes. Do you want to see it?" said Deronda, taking a small
penknife from his waistcoat-pocket.
  Jacob seized it immediately and retreated a little, holding
the two knives in his palms and bending over them in
meditative comparison. By this time the other clients were
gone, and the whole family had gathered to the spot,
centring their attention on the marvellous Jacob: the father,
mother, and grandmother behind the counter, with baby
held staggering thereon, and the little girl in front leaning at
her brother's elbow, to assist him in looking at the knives.
  "Mine's the best," said Jacob, at last, returning Deronda's
knife, as if he had been entertaining the idea of ecange
and had rejected it.
  Father and mother laughed aloud with delight. "You
won't find Jacob choosing the worst," said Mr Cohen, winking,
with much confidence in the customer's admiration.
Deronda, looking at the grandmother, who had only an
inward silent laugh, said --
  "Are these the only grandchildren you have?"
  "All. This is my only son," she answered, in a communicative
tone, Deronda's glance and manner as usual conveying
the impression of sympathetic interest -- which on this
occasion answered his purpose well. It seemed to come
naturally enough that he should say --
  "And you have no daughter?"
  There was an instantaneous change in the mother's face.
Her lips closed more firmly, she looked down, swept her
hands outward on the counter, and finally turned her back
on Deronda to examine some Indian handkerchiefs that
hung in pawn behind her. Her son gave a significant
glance, set up his shoulders an instant and just put his
finger to his lips, -- then said quickly, "I think you're a firstrate
gentleman in the city, sir, if I may be allowed to guess."
  "No," said Deronda, with a preoccupied air, "I have nothing
to do with the city."

*X442
  "That's a bad job. I thought you might be the young
principal of a first-rate firm," said Mr Choen, wishing to
make amends for the check on his customer's natural
desire to know more of him and his. "But you understand
silver-work, I see."
  "A little," said Deronda, taking up the clasps a moment
and laying them down again. That unwelcome bit of circumstantial
evidence had made his mind busy with a plan
which was certainly more like acting than anything he had
been aware ofin his own conduct before. But the bare
possibility that more knowledge might nuffiy the evidence,
now overpowered the inclination to rest in uncertainty.
  "To tell you the truth," he went on, "my errand is not so
much to buy as to borrow. I daresay you go into rather
heavy transactions occasionally."
  "Well, sir, I've accommodated gentlemen of distinction --
I'm proud to say it. I wouldn't exchange my business with
any in the world. There's none more honourable, nor more
chairitable, nor more necessary for all classes, from the good
lady who wants a little of the ready for the baker, to a
gentleman like yourself, sir, who may want it for amusement.
I like my business, I like my street, and I like my
shop. I wouldn't have it a door further down. And I
wouldn't be without a pawn-shop, sir, to be the Lord
Mayor. It puts you in connection with the world at large. I
say it's like the Government revenue -- it embraces the
brass as well as the gold of the country. And a man who
doesn't get money, sir, can't accommodate. Now what can I
do for ˛you˛, sir?"
  If an amiable self$atisfaction is the mark of earthly bliss,
Solomon in all his glory was a pitiable mortal compared with
Mr Cohen -- clearly one of those persons who, being in
excellent spirits about themselves, are willing to cheer
strangers by letting them know it. While he was delivering
himself with lively rapidity, he took the baby from his wife
and holding it on his arm presented his features to be
explored by its small fists. Deronda, not in a cheerful mood,
was rashly pronouncing this Ezra Cohen to be the most
unpoetic Jew he had ever met with in books or life: his
*X443
phraseology was as little as possible like that of the Old
Testament; and no shadow of a Suffering Race distinguished
his vulgarity of soul from that of a prosperous pink-and-white
huckster of the purest English lineage. It is naturally a
Christian feeling that a Jew ought not to be conceited.
However, this was no reason for not presevering in his project,
and he answered at once in advenurous ignorance of
technicalities --
  "I have a fine diamond ring to offer as security -- not with
me at this moment, unfortunately, for I am not in the habit
of wearing it. But I will come again this evening and bring it
with me. Fifty pounds at once would be a convenience to me."
  "Well, you know, this evening is the Sabbath, young
gentleman," said Cohen, "and I go to the ˛Shool˛. The shop
will be closed. But accommodation is a work of charity; if
you can't get here before, and are any ways pressed -- why,
I'll look at your diamond. You're perhaps from the West
End - a longish drive?"
  "Yes; and your Sabbath begins early at this season. I could
be here by five -- will that do?" Deronda had not been
without hope that by asking to come on a Friday evening he
might get a better opportunity of observing points in the
family character, and might even be able to put sone decisive
question.
  Cohen assented; but here the marvellous Jacob, whose
˛physique˛ supported a precocity that would have shattered a
Gentille of his years, showed that he had been listening with
much comprehension by saying, "You are coming again.
Have you got any more knives at home?"
  "I think I have one," said Deronda, smiling down at him.
  "Has it two blades anda hook -- and a white handle like
that?" said Jacob, pointing to the waistcoat-pocket.
  "I daresay it has."
  "Do you like a cork-screw?" said Jacob, exhibiting that article
in his own knife again, and looking up with serious inquiry.
  "Yes," said Deronda, experimentally.
  "Bring you knife the, and we'll swop," said Jacob, returning
the knife to his pocket, and stamping about with the
sense that he had concluded a good transaction.

*X444
  The grandmother had now recovered her usual manners,
and the whole family watched Deronda radiantly when he
caressingly lifted the little girl, to whom he had not hitherto
given attention, and seating her on the counter, asked for her
name also. She looked at him in silence, and put her fingers
to her gold earrings, which he did not seem to have noticed
  "Adelaide Rebekah is her name," said her mother, proudly.
"Speak to the gentleman, lovey."
  "Shlav'm Shabbes fyock on," said Aidelaide Rbekah.
  "SHer Sabbath frock, she means," said her father, in
explanation.
  "She'll have her Sabbath frock on this evening."
  "And will youlet me see you in it, Adelaide?" said
Deronda, with that gentle intonation which came very easily
to him.
  "Say yes, lovey -- yes, if you please, sir," said her mother,
enchanted with this handsome young gentleman, who appreciated
remarkable children.
  "And will you give me a kiss this evening?" said Deronda,
with a hand on each of her little brown shoulders.
  Adelaide Rebekah (her miniature crinoline and monumental
features corresponded with the combination of her
names) immediately put up her lips to pay the kiss in
advance; whereupon her father, rising into still more glowing
satisfaction with the general meritoriousness of his circumstances,
and with the stranger who was an admiring
witness, said cordially --
  "You see there's somebody will be disappointed if you
don't come this evening, sir. You won't mind sitting down in
our family place and waiting a bit for me, if I'm not in when
you come, sir? I'll stretch a point to accommodate a gent of
your sort. Bring the diamond, and I'll see what I can do for
you."
  Deronda thus left the most favourable impression behind
him, as a preparation for more easy intercourse. But for his
own part those amenities had been carried on under the
heaviest spirits. If there were really Mirah's relatives, he
could not imagine that ever her fervid filial piety could give
the reunion with them any sweetness beyond such as could

*X445
be found in the strict fulfilment of a painful duty, What did
this vaunting brother need? And with the most favourable
supposition about the hypothetic mother, Deronda shrank
from the image of a first meeting between her and Mirah,
and still more from the idea of Mirah's domestication with
this family. He took refuge in disbelief. To find an Ezra
Cohen when the name was running in your head was no
more extraordinary than to find a Josiah Smith under like
circumstances; and as to the coincidence about the daughter,
it would probably turn out to be a difference. If, however,
further knowledge confirmed the more undesirable conclusion,
what would be wise expediecy? -- to try and determine
the best consequences by concealment, or to brave other
consequences for the sake of that openness which is the
sweet fresh air of our moral life.

*C34

WHEN Deronda arrived at five o'clock, the shop was closed
and the door was opened for him by the Christian servant.
When she showed him into the room behind the shop he
was surprised at the prettiness of the scene. The house was
old, amd rather extensive at the back: probably the large
room he now entered was gloomy by daylight, but now it
was agreeably lit by a fine old brass lamp with seven oil-lights
hanging about the snow-white cloth spread on the
central table. The ceiling and walls were smoky, and all the

*X448
gentleman, who apparently supposed that redemption was a
satisfaction to pawnbrokers. He took the ring, examined and
returned it, saying with indifference, "Good, good. We'll talk
of it after our meal. Perhaps you'll join us, if you've no
objection. Me and my wife 'll feel honoured, and so will
mother: won't you, mother?"
  The invitation was doubly echoed, and Deronda gladly
accepted it. All now turned and stood round the table. No
dish was at present seen except one covered with a napkin;
and Mrs Cohen had placed a china bowl near her husband
that he might wash his hands in it. But after putting on his
hat again, he paused, and called in a loud voice, "Mordecai]"
  Can this be part of the religious ceremony? thought
Deronda, not knowing what might be expected of the
ancient hero. But he heard a "Yes" from the next room,
which made him look towards the open door; and there, to
his astonishment, he saw the figure of the enigmatic Jew
whom he had this morning met with in the book-shop.
Their eyes met, and Mordecai looked as much surprised as
Deronda -- neither in his surprise making any sign of recognition.
But when Mordecai was seating himself at the end of
the table, he just bent his head to the guest in a cold and
distant manner, as if the disappointment of the morning
remained a disagreeable association with this new acquaintance.
  Cohen now washed his hands, pronouncing Hebrew words
the while: afterwards, he took off the napkin covering the
dish and disclosed the two flat loaves besprinkled with
seed -- the memorial of the manna that fed the wandering
forefathers -- and breaking off small pieces gave one to each
of the family, including Adelaide Rebekah, who stood on
the chair with her whole length exhibited in her amber
coloured garment, her little Jewish nose lengthened by
compression of the lip in the effort to make a suitable appearance.
Cohen then began another Hebrew blessing, in which
Jacob put on his hat to join with close imitation. After that,
the heads were uncovered, all seated themselves, and the
meal went on without any peculiarity that interested
Deronda. He was not very conscious of what dishes he ate

*X449
from, being preoccupied with a desire to turn the conversation
in a way that would enable him to ask some leading
question; and also with thinking of Mordecai, between
whom and himself there was an exchange of fascinated, half-furtive
glances. Mordecai had no handsome Sabbath garment,
but instead of the threadbare rusty black coat of the
morning he wore one of light drab, which looked as if it had
once been a handsome loose patetot now shrunk with washing;
and this change of clothing gave a still stronger accentuation
to his dark-haired, eager face, which might have
belonged to the prophet Ezekiel -- also probably not modish
in the eyes of contemporaries. It was noticeable that the thin
tails of the fried fish were given to Mordecai; and in general
the sort of share assigned to a poor relation -- no doubt a
"survival" of pre-historic practice, not yet generally admitted
to be superstitious.
  Mr Cohen kept up the conversation with much liveliness,
introducing as subjects always in taste (the Jew is proud of
his loyalty) the Queen and the Royal Family, the Emperor
and Empress of the French -- into which both grandmother
and wife entered with zest. Mrs Cohen the younger showed
an accurate memory of distinguished birthdays; and the elder
assisted her son in informing the guest of what occured
when the Emperor and Empress were in England and visited
the city, ten years before.
  "I daresay you know all about it better than we do, sir,"
said Cohen, repeatedly, by way of preface to full information;
and the interesting statements were kept up in trio.
  "Our baby is named ˛Eug˛enie  Esther," said young Mrs
Cohen, vivaciously.
  "It's wonderful how the Emperor's like a cousin of mine in
the face," said the grandmother; "it struck me like lightning
when I caught sight of him. I countn't have thought it."
  "Mother and me went to see the Emperor and Empress at
the Crystal Palace," said Mr Cohen. "I had a fine piece of
work to take care of mother; she might have been squeezed
flat -- though she was pretty near as lusty then as she is now.
I said, if I had a nundred mothers I'd never take one of 'em
to see the Emperor and Empress at the Crystal Palace again;

*X450
and you may think a man can't afford it when he's got but
one mother -- not if he'd ever so big an insurance on her." He
stroked his mother's shoulder affectonately, and chuckled a
little at his own humour.
  "Your mother had been a widow a long while, perhaps,"
said Deronda, seizing his opportunity. "That has made your
care for her the more needful."
  "Ay, ay, it's a good many ˛yore-zeit˛ since I had to manage
for her and myself," said Cohen, quickly. "I went early to it.
It's that makes you a sharp knife."
  "What does -- what makes a shapr knife, father?" said
Jacob, his cheek very much swollen with sweet-cake.
  The father winked at his guest and said, "Having your
nose put on the grindstone."
  Jacob slipped from his chair with the piece os
of sweet-cake
in his hand, and going close up to Mordecai, who had been
totally silent hitherto, said, "What does that mean -- putting
my nose to the,grindstone?"
  "It means that you are to bear being hurt without making
a noise," said Mordecai, turning his eyes benignantly on the
small face close to his. Jacob put the corner of the cake into
Mordecai's mouth as an invitation to bite, saying meanwhile,
"I shan't, though," and keeping his eyes on the cake to
observe how much of it went in this act of generosity,
Mordecai took a bite and smiled, evidently meaning to
please the lad, and the little incident made them both look
more lovable. Deronda, however, felt with some vexation
that he had taken little by his question.
  "I fancy that is the right quarter for learning," said he,
carrying on the subject that he might have an excuse for
addressing Mordecai, to whom he turned and said, "You
have been a great student, I imagine."
  "I have studied," was the quiet answer. "And you? -- You
know German, by the book you were buying."
  "Yes, I have studied in Germany. Are you generally engaged
in bookselling?" said Deronda.
  "No; I only go to Mr Ram's shop every day to keep it while
he goes to meals," said Mordecai, who was now looking at
Deronda with what seeemed a revival of his original interest:

*X451
it seemed as if the face had some attractive indication for
him which now meutralised the former disappointment.
After a slight pause, he said, "Perhaps you know Hebrew?"
  "I am sorry to say, not at all."
  Mordecai's countenance fell: he cast down his eyelids,
looking at his hands, which lay crossed before him, and said
no more. Deronda had now noticed more decisively than in
their former interview a difficulty of breathing, which he
thought must be a sign of consumption.
  "I've had something else to do than to get book-learning,"
said Mr Cohen, -- "I've had to make myself knowing about useful
things. I know stones well," -- here he pointed to Deronda's
ring. "I'm not afraid of taking that ring of yours at my own
valuation. But now," he added, with a certain drop in his voice
to a lower, more familiar nasal, "what do you want for it?"
  "Fifty or sixty pounds," Deronda answered, rather too carelessly.
  Cohen paused a little, throust his hands into his pockets,
fixed on Deronda a pair of glistening eyes that suggested a
miraculous guinea-pig, and said, "Couldn't do you that.
Happy to oblige, but couldn't go that lenths. Forty pound --
say forty -- I'll let you have forty on it."
  Deronda was aware that Mordecai had looked up again at
the words implying a monetary affair, and was now examining
him again, while he said, "Very well; I shall redeem it in
a month or so."
  "Good. I'll mkae you out the ticket by-and-by," said Cohen,
indifferently. Then he held up his finger as a sign that
conversation must be deferred. He, Modecai, and Jacob
put on their hats, and Cohen opened a thanksgiving, which
was carried on by responses, till Mordecai delivered himself
alone at some length, in a solemn chanting tone, with his
chin slightly uplighted and his thin hands clasped easily before him.
Not only in his accent and tone, but in his freedom
from the self-consciousness which has reference to others' approbation,
there coluld hardly have been a stronger contrast
to the Jew at the other end of the table. It was an unaccountable
conjunction -- the presence among these common, prosperous,
shopkeeping types, of a man who, in an emaciated

*X452
threadbare condition, imposed a certain awe on Deronda,
and an embrassment at not meeting his expectations.
  No sooner had Mordecai finished his devotional strain,
than rising, with a slight bend of his head to the stranger, he
walked back into his room, and shut the door behind him.
  "That seems to be rather a remarkable man," said Deronda,
turning to Choen, who immediately set up his shoulders, put
out his tongue slightly, and tapped his own brow. It was
clearly to be understood that Mordecai did not come up to
the standard of sanity which was set by Mr Cohen's view of
men and things.
  "Does he belong to your family?" said Deronda.
  This idea appeared to be rather ludicrous to the ladies as
well as to Cohen, and the family interchanged looks of
amusement.
  "No, no," said Cohen. "Charity] chairty] He worked for me,
and when he got weaker and weaker I took him in. He's
an encumbrance; but he brings a blessing down, and he
teaches the boy. Besides, he does the repairing at the watches
and jewellery."
  Deronda hardly abstained from smiling at this mixture of
kindliness and the desire to justify it in the light of a
calculation; but his willingness to speak further of Mordecai,
whose character was made the more enigmatically striking
by these new details, was baffled. Mr Cohen immediately
dismissed the bubject by reverting to the "accommodation,"
which was also an act of charity, and proceeded to make out
the ticket, get the forty pounds, and present them both in
exchange for the diamond ring. Deronda, feeling that it
would be hardly delicate to protact his visit beyond the
settlement of the business which was its pretext, had to take
his leave, with no more decided result than the advance of
forty pounds and the pawn-ticket in his breastocket, to make
a reason for returning when he came up to town after Christmas.
He was resolved that he would then endeavour to gain a
little more insight into the character and history of Mordecai;
from whom also he might gather something decisive about
the Cohens -- for example, the reason why it was forbidden
to ask Mrs Cohen the elder whether she had a daughter.

*X453
*B5
MORDECAI

*X455
*C35
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 cuturse and the murderer that doth his
butchery in small with his own hand. No doubt wickedness hath
its rewards to distribute; but whoso 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 29th 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

*X456
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
tells 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 horse-whip
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 someone 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 Gwendolen,
youngm headlong, eager for pleasure, fed with the flattery
which makes a lovely girl believe in her divine right to rule --

*X457

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 Ryelands 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 specialised 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
Luebronn 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 panelling --
surmounted by a ceiling that glowed with the rich colours 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


2234.
*X365x260
*X458
*X458
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 colouring 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
Leubroon.
  "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 upon 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 hi, 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 the diamonds on her neck, in her

*X459
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 domonic force that had possessed her
when she took him in her seolute 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 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 towards 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 favourite
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 daresay 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

*X460
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 papers," said Sir
Hugo. "And disowning your own child because of a
˛me<salliance˛ is something like disowning your one eye:
everybody knows it's yours, and you have no other to make
an appearance with."
  "As to ˛me<salliance˛, 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 there was any ˛me<salliance˛ in the cae, I should say it
was on Klesmer's side," said Deronda.
  "Ah, you think it is a case if 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 daresay 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 gaiety, "When Herr Klesmer admires his own genius, it
will take off some of the absurdity if his wife says Amen."
  "Klesmer is no favourite 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 cover 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 pu6 on a little hardness and
defiance by way of concealing some painful consciousness --
if, indeed, he could imagine her manners otherwise than in
*X461
the light of his suspicion. But why did she not recognise 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 afterwards they were build 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 he have
altered things so much."
  "Oh, the ghosts must be of all political parties," said Sir
Hugo. "And those who wanted to change things while
they lived and counldn't do it must be on our side. But if you
would not like to fo 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 round with us. He is more
learned about it than I am." The baronet was in the most
complaisant of humours.
  Gwendolen stole a glance at Deronda, who must have
heard what Sir Hugo said, for he had his face turned towards
them helping himself to an ˛entre<e˛; 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 often repeated within
her, but now returning on an occasion embarrassingly new;
and she was conscious of something furtive and awkward in
her glance, which Sir Hugo must have noticed. With her
usual readiness of resourse against betrayal, she said playfull,
"You don't know how much I am afraid of Mr Deronda."
  "How's that? Because you think him too learned?" said

*X462
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 he 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 towards Gwendolen, he said audibly, "I don't
think ladies generall 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 anyeyes 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 everyother 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 gentleman
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."

*X463
  "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 cam 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 inas much as in the pure
processof 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
marraige of this very charming bride. Gwendolen was much
to the baronet's taste, but, as he observed afterwards 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. Afterwards 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 towards 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 screeens 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

*X464
at table, his speech was checked. For what was an
appreciable 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 neutralised other feelings.
  "Will you not join in the music?" he siad, 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. Amd 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 dulness."
  "I don't admit the justification," said Deronda. "I think
what we call the dulness of things is a disease in ourselves.
Else how could 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˛ nover 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."

*X465
  "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 arresteed his answer a moment, but at last he said,
with a graver, deeper intonation, "Why ten, 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 round for Grandcourt, wondering whether
he followed his bride's movements with any attention; but it
was rather undiscerning in him to suppose that he could find
out the fact. Grandcourt had a delusive mode 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 my 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 in 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 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 wifee is not happy naturally leads one to speculate on the
hunsband's private deportment; and Deronda found himself


*X466
after one o'clock in the morning in the rather ludicrous
position of sitting up severly 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
incidents 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 behaviour towards 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 afterwards turned on him under the consciousness of his
approach.
  "What is the use of it all?" though 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 had a dreary
lack of the ideas that might help her. Strange and piteous to
think what a centre of wretchedness a delicate piece of
human flesh like that might be, wrapped round with fine
raiment, her ears pierced for gems, her had 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.
Gwendolen during the few days of her stay at the Abbey;

*X467
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 a 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 old bits about
the place?"
  "Yes, pray," said Gwendolen. "You will like to see the
stables, Henleigh?" she said, looking at her husband.
  "Uncommonly," said Grandcourt, with an indifference
which seemed to give irony to the words, 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 and offical as if it had been 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 think

*X468
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 towards 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 signalling
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 contructing 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 ipinion 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 towards 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 consciouce 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."

*X469
  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, and to Sir Hugo's reasons for not attempting to
remedy the mixture of the indisquised 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 pretence of the thirteenth century. Additions ought
to smak of the time when they are made and carry the
stamp of their period. I wounldn'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

*X470
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
,ay 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 hip it all over artistically
to give it an elderly-looking surface; which at the
present rate of labour 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 @c-- and
affection is the broadest basis of good in life."
  "Do you think so?" said Gwendolen, with alittle surprise. "I
should have thought you cared most about ideads, knowledge,
wisdom, and all that."
  "But to care about ˛them˛ is a sort of affection," said
Deronda, smiling at her sudden ˛naiµ"ete<˛. "Call it attachment,
interest, willingness 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 --

*X471
half persons abd half ideads -- sentiments and affections flow
in together."
  "I wonder whether I understand that," said Gwendolen,
putting up her chiin 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
hopeless to flatter a bride. We give it up in despair. She had
been so fed on sweet speaches that everything 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
is a deucedly hard thing to keep up, though."
  All this seemed to Sir Hugo a matural playfulness between
such a husband and wife; but Deronda wondered at the
misleading alternations in Gwendolen's manner, which at
one moment seemed to invite 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 unfavourably
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

*X472
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 insistance 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
boughts of the great cedar and the crenelated coping of the
stone walls, and them into a larger court, where there was
another cedar, to find the veautiful 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 grey 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
afternnon sun upon it, sending shadows from the cedar
boughts, and lighting up the touches of snow remaining on

*X473
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 levelled, paved, and drained according to the most
approved fashion, and a lone of loose-boxes erected in the
middle: a soft light fell from the upper windows on sleek
brown or grey flanks and haunches; on mild equine faces
looking out with active mostrils over the varnished brown
boarding; on the hay hanging from rachs 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-coloured 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 colurs mysteriously through veiling shadow
and cobweb, and a hoof now and them striking against the
boards seemed to fill the vault with thunder, while outside
there was the ansering 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 towards
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

*X474
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 the 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
˛de<mangeaison˛," said Sir Hugo, as they were coming out.
  "What is a man to do, thought?" 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 characterising 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

*X475
bit of all -- in perfect preservation: the monks might have
been walking there yesterday."
  But Gwendolen had lingered behind to look at the kennelled
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 a ˛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
˛te´te-a>-te´te˛ 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 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 pillared
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 matural forms.

*X476
  "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 daresay 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 thaey 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

*X477
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 as Grandcourt turned into the billiard-room,
she went to the pretty boudior which had been
assigned to her, and shut herself u˛ 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 nother. 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 and
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 sawy; 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

*X478
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 burnt 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 husterics 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 consciousnesss
with the weight of a prophetic doom. "I am the
grave in which tour chance of happiness is buried as well as
mine. You had your warning. Tou 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 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 if 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

*X479
now as futile as the burnt-out lights which set off a child's
pageant. Her sense of being blameworthy was exaggerated
by a dread both definite and vague.
 The definte 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 thoroughtly. 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
come at last to be to her, she meant to wear the yoke so as

*X480
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 towards 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 comunication between
them, showing him in the light of a creature such as she could
understand and manage: but marriage had nullified all such
interchange, and Grandcourt had become a blank certainty
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 about 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 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

*X481
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 ˛sott˛ ˛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 fearof 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 slowly 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 de defiant? She had nothing to say that would
touch him -- nothing but what would give him a more
painful grasp of her consciousness.

*X482
  "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 towards
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 marital 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 onlu 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,

*X483
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
neighbourhood, 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 ging to let her live like a gamekeeper's
mother."
  "At least he is not mean about moneu," though 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 dulness, which used to irritate her, she was at
present inclined to explain as the ordinary result of women'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-soresm 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

*X484
oriducinf 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 practised accomplishments.
If she could onlu 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 ve 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 remose and dread; she trusted
neither herself nor her future.
  This hidden helplessness have 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 had been fitly named
conversion, that to many among us neither heaven nor earth
has any revelation till some personality touches theirs witha
peculiar influence, subduing them into receptiveness. It had

*X485
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 novely: not by words only,
but vy 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 telling
him," was one of her thoughts, as she sat leaning over the
end of a couch, supporting her head with her hand, and
looking at herself in a mirror -- not in admiration, but in a
sad kind of comanionship. "I wish he knew that I am not so
contemptible as he thinks me -- that I am in deep trouble,
and want to be something better if I could." Without the aid
of sacred ceremony or costume, her feelings had turned this
man, only a few years older than herself, into a priest; a sort
of trust less rare than the fidelity that guards it. Young
reverence for one who is also young is the most coercive of
all: there is the same level of temptation, and the higher
motive is believed in as a fuller force -- not suspected to be a
mere residue from weary experience.
  But the coercion is often stronger on the one who takes
the reverence. Those who trust us educate us. And perhaps
in that ideal consecration of Gwendolen's, some deucation
was being prepared for Deronda.

*C36
MEANWHILE Deronda had been fastened and led off by Mr
Vandernoodt, who wished for a brisker walk, a cigar, and a
little gossip. Since we cannot tell a man his own secrets, the

*X486
restraint of being in his company often breeds a desire to
pair off in conversation with some more ignorant person, and
Mr Vandernoodt presently said --
  "What a washed-out piece of cambric Grandcourt is" But
if he is a favourite of yours, I withdraw the remark."
  "Not the least in the world," said Deronda.
  "I thought not. One wonders how he came to have a great
passion again; and he must have had -- to marry in this way.
Though Lush, his old chum, hints that he married this girl
out of obstinacy. By George] it was a very accountable
obstinacy. A man might make up his mind to marry her
without the stimulus of contradiction. But he must have
made himself a pretty large drain of meney, eh?"
  "I know nothing of his affairs."
  "What] not of the other establishment he keeps up?"
  "Diplow? Of course. He took that of Sir Hugo. But merely
for the year."
  "No, no: not Diplow: Gadsmere. Sir Hugo knows, I'll
answer for it."
  Deronda said nothing. He really began to feel some
curiosity, but he foresaw that he should hear what Mr
Vandernoodt had to tell, without the condescension of
asking.
  "Lush would not altogether own to it, of course. He's a
confidant and go-between of Grandcourt's. But I have it on
the best authority. The fact is, there's another lady with four
children at Gadsmere. She has had the upper hand of him
these ten years and more, and by what I can understand has it
still -- left her husband for him, and used to travel with him
everywhere. Her husband's dead now: I found a fellow who
was in the same regiment with him, and knew this Mrs
Glasher before she took wing. A fiery dark-eyed woman -- a
noted beauty at that time -- he though she was dead. They
say she had Grandcourt under her thumb still, and it's a
wonder he didn't marry her, for there's a very fine boy, and I
understand Grandcourt can do absolutely as he pleases with
the estates. Lush told me as much as that."
  "What right had he to marry this girl?" said Deronda, with
disgust.

*X487
  Mr Vandernoodt, adjusting the end of his cigar, shrugged
his shoulders and put out his lips.
  "˛She˛ can know nothing of it," said Deronda, emphatically.
But that positive statement was immediately followed by an
inward query -- "Could she have known anything of it?"
  "It's rather apiquant picture," said Mr Vandernoodt --
"Grandcourt between two fiery women. For depend upon it
this light-haired one has plenty of devil in her. I formed that
opinion of her at Leubronn. It's a sort of Medea and Creuµ
business. Fancy the two meeting] Grandcourt is a new kind
of Jason: I wonder what sort of a part he'll make of it. It's a
dog's part at best. I think I hear Ristori now, saying,
"Jasone] Jasone]" These fine women generally get hold of a
stick."
  "Grandcourt can bite, I fancy," said Deronda. "He is no stick."
  "No, no; I meant Jason. I can(t quite make out Grandcourt.
But he's a keen fellow enough -- uncommonly erll built too.
And if he comes into all this property, the estate will bear
dividing. This girl, whose friends had come to beggary, I
understand, may think herself lucky to get him. I don't want
to be hard on a man because he gets involved in an affair of
that sort. But he might make himself more agreeable. I was
telling him a capital story last night, and he got up and
walked away in the middle. I felt inclined to kick him. Do
you suppose that is inattention or insolence, now?"
  "Oh, a mixture. He generally observes the forms; but he
doesn't listen much," said Deronda. Then. after a moment's
pause, he went on, "I should think there must be some
exaggeration or inaccuracy in what you have heard about
this lady at Gadsmere."
  "Not a bit, depend upon it; it had all lain snug of late
years. People have forgotten all about it. But there the nest
is, and the birds are in it. And I know Grandcourt goes
there. I have good evidence that he goes there. However,
that's nobody's business but his own. The affair has sunk
below the surface."
  "I wonder you could have learned so much about it," said
Deronda, rather drily.
  "Oh, there are plenty of people who knew all about it; but

*X488
such stories get packed away like old letters. They interest
me. I like to know the manners of my time -- contemporary
gossip, not antedeluvian. These Dryasdust fellows get a
reputation by raking up some small scandal about Semiramis
or Nitocris, and then we have a thousand and one
poems written upon it by all the warblers big and little. But I
don't care a straw about the ˛faux˛ ˛pas˛ of the mummies. You
do, though. You are one of the historical men -- more interested
in a lady when she's got a rag face and skeleton toes
peeping out. Does that flatter your imagination?"
  "Well, if she had any woes in herlove, one has the satisfaction
of knowing that she's well out of them."
  "Ah, you are thinking of the Medea, I see."
  Deronda then chose to point to some giant oaks worth
looking at in their bareness. He also felt an interestin this
piece f contemporary gossip, but he was satisfied that Mr
Vandernoodt had no more to tell about it.
  Since the early days when he tried to constuct the hidden
story of his own birth, his mind had perhaps never been so
active in weaving probabilities about any private affair as it
had now begun to be about Gwendolen's marriage. This
unavowed relation of Grandcourt's, -- could she have gained
some knowledge of it, which caused her to shrink from the
match -- a shrinking finally overcome by the urgence of
poverty? He could recall almost every word she had said to
him, and in certain of these words he seemed to discern that
she was conscious of having done some wrong -- inflicted some
injury. His own acute experience made him alive to the form
of injury which might affect the unavowed children and
their mother. Was Mrs Grandcourt, under all her determined
show of satisfaction, gnawed by a double, a treble-headed
grief -- self-reproach, disappointment, jealousy? He dwelt
especially on all the slight signs of self-reproach: he was
inclined to judge her tenderly, to excuse, to pity. He thought
he had found a key now by which to interpret her more
clearly: what magnifying of her misery might not a young
crature get into who had wedded her fresh hopes to old
secrets] He thought he saw clearly enough now why Sir
Hugo had never dropped any hint of this affair to him; and

*X489
immediately the image of this Mrs Glasher became painfully
associated with his own hidden birth. Gwendolen knowing of
that woman and her children, marrying Grandcourt, and
showing herself contented, would have been among the most
repulsive of beings to him; but Gwendolen tasting the bitterness
of remorse for having contributed to their injury was
brought very near to his fellow-feeling. If it were so, she had
got to a common plane of understanding with him on some
difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able to judge of
with any justice or generosity; for, according to precedent,
Gwendolen's view of her position might easily have been no
other than that her husband's marriage with her was his
entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs Glasher represented
his forsaken sin. And Deronda had naturally some
resentment on behalf of the Hagars and Ishmaels.
  Undeniably Deronda's growing solicitude about Gwendolen
depended chiefly on her peculiar manner towards him;
and I suppose neither man nor woman would be the better
for an utter insensibility to such appeals. One sign that his
interestin her had changed its footing was that he dismissed
any caution against her being a coquette setting snares to
involve him in a vulgar fliration, and determined that he
would not again evade any opportunity of talking with her.
He had shaken off Mr Vandernoodt, and got into a solitary
corner in the twlight; but half an hour was long enough to
think of those possibilities in Gwendolen's position and state
of mind; and on forming the determination not to avoid her,
he remembered that she was likely to be at tea with the
other ladies in the drawing-room. The conjecture was true;
for Gwendolen, after resolving not to go down again for the
next four hours, began to feel, at the end of one, that in
shutting herself up she missed all chances of seeing and
hearing, and that her visit would onlu last two days more. She
adjusted herself, put on her little air of self-possession, and
going down, made herself resolutely agreeable. Only ladies
were assembled, and Lady Pentreath was amusing them
with a description of a drawing-room under the Regency,
and the figure that was cut by ladies and gentlemen in 1819,
the year she was presented -- when Deronda entered.

*X490
  "Shall I be acceptable?" he said. "Perhaps I had better go
back and look for the others. I suppose they are in the
billiard-room."
  "No, no; stay where you are," said Lady Pentreath. "They
were all getting tired of me; let us hear what ˛you˛ have to
say."
  "That is rather an embarrassing appeal," said Deronda,
drawing up a chair near Lady Mallinger's elbow at the tea-table.
"I think I had better take the opportunity of mentioning
our songstress," he added, looking at Lady Mallinger, --
"unless you have done so."
  "Oh, the little Jewess]" said Lady Mallinger. "No, I have
not mentioned her. It never entered my head that any one
here wanted singing lessons."
  "All ladies know some one else who wants singing lessons,"
said Deronda. "I have happened to find an exquisite singer;" --
her h-2ce he turned to Lady Pentreath. "She is living with some
ladies who are friends of mine -- the mother and sisters of a
man who was my chum at Cambridge. She was on the stage
at Vienna; but she wants to leave that life, and maintain
herself by teaching."
  "There are swarms of those people, aren't there?" said the
old lady. "Are her lessons to be very cheap or very expensive?
Those are the two baits I know of."
  "there is another bait for those who hear her," said
Deronda. "Her singing is something quite exceptional, I
think. She has had such first-rate teaching -- or rather first-rate
instinct with her teaching -- that you might imagine her
singing all came by nature."
  "Why did she leave the stage, then?" said Lady Pentreath.
"I'm too old to believe in first-rate people giving up first-rate
chances."
  "Her voice was too weak. It is a delicious voice for a room.
You who put up with my singing of Schubert would be
enchanted with hers," said Deronda, looking at Mrs Raymond.
"And I imagine she would not object to sing at
private parties or concerts. Her voice is quite equal to that."
  "I am to have her in my drawing-room when we fo up to
town," said Lady Mallinger. "You shall hear her then. I have

*X491
not heard her myself yet; but I trust Daniel's recommendation.
I mean my girls to have lessons of her."
  "Is it a charitable affair?" said Lady Pentreath. "I can't bear
charitable music."
  Lady Mallinger, was was rather helpless in conversation,
and feltherself under an engagement not to tell anything of
Mirah's story, had an embarrassed smile on her face, and
glanced at Deronda.
  "It is a charity to those who want to have a good model of
feminine singing," said Deronda. "I think everybody who has
ears would benefit by a little improvement on the ordinary
style. If you heard Miss Lapidoth" -- here he looked at
Gwendolen -- "perhaps you would revoke your resolution to
give up singing."
  "I should rather think my resolution would be confirmed,"
said Gwendolen. "I don't feel able to follow your advice of
enjoying my own middlingness."
  "For my part," said Deronda, "people who do anything
finely always inspirit me to try. I don't mean that they make
me believe I can do it as well. But they make the thing,
whatever it may be, seem worthy to be done. I can bear to
think my own music not good for much, but the world
would be more dismal if I thought music itself not good for
much. Ecellence encourages one about life generally; it
shows the spiritual wealth of the world."
  "But them if we can't imitate it? -- if only makes our own
life seem the tamer," said Gwendolen, in a mood to resent
encouragement founded on her own insignigicance.
  "that depends on the point of view, I think," said Deronda.
"We should have a poor life of it if we were reduced for
all our pleasure to our own performances. A little private
imitation of what is good is a sort of private devotion to it,
and most of us ought to practise art only in the light of
private study -- preparation to understand and enjoy what
the few can do for us. I think Miss Lapidoth is one of the
few."
  "She must be a very happy person, don't you think?" said
Gwendolen, with a touch of sarcasm, and a turn of her neck
towards Mrs Raymond.

*X492
  "I don't know," answered the independent lady; "I must
hear more of her before I said that."
  "It may have been a bitter disappointment to her that her
voice failed her for the stage," said Juliet Fenn, sympathetically.
  "I suppose she's past her best, thought," said the deep voice
of Lady Pentreath.
  "On the contrary, she had not reached it," said Deronda.
"She is barely twenty."
  "And very pretty," interposed Lady Mallinger, with an
amiable wish to help Deronda. "And she has very good
manners. I'm sorry she is a bigoted Jewess; I should not like
it for anything else, but it doesn't matter in singing."
  "Well, since her voice is too weak for her to scream much,
I'll tell Lady Clementina to set her on my nine grand-daughters,"
said Lady Pentreath; "and hope she'll convince
eight of them that they have not voice enough to sing
anywhere but at church. My notion is, that many of our
girls nowadays want lessons not to sing."
  "I have had my lessons in that," said Gwendolen, looking at
Deronda. "You see Lady Pentreath is on my side."
  Whilse she was speaking, Sir Hugo entered with some of
the other gentlemen, including Grandcourt, and standing
against the group at the low tea-table said --
  "What imposition is Deronda putting on you ladies -- slipping
in among you by himself?"
  "Wanting to pass off an obscurity on us as better than any
celebrity," said Lady Pentreath -- "a pretty singing Jewess who
is to astonish these young people. You and I, who heard
Catalani in her prime, are not so easily astonished."
  Sir Hugo listened with his good-humoured smile as he
took a cup of tea from his wife, and then said, "Well, you
know, a Liberal is bound to think that there have been
singers since Catalani's time."
  "Ah, you are younger than I am. I daresay you are one of
the men who ran after Alcharisi. But she married off and
left you all in the lurch."
  "Yes, yes; it's rather too bad when these great singers
marry themselves into silence before they have a crack in

*X493
their voices. And the husband is a public robber. I remember
Leroux saying, "A man might as well take down a fine peal
of church bells and carry them off to the steppes,"" said Sir Hugo,
setting down his cup and turning away, while
Deronda, who had moved from his place to make room for
others, and felt that he was not in request, sat down a little
apart. Presently he became aware that, in the general dispersion
of the group, Gwendolen had extricated herself from
the attentions of Mr Vandernoodt and had walked to the
piano, where she stood apparently examining the music
which lay on the desk. Will any one be surprised at
Deronda's concluding that she wished him to join her? Perhaps
she wanted to make amends for the unpleasanttone of
resistance with which she had met his recommendation of
Mirah, for he had noticed that her first impulse often was to
say what she afterwards wished to retract.  He went to her
side and said --
  "are you relenting about the music and looking for something
to play or sing?"
  "I am not looking for anything, but I ˛am˛ relenting," said
Gwendolen, speaking in a submissive tone.
  "May I know the reason?"
  "I should like to hear Miss Lapidoth and have lessons from
her, since you admire her so much -- that is, of course, when
we go to town. I mean lessons in rejoicing at her excellence
and my own deficiency," said Gwendolen, turning on him a
sweet open smile.
  "I shall be really glad for you to see and hear her," said
Deronda, returning the smile in kind.
  "Is she as perfect in everything else as in her music?"
  "I can't vouch for that exactly. I have not seen enough of
her. But I have seen nothing in her that I could wish to be
different. She had had an unhappy life. Her troubles begun
in early childhood, and she has grown up among very painful
surroundings. But I think you will say that no advantages
could have given her more grace and truer refinement."
  "I wonder what sort of troubles hers were?"
  "I hove not any very precise knowledge. But I know that
she was on the brink of drowning herself in despair."

*X494
  "And what hindered her?" said Gwendolen, quickly, looking
at Deronda.
  "Some ray or other came -- which made her feel that she
ought to live -- that it was good to live," he answered, quietly.
"She is full of piety and seems capable of submitting to
anything when it takes the form of duty."
  "Those people are not to be pitied," said Gwendolen, impatiently.
"I have no sympathy with women who are always
doing right. I don't believe in their great sufferings." Her
fingers moved quickly among the edges of the music.
  "It is true," said Deronda, "that the consciousness of having
done wrong is something deeper, more bitter. I suppose we
faulty creatures can never feel so much for the irreproachable
as for those who are bruised in the struggle with their
own faults. It is a very ancient story, that of the lost sheep --
but it comes up afresh every day."
  "That is a way of speaking -- it is not acted on, it is not
real, said Gwendolen, bitterly. "You admire Miss Laidoth
because you think her blameless, perfect. And you know you
would despise a woman who had done something you
thought very wrong."
  "That would depend entirely on her own view of what she
had done," said Deronda.
  "You would be satisfied if she were very wretched, I suppose?"
said Gwendolen, impetuously.
  "No, not satisfied -- full of sorrow for her. It was not a mere
way of speaking. I did not mean to say that the finer nature
is not more adorable; I meant that those who would be
comparatively uninteresting beforehand may become
worthier of sympathy when they do something that awakens
in them a remorse. Lives are enlarged in different ways.
I daresay some would never get their eyes opened if it were
not for a violent shock from the consequences of their
own actions. And when they are suffering in that way one
must care for them more than for the comforably self-satisfied."
Deronda forgot everything but his vision of what
Gwendolen's experience had probably been, and urged by
compassion let his eyes and voice express as much interest as
they would.

*X495
  Gwendolen had slipped on to the music-stool, and looked
up at him with pain in her long eyes, like a wounded animal
asking help.
  "Are you persuading Mrs Grandcourt to play to us, Dan?"
said Sir Hugo, coming up and putting his hand on
Deronda's shoulder with a gentle admonitory pinch.
  "I cannot persuade myself," said Gwendolen, rising.
  Others had followed Sir Hugo's lead, and there was an end
of any liability to confidences for that day. But the next was
New Year's Eve; and a grand dance, to which the chief
tenants were invited, was to be held in the picture-gallery
above the cloister -- the sort of entertainment in which
numbers and general movement may create privacy. When
Gwendolen was dressing, she longed, in remembrance of
Leubroon, to put on the old turquoise necklace for her sole
ornament; but she dared not offend her husband by appearing
in that shabby way on an occasion when he would
demand her utmost splendour. Determined to wear the
memorial necklace somehow, she wound it thrice round her
wrist and made a bracelet of it -- having gone to her room to
put it on just before the time of entering the ball-room.
  It was always a beautiful scene, this dance on New Year's
Eve, which had been kept up by family tradition as nearly
in the old fashion as inexorable change would allow. Red
carpet was laid down for the occasion; hothouse plants and
evergreens were arranged in bowers at the extremities and in
every recess of the gallery; and the old portraits stretching
back through generations even to the pre-portraying period,
made a piquant line of specators. Some neighbouring
gentry, major and minor, were invited; and it was certaintly
an occasion when a prospective master and mistress of
Abbot's and King's Topping might see their future glory in
an agreeable light, as a picturesque provincial supremacy
with a rent-roll personified by the most prosperous-looking
tenants. Sir Hugo expected Grandcourt to feel flattered by
being asked to the Abbey at a time which included this
festival in honour of the family estate; but he also hoped
that his own hale appearance might impress his successor
with the probable length of time that would elapse before

*X496
the succession came, and with the wisdom of preferring a
good actual sum to a minor property that must be waited
for. All present, down to the least important farmer's
daughter, knew that they were to see "young Grandcourt", Sir
Hugo's nephew, the presumptive heir and future baronet,
now visiting the Abbey with his bride after an absence of
many years; any coolness between uncle and nephew having,
it was understood, given way to a friendly warmth. The
bride opening the ball with Sir Hugo was necessarily the
cynosure of all eyes; and less than a year before, if some
magic mirror could have shown Gwendolen her actual position,
shhe would have imagined herself moving in it with a
glow of triumphant pleasure, conscious that she held in her
hands a life full of favourable chances which her cleverness
and spirit would enable her to make the best of. And now
she was wondering that she could get so little joy out of the
exaltation to which she had been suddenly lifted, away from
the distasteful petty empire of her girlhood with its irksome
lack of distinction and superfluity of sisters. She would have
been glad to be even unreasonably elated, and to forget
everything but the flattery of the moment; but she was like
one courting sleep, in whom thoughts insist like wilful
tormentors.
  Wondering in this way at her own dulness, and all the
while longing for an excitement that would deaden importunate
aches, she was passing through files of admiring beholders
in the country-dance with which it was traditional to
open the ball, and was being generally regarded by her own
sex as an enviable woman. It was remarked that she carried
herself with a wonderful air, considering that she had been
nobody in particular, and without a farthing to her fortune.
If she had been a duke's daughter, or one of the royal
princesses, she could not have taken the honours of the evening
more as a matter of course. Poor Gwendolen] It would by-and-by
become a sort of skill in which she was automatically
practised, to bear this last great gambling loss with an air of
perfect self@c-possession.
  The next couple that passed were also worth looking at.
Lady Pentreath had said, "I shall stand up for one dance, but

*X497
I shall choose my partner. Mr Deronda, you are the
youngest man; I mean to dance with you. Nobody is old
enough to make a good pair with me. I mush have a contrast."
And the contrast certainly set off the old lady to the
utmost. She was one of those women who are never handsome
till they are old, and she had had the wisdom to
embrace the beauty of age as early as possible. What might
have seemed harshness in her features when she was young,
had turned now into a satisfactory strength of form and
expression which defied wrinkles, and was set off by a crown
of white hair; her well-built figure was well covered with
black drapery, her ears and neck comfortably caressed with
lace, showing none of those withered spaces which one
would think it a pitiable condition of poverty to expose. She
glided along gracefully enough, her dark eyes still with a
mischievous smile in them as she observed the company. Her
partner's young richness of tint against the flattened hues
and rougher forms of her aged head had an effect something
like that of a fine flower against a lichenous branch.
Perhaps the tenants hardly appreciated this pair. Lady Pentreath
was nothing more than a straight, active old lady: Mr
Deronda was a familiar figure regarded with friendliness;
but if he had been the heir, it would have regretted
thathis face was not as unmistably English as Sir Hugo's.
  Grandcourt's appearance when he came up with Lady
Mallinger was not impeached with foreigness: still the
satisfaction in it was not complete. It would have been
metter of congratulation if one who had the luck to inherit
two old family estates had had more hair, a fresher colour,
and a look of greater animation; but that fine families
dwindled off into females, and estates ran together into the
single heirship of a mealy-complexioned male, was a tendency
in thing which seemed to be accounted for by a
citation of other instances. It was agreed that Mr Grandcourt
could never be taken for anything but what he was -- a
born gentleman; and that, in fact, he looked like an heir.
Perhaps the person least complacently disposed towards him
at that moment was Lady Mallinger, to whom going in
procession up this country-dance with Grandcourt was a

*X498
blazonment of herself as the infelicitous wife who had produced
nothing but daughters, little better than no children
poor dear things, except for her own fondness and for Sir
Hugo's wonderful goodness to them. But such inward discomfort
could not prevent the gentle lady from looking fair
and stout to admiration, or her full blue eyes from glancing
mildly at her neighbours. All the mothers and fathers held it
a thousand pities that she had not had a fine boy, or even
several -- which might have been expected, to look at her
when she was first married.
  The gallery included only three sides of the quadrangle,
the fourth being shut off as a lobby or corridor: one side
was used for dancing, and the opposite side for the supper-table
while the imtermediate part was less brilliantly lit, and
fitted with comfortable seats. Later in the evening Gwendolen
was in one of these seats, and Grandcourt was standing
near her. They werenot talking to each other: she was
leaningbackward in he chair, and he against the wall; and
Deronda, happening to observe this, went up to ask her if
she had resolved not to dance any more. Having himself
been doing hard duty in this way among the guests, he
thought he had earned the right to sink for a little while
into the background, and he had spoken little to Gwendolen
since their conversation at the piano the day before.
Grandcourt's presence would onlu make it the easier to show
that pleasure in talking to her even about trivialities which
would be a sign of friendliness, and he fancied that her face
looked blank. A smile beamed over it as she saw him coming,
and she raised herself from her leaning posture. Grandcourt
had been grumbling at the ˛ennui˛ of staying so long in
this stupid dance, and proposing that they should vanish:
she had refused on the ground of politeness -- not without
being a little frightened at the probability that he was
silently angry with her. She had her reason for staying,
though she had begun to despair of the opportunity for the
sake of which she had put the old necklace onher wrist. But
now at last Deronda had come.
  "Yes; I shall not dance any more. Are you not glad?" she
said, with some gaity. "You might have felt obliged humbly

*X499
to offer yourself as a partner, and I feel sure you have
danced more than you like already."
  "I will not deny that," said Deronda, "since you have danced
as much as you like."
  "But will you take trouble for me in another way, and
fetch me a glass of that fresh water?"
  It was but a few steps that Deronda had to go for the
water. Gwendolen was wrapped in the lightest, softestof
white woollen burnouses, under which her hands were
hidden. While he was gone she had drawn off her glove,
which was finished with a lace ruffle, and when she put up
her hand to take the glass and lifted it to her mouth, the
necklaceracelet, which in its triple winding adapteditself
clumsily to her wrist, was necessarily conspicuous. Grandcourt
saw it, and saw that it was attracting Deronda's notice.
  "What is that hideous thing youhave got on your wrist?"
said the husband.
  "That?" said Gwendolen, composedly, pointing to the
turquoises, while she still held the glass; "It is an old necklace
that I like to ear. I lost it once, and some one found it for
me."
  With that she gave the glass again to Deronda, who
immediately carried it away, andon returning said, in order
to banish any consciousness about the necklace --
  "It is worth while for you to go and look out at one of the
windows on that sie. You can see the finestpossible moonlight
on the stone pillats and carving, and shadows waving
across it in the wind."
  "I should like to see it. Will you go?" said Gwendolen,
looking up at her husband.
  He cast his eyes down at her, and saying, "No, Deronda
will take you," slowly moved from his leaning attitude, and
slowly walked away.
  Gwendolen's face for a moment showed a fleeting vexation:
she resented this show of indifference towards her.
Deronda felt annoyed, chiefly for her sake; and with a quick
sense that it would relieve her most to behave as if nothing
peculiar had occurred, he said, "Will you take my arm and
go, while only servants are there?" He thought that he

*X500
understood well her action in drawinf his attention to the
necklace: she wished him to infer that she had submitted
her mind to rebuke -- her speech and manner had from the
first fluctuated towards that submission -- and that she felt
no lingering resentment. Her evident confidence in his interpretation
of her appealed to him as a peculiar claim.
  When they were walking together, Gwendolen felt as if
the annoyance which had just happened had removed another
film of reserve from between them, and she had more
right than before to be as open as she wished. She did not
speak, being filled with the sense of silent confidence, until
they were in front of the window looking out on the moonlit
court. A sort of bower had been made round the window,
turning it into a recess. Quitting his arm, she folded her
hands in her burnuous, and pressed her brow against the
glass. He moved slightly away, and held the lapels of his
coat with his thumbs under the collar as his manner was: he
had a wonderful power of standing perfectly still, and in
that position reminded one sometimes of Dante's ˛spiriti˛
˛magni˛ ˛con˛ ˛occhi˛ ˛tardi˛ ˛e˛ ˛gravi˛. (Doubtless some of these
danced in their youth, doubted of their own vocation, and
found their own times too modern.) He abstained from
remarking on the scene before them, fearing that any indifferent
words might jar on her: already the calm light and
shadow, the ancient steadfast forms, had aloofness enough
from those inward troubles which he felt sure were agitating
her. And he judged aringt: she would have been impatient
of polite comversation. The incidents of the last minute or
two had receded behind former thoughts which she had
imagined herself uttering to Deronda, and which now urged
themselves to her lips. In a subdued voice, she said --
  "Suppose I had gambled again, and lost the necklace again,
what should you have thought of me?2
  "Worse than I do now."
  "Then you are mistaken about me. You wanted me not to
do that -- not to make my gain out of another's loss in that
way -- and I have done a great deal worse."
  "I can imagine temptations," said Deronda. "Perhaps I am
able to understand what you mean. At least I understand

*X501
self-reproach." In spite of preparation he was almost alarmed
at Gwendolen's precipitancy of confidence towards him, in
contrast with her habitual resolute concealment.
  "What should you do if you were like me -- feeling that
you were wrong and miserable, and dreading everything to
come?" It seemed that she was hurrying to make the utmost
use of this opportunity to speak as she would.
  "That is not to be amended by doing one thing only -- but
many," said Deronda, decisively.
  "What?" said Gwendolen, hastily, moving her brow
from the glass and looking at him.
  He looked full at her in return, with what she thought was
severity. He felt that it was not a moment in which he must
let himself be tender, and flinch from implying a hard
opinion.
  "I mean there are many thoughts and habits that may help
us to bear inevitable sorrow. Multitudes have to bear it."
  She turned her brow to the window again, and said impatiently,
"You must tell me when to think and what to
do; else why did you not let me go on ding as I liked, and
not minding? If I had gone on gambling I might have won
again, and I might have got not to care for anything else.
You would not let me do that. Why shouldn't I do as I like,
and not mind? Other people do." Poor Gwendolen's speech
expressed nothing very clearly except her irritation.
  "I don't believe you would ever get not to mind," said
Deronda, with deep-toned decision. "If it were true that
baseness and cruelty made an escape from pain, what difference
would that make to people who can't be quite base or
cruel? Idiots escape some pain; but you can't be an idiot.
Some may do wrong to another without remose; but suppose
one does feel remorse? I believe you could never lead
an injurious life -- all reckless lives are injurious, pestilential --
without feeling remorse." Deronda's unconscious fervour had
gathered as he went on: he was uttering thoughts which he
had used for himself in moment of painful meditation.
  "Then tell me what better I can do," said Gwendolen,
insistently.
  "Many things. Look on other lives besides your own. See

*X502
what their troubles are, and how they are borne. Try to care
about something in this vast world besides the gratification
of small selfish desires. Try to care for what is best in
thought and action -- something that is good apart from the
accidents of your own lot."
  For an instant or two Gwendolen was mute. Then, again
moving her brow from the glass, she said --
  "You mean that I am selfish and ignorant."
  He met her fixed look in silence before he answered firmly --
  "You will not go on being selfish and ignorant."
  She did not turn away her glance or let her eyelids fall,
but a change came over her face -- that subtle change in
nerve and muscle which will sometimes give a childlike
expression even to the elderly: it is the subsidence of self-assertion.
  "Shall I lead you back?" said Deronda, turning and
offering her his arm again. She took it silently, and in that
way they came in sight of Grandcourt, who was walking
slowly near their former place. Gwendolen went up to him
and said, "I am ready to go now. Mr Deronda will excuse us
to Lady Mallinger."
  "Certainly," said Deronda. "Lord and Lady Pentreath disappeared
some time ago."
  Grandcourt gave his arm in silent compliance, nodding
over his shoulder to Deronda, and Gwendolen too only half
turned to bow and say, "Thanks." The husband and wife left
the gallery and paced the corridors in silence. When the
door had closed on them in the boudior, Grandcourt threw
himself into a chair and said, with undertoned peremptoriness,
"Sit down." She, already in the expectation of something
unpleasant, had thrown off her burnous with nervous unconsciousness,
and immediatly obeyed. Turning his eyes towards her, he began:
  "Oblige me in future by not showing whims like a mad
woman in  a play."
  "What do you mean?" said Gwendolen.
  "I suppose there is some understanding between you and
Deronda about that thing you have on your wrist. If you
have anything to say to him, say it. But don't carry on a

*X503
telegraphing which other people are supposed not to see. It's
damnably vulgar."
  "You can know all about the necklace," said Gwendolen,
her angry pride resisting the nightmare of fear.
  "I don't want to know. Keep to yourself whatever you like."
Grandcourt paused between each sentence, and in each his
speech seemed to become more preternaturally distinct in its
inward tones. "What I care to know, I shall know without
your telling me. Only you will please to behave as becomes
my wife. And not to make a spectacle of yourself."
  "Do you object to my talking to Mr Deronda?"
  "I don't care two straws about Deronda, or any other
conceited hanger-on. Youmay talk to him as much as you
like. He is not going to take my place. You are my wife. And
you will either fill your place properly -- to the world and to
me -- or you will go to the devil."
  "I never intened anything but to fill my place properly,"
said Gwendolen, with bitterest mortification in her soul.
  "You put that thing on your wrist, and hid it from me till
you wanted him to see it. Only fools go into that deaf and
dumb talk, and think they're secret. You will understand
that you are not to compromise yourself. Behave with
dignity. That's all I have to say."
  With that last word Grandcourt rose, turned his back to
the fire and looked down on her. She was mute. There was
no reproach that she dared to fling at him in return for these
insulting admonitions, and the very reason she felt them to
be insulting was that their purport went with the most
absolute dictate of her pride. What she would least like to
incur was the making a fool of herself and being compromised.
It was futile and irrelevant to try and explain that
Deronda too had only been a monitor -- the strongest of all
monitors. Grandcourt was contemptuous, not jealous; contemptuously
cetain of all the subjection he cared for. Why
could she not rebel, and defy him? She longed to do it. But
she might as well have tried to defy the texture of her nerves
and the palpitation of her heart. Her husband had a ghostly
army at his back, that could close round her wherever she
might turn. She sat in her splendid attire, like a white image

*X504
of helplessness, and he seemed to gratify himself with looking
at her. She could not even make a passionate exclamation,
or throw up her arms, as she would have done in her
maiden days. The sense of his scorn hept her still.
  "Shall I ring?" he said, after what seemed to her a long
while. She moved her head in assent, and after ringing he
went to his dressing-room.
  Certain words were gnawing within her. "The wrong you
have done will be your own curse." As he closed the door, the
bitter tears rose, and the granwing words provoked an
answer: "Why did you put your fangs into me and not into
him?" It was uttered in a whisper, as the tears came up
silently. But immediately she pressed her handkerchief
against her eys, and checked her tendency to sob.
  The next day, recovered from the suddering fit of this
evening scene, she determined to use the charter which
Grandcourt had scornfully given her, and to talk as much as
she liked with Deronda; but no opportunities occurred, and
any little devices she could imagine for creating them were
rejected by her pride, which was now doubly active. Not
towards Deronda himself -- she was curiously free from
alarm lest he should think her openness wanting in dignity:
it was part of his power over her that she believed him free
from all misunderstanding as to the way in which she
appealed to him: or rather, that he should misunderstand
her had never entered into her mind. But the last morning
came, and still she had never been able to take up the
dropped thread of their talk, and she was without devices.
She and Grandcourt were to leave at three o'clock. It was too
irritating that after a walk in the grounds had been planned
in Deronda's hearing, he did not present himself to join in it.
Grandcourt was gone with Sir Hugo to King's Topping, to
see the old manor-house; others of the gentlemen were
shoorting; she was condemned to go and see the decoy and
the water-fowl, and everything else that she least wanted to
see, with the ladies, with old Lord Pentreath and his anecdotes,
with Mr Vandernoodt and his admiring manners. The
irritation became too strong for her: without premeditation,
she took advantage of the winding road to linger a

*X505
little out of sight, and then set off back to the house, almost
running when she was safe from observation. She entered by
a side door, and the library was on her left had; Deronda,
she knew, was often there; why might she not turn in there
as well as into any other room in the house? She had been
taken there expressly to see the illuminated family tree, and
other remarkable things -- what more natural than that she
should like to look in again? The thing most to be feared
was that the room would be empty of Deronda, for the door
was ajar. She pushed it gently, and looked round it. He was
there, writing busily at a distant table, with his back towards
the door ( in fact, Sir Hugo had asked him to answer some
constituents' letters which had becomepressing). An
enormous log-fire, with the scent of russia from the books,
made the great room as warmly odorous as a private chapel
in which the censers have been swinging. It seemed too
daring to go in -- too rude to speak and iterrupt him; yet
she went in on the noiseless carpet, and stood still for two or
three minutes, till Deronda, having finished a letter, pushed
it aside for signature, and threw himself back to consider
whether there were anything else for him to do, or whether
he could walk out for the chance of meeting the party which
included Gwendolen, when he heard her voice saying, "Mr
Deronda."
  Ir-ct was certainly startling. He rose hastily, turned round,
and pushed away his chair with a strong expression of surprise.
  "Am I wrong to come in?" said Gwendolen.
  "I thought you were far on your walk," said Deronda.
  "I turned back," said Gwendolen.
  "do you not intend to go out again? I could join younow,
if you wold allow me."
  "No; I want to say something, and I can't stay long," said
Gwendolen, speaking quickly in a subdued tone, while she
walked forward and rested her arms and muff on the back of
the chair he had pushed away from him. "I want to tell you
that it is really so -- I can't help feeling remorse for having
injured others. That was what I meant when I said that I
had done worse than gamble again and pawn the necklace

*X506
again -- something more injurious, as you called it. And I
can't alter it. I am punihed, but I can't alter it. You said I
could do many things. Tell me again. What should you do --
what should you feel, if you were in my place?"
  The hurried directness with which she spoke -- the absence
of all her little airs, as if she were only concerned to use the
time in getting an answer that would guide her, made her
appeal unspeakably touching.
  Deronda said, -- "I should feel something of what you feel --
deep sorrow."
  "But what would you try to do?" said Gwendolen, with
urgent quickness.
  "Order my life so as to make any possible amends, and
keep away from doing any sort of injury again," said Deronda,
catching her sense that the time for speech was brief.
  "but I can't -- I can't; I must fo on," said Gwendolen, in a
passionate loud whisper. "I have thrust out others -- I have
made my gain out of their loss -- tried to make it -- tried.
And I must go on. I can't alter it."
  It was impossible to answer this instantaneously. Her
words had confirmed his conjecture, and the situation of all
concerned rose in swift images before him. His feeling for
those who had been "thrust out" sanctioned her remorse; he
could not try to nullify it, yet his heart was full of pity for
her. But as soon as ge could he answered -- taking up her last
words --
  "That is the bitterest of all -- to weat the yoke of our own
wrongdoing. But if you submitted to that, as men submit to
maiming or a lifelong incurable disease? -- and made the
unalterable wrong a reason for more effort towards a good
that may do something to counterbalance the evil? One who
has committed irremediable errors may be scourged by that
consciousness into ahigher course than is common. There
are many examples. Feeling what it is to have spoiled one
life may well make us long to save other lives from being
spoiled."
  "But you have not wronged any one, or spoiled their lives,"
said Gwendolen, hastily. "It is only others who have wronged
˛you˛."

*X507
  Deronda coloured slightly, but siad immediately -- 'I suppose
our keen feeling for ourselves might end in giving us a
keen feeling for others, if, when we are suffering acutely, we
were to consider that others fo through the same sharp
experience.  That is a sort of remorse before commission.
Can't you understand that?"
  "I think I do -- now," said Gwendolen. "But you were right --
I am selfish. I have never thought much of any one's feelings,
except my mother's. I have not been fond of people. -- But
what can I do?" she went on, more quickly. "I must get up in
the morning and do what every one else does. It is all like a
dance set beforehand. I seem to see all that can be -- and I
and tired and sick of it. And the world is all confusion to me"
-- she made a gesture of disgust. "You say I am ignorant. But
what is the good of trying to know more, unless life were
worth more?"
  "this good," said Deronda, promptly, with a touch of indignant
severity, which he was inclined to encourage as his
own safeguard; "life ˛would˛ be worth more to you: some real
knowledge would give you an interestin the world beyond
the small drama of personal desires. It is the curse of your
life -- forgive me -- of so many lives, tgat@wthat all passion is spent
in that narrow round, for want of ideas and sympathies to
make a larger home for it. Is there any single occupation of
mind that you care about with passionate delight or even
independent interest?"
  Deronda paused, but Gwendolen, looking startled and
thrilled as by an electric shock, said nothing, and he went on
more insistently --
  "i take what you said of music for a small example -- it
answeres for all larger things -- you will not cultivate it for the
sake of private joy in it. What sort of earth or heaven
would hold any spiritual wealth in it for souls pauperised by
inaction? If one firmament has no stimulus for our attention
and awe, I don't see how four would have it. We should
stamp every possible world with the flatness of our own
inanity -- which is necessarily impious, without faith or
fellowship. The refuge you are needing from personal
trouble is the higher, the religious life, which holds an

*X508
enthusuasm for something more than our own appetites and
vanities. The few may find themselves in it simply by an
elevation of feeling; but for us who have to strugle for our
wisdom, the ligher life must be a region in which the
affections are clad with knowledge."
  The half-indignant remonstrance that vibrated in Deronda's
voice came, as often happens, from the habit of
inward argument with himself rather than from severity
towards Gwendolen; but it had a more beneficent effect on
her than any soothings. Nothing is feebler than the indolent
rebellion of compaint; and to be roused into self-judgment
is comparative activity. For the moment she felt like a
shaken child -- shaken out of its wailings into awe, and she
said humbly --
  "I will try. I will think."
  They both stood silent for a minute, as if some third
presence had arrested them -- for Deronda, too, was under
that sense of pressure which is apt to come when our own
winged words seem to be hovering around us, -- till Gwendolen
began again --
  "You said affection was the best thing, and I have hardly
any -- none about me. If I could, I would have mamma; but
that is impossible. Things have changed to me so -- in such a
short time. What I used not to likem I long for now. I think I
am almost getting fond of the old things now they are gone."
Her lip trembled.
  "Take the present suffering as a painful leeting in of light,"
said Deronda, more gently. "You are conscious of more beyond
the round of your own inclimations -- you know more of
the way in which your life presses on others, and their life
on yours. I don't think you could have escaped the painful
processi n some form or other."
  "But it is a very cruel form," said Gwendolen, beating her
foot on the ground with returning agitation. "I am frightened
at everything. I am frightened  at myself. When my
blood is fired I can do daring things -- take any leap; but that
makes me frightened at myself." She was looking at nothing
outside her; but her eyes were directed toward the window,
away from Deronda, who, with quick comprehension, said --

*X509
  "Turn your fear into a safeguard. Keep your dread fixed on
the idea of increasing that remorse which is so bitter to you.
Fixed meditation may do a great deal towards defining our
longing or dread. We are not always in a state of strong
emotion, and when we are calm we can use our memories
and gradually change the bias of our fear, as we do our
tastes. Take your fear as a safeguard. It is like quickness of
hearing. It may make consequences passionately present to
you. Try to take hold of your sensibility, and use it as if it
were a faculty, like vision." Deronda uttered each sentence
more urgently; he felt as if he were seizing a faint chance of
rescuing her from some indefinite danger.
  "Yes, I know; I understand what you mean," said Gwendolen,
in her loud whisper, not turning her eyes, but lifting
up her small gloved hand and waving it in deprecation of
the notion that it was easy to obey that advice. "But if
feelings rose -- there are some feelings -- hatred and anger --
how can I be good when they keep rising? And if there
came a moment when I felt stifled and could bear it no
longer --" She broke off, and with agitated lips looked at
Deronda, but the expression on his face pierced her with an
entirely new feeling. He was under the baffling difficulty of
discerning, that what he had beenurging on her was thrown
into the pallid distance of mere thought before the outburst
of her habitual emotion. It was as if he saw her drowning
while his limbs were bound. The pained compassion which
was spread over his features as he watched her, affected her
with a compunction unlike any she had felt before, and in a
changed imploring tone she said --
  "I am grieving you. I am ungrateful . You ˛can˛ help me.
I will think of everything. I will try. Tell me -- it will not
be a pain to you that I have dared to speak of my trouble
to you?  You began it, you know, when you rebuked me."
Thee was a melancholy smile on her lips as she said that,
but she added more entreatingly, "It woill not be a pain to
you?"
  "Not if it does anything to save you from an evil to come,"
said Deronda, with strong emphasis, "otherwisem it will be a
lasting pain.

*X510
  "No -- no -- it shall not be. It may be -- it shall be better
with me because I have known you." She turned immediately,
and quitted the room.
  When she was on the first landing of the  staircase, Sir
Hugo passed across the hall on his way to the library, and
saw her. Grandcourt was not with him.
  Deronda, when the baronet entered, was standing in his
ordinary attitude, grasping his coat-collar, with his back to
the table, and with that indefinable expression by which we
judge that a man is still in the shadow of a scene which he
has just gone through. He moved, however, and began to
arrange the letters.
  "has Mrs Grandcourt been in here?" said Sir Hugo.
  "Yes, she has."
  "Where are the others?2
  "I believe she left them somewhere in the grounds.
  After a moment's silence, in which Sir Hugo looked at a
letter without reading it, he said, "I hop you are not playing
with fire, Dan -- you understand me."
  "I believe I do, sir," said Deronda, after a slight hesitation,
which had some repressed anger in it. "But there is nothing
answering to your metaphor -- no fire, and therefore no
chance of scorching."
  Sir Hugo looked searchingly at him, and then said, "So
much the better. For between ourselves, I fancy there may
be some hidden gunpowder in that establishment."

*X511
*C37
˛Aspern.˛       Pardon, my lord -- I speak for Sigismund.
˛Fronsberg.!    For him? Oh, ay -- for him I always hold

                Apardon safe in bank, sure he will draw
                Sooner or later on me. What his need?
                Mad project broken? fine nechanic wings
                That would not fly? durance, assault on watch,
                Bill for Epernay, not a crust to eat?

˛Aspern.˛       Oh, none of these, my lord; he has escaped
                From Circe's herd, and seeks to win the love
                Of your fair ward Cecilia: but would win
                First your consent. You frown.
˛Fronsberg.˛                                  Distinguish words.
                I said I held a pardon, not consent.

IN spite of Deronda's reasons for wishing to be in town again
-- reasons in which his anxiety for Mirah was blent with
curiosity to know more of the enimatic Mordecai -- he did
not manage to go up before Sir Hugo, who preceded his
family that he might be ready for the opening of Parliament
on the 6th February. Deronda took up his quarters in
Park Lane, aware that his chambers were sufficiently
tenanted by Hans Meyrick. This was what he expected; but
he found other things not altogether according to his expectations.
  Most of us remember Retzsch's drawing of destiny in
the shape of Mephistopheles playing at chess with man for
his soul, a game in which we may imagine the clever adversary
making a feint of unintended moves so as to set the
beguiled mortal on carrying his defensive pieces away from
the true point of attack. The fiend makes preparation his
favourite objectof mockery, that he may fatally persyade us
against our best safeguard: he even meddles so far as to
suggest our taking our waterproofs when he is well aware
the sky is going to clear, foreseeing that theimbecile will
turn this delusion into a prejudice against waterproofs instead
of giving a closer study to the weather-signs. It is a

*X512
peculiar test of a man's metal when, after he had painfully
adjusted himself to what seems a wise provision, he finds all
his mental precaution a little beside the mark, and his excellent
intentions no better than miscalculated dovetails,
accurately cut from a wrong starting-point. His magnaimity
has got itself ready to meet misbehaviour, and finds
wuite a differnt call upon it. Something of this kind happened
to Deronda.
  His first impression was one of purepleasure and amusement
at finding his sitting-room transformed into an ˛atelier˛
strewed with miscellaneous drawings and with the contents
of two chests from Rome, the lower half of the windows
darkened with baize, and the blond Hans in his weird youth
as the presiding genius of the littered place -- his hair longer
than ofold, his facemore whimsically creased, and his high
voice as usual getting higher under the excitement of rapid
talk. The friendship of the two had been kept up warmly
since the memorable Cambridge time, notonly by correspondence
but by little episodes of companionship abroad
and in England, and the original relation of confidence on
one side and indulgence on the other had been developed in
practice, as is wont to be the case where such spiritual
borrowing and lending had been well begun.
  "I knew you would like to see my casts and antiquities,"
said Hans, after the first hearty greetings and inquiries, "so
I didn't scruple to unlade my chests here. But I've found
two rooms at Chelsea not many hundred yards from my
mother and sisters, and I shall soon be ready to hang out
there -- when they're scraped the walls and put some new
lights. That's all I'm waiting for. But you see I don't wait to
begin work: you can't conceive what a great fellow I'm
going to be. The seed of immortality has sprouted within
me."
  "Only a fungoid growth, I daresay -- a crowing disease in
the lungs," said Deronda, accustomed to treat Hans in
brotherly fashion. He was walking towards some drawings
propped on the ledge of his bookcases; fice rapidly-sketched
heads -- different aspects of the same face. He stood at a
convenient distance from them, without making any remark.

*X513
Hans, too, was silent for a minute, took up his palette and
began touching the picture on his easel.
  "What do you think of them>" he said at last.
  "The full face looks too massive; otherwise the likenesses are
good," said Deronda, moe coldly than wasusual with him.
  "No, it is not too massive," said Hans, decisively. "I have
noted that. Thereis always a little surprise when one passes
from the profile to the full face. But I shall enlarge her scale
for Berenice. I am making a Merenice series -- look at the
sketches along there -- and now I think of it, you are just the
model I want for the Agrippa." Hans, still with pencil and
palette inhand, had moved to Deronda's side while he said
this, but he addedhastily, as if conscious of a mistake, "No,
no, I forgot; you don't like sitting for your portrait, confound
you] However, I've picked up a capital Titus. There
are to be five in the series. The first is Berenice clasping the
knees of Gessius Florus and beseeching him to spare her
people: I've got that on the easel. Then this, where she is
standing on the Xystus with Agrippa, entreating the people
not to injure themselves by resistance."
  "Agrippa's legs will never do," said Deronda.
  "The legs are good realistically," said Hans, his face creasing
drolly; "public men are often shaky about the legs --
"Their legs, the emblem of their various thought," as somebody
says in the ˛Rehearsal˛."
  "But these are as impossible as the legsof Raphael's
Alcibiades," said Deronda.
  "then they are food ideally," said Hans. "Agrippa's legs
were possibly bad; I idealise that and make them impossibly
bad. Art, my Eugenius, must intensify. But never mind the
legs now: the third sketch in the series is Berenice exulting
in the prospect of being Empress if Rome, when the news
has come that Vespasian is declared Emperor and herlover
Titus his successor."
  "You must put a scroll in her mouth, else people will not
understand that. You can't tell that in a picture."
  "It will make them feel their ignorance then -- an excellent
aesthetic effect. The fourth is, Titus sending Berenice away
from Rome after she has shared his palace for ten years --

*X514
both reluctant, both sad -- ˛invitus˛ ˛invitam˛, as Suetonius hath
it. I've found a model for the Roman brute."
  "shall you make Berenice look fifty? She must have been
that."

  "No, no; a few mature touches to show the lapse of time.
Dark-eyed beauty wears well, hers particularly. But now,
here is the fifth: Berenice seated lonely on the ruins of
Jerusalem. That is pure imagination. That is what ought to
have been -- perhaps was. Now, see how I tell a pathetic
negative. Nobody knows what became of her: -- that is finely
indicated by the series coming to a close. There is no sixth
picture." Here Hans pretended to speak with a gasping sense
of sublimity, and drew back his head with a frown, as if
looking for a like impression on Deronda. "I break off in the
Homeric style. The story is chipped off, so to speak, and
passes with a ragged edge into nothing -- ˛le˛ ˛ne<ant˛; can
anything be more sublime, especially in French? The vulgar
would desire to see her corpse and burial -- perhaps her will
read and her linen distributed. But now come and look at
this on the easel. I have made some way there."
  "That beseeching attitude is really good," said Deronda,
after a moment's contemplation. "You have been very industrious
in the Christmas holidays; for I suppose you have
taken up the subject since you came to London." Neither of
them had yet mentioned Mirah.
  "No," said Hans, putting touches to his picture, "I made up
my mind to the subject before. I take that lucky chance for
an augury that I am goingto burst on the world as a great
painter. I saw a splendid woman in the Trastevere -- the
grandest women there are half Jewesses -- and she set me
hunting for a fine situation of a Jewess at Rome. Like other
men of vast learning, I ended by taking what lay on the
surface. I'll show you a sketch of the Trasteverina's head
when I can lay my hands on it."
  "I should think she would be a more suitable model for
Berenice," said Deronda, not knowing exactly how to express
his discontent.
  "Not a bit of it. The model ought to be the most beautiful
Jewess in the world, and I have found her."

*X515
  "Have you made yourself sure that she would like to figure
in that character? I should think no woman would be more
abhorrent to her. Does her quite know what you are doing?"
  "Certainly. I got her to throw herself precisely into this
attitude. Little mother sat for Gessius Florus, and Mirah
clasped her knees." -- Here Hans went a little way off and
looked at the effect of his touches.
  "I daresay she knows nothing about Berenice's history,"
said Deronda, feeling more indignation than he would have
been able to justify.
  "Oh yes, she does -- ladies' edition. Berenice was a fervid
patriot, but was beguiled by love and ambition into attaching
herself to the arch-enemy of her people. Whence the
Nemesis. Mirah takes it as a tragic parable, and cries to
think what the penitent Berenice suffered as she wandered
back to Jerusalem and sat desolate amidst desolation. That
was her own phrase. I couldn't find in my heart to tell her I
invented that part of the story."
  "Show me your Trasteverina," said Deronda, chiefly in
order to hinder himself from say8ing something else.
  "shall you mind turning over that folio?" said Hans. "My
studies of heads are all there. But they are in confusion. You
will perhaps find her next to a crop-eared undergraduate."
  After Deronda had been turning over the drawings a
minute or two, he said --
  "these seem to be all Cambridge heads and bits of
country. Perhaps I had better begin at the other end."
  "No; you'll find her about the middle. I emptied one folio
into another."
  "Is this one of your undergraduates?" said Deronda, holding
up a drawing. "It's an unusually agreeable face."
  "That? Oh, that's a man named Gascoigne -- Rex Gascoigne.
An uncommonly good fellow; his upper lip, too, is
good. I coached him before he got his scholarship. He ought
to have taken honours last Easter. But he was ill, and has
had to stay up another year. I must look him up. I want to
know how he's going on."
  "Here she is, I suppose," said Deronda, holding up the
sketch of the Trasteverina.

*X516
  "Ah," said Hans, looking at it rather contemptuously, "too
coarse. I was unregenerate then."
  Deronda was silent while he closed the folio, leaving the
Travesteverina outside. Then grasping his coat-collar, and
turning towards Hans, he said, "I daresay my scruples are
excessive, Meyrick, but I must ask you to oblige me by
giving up this notion."
  Hans threw himself into a tragic attitude, and screamed,
"What] my series -- my immortal Berenice series? Think of
what you are saying, man -- destroying, as Milton says, not a
life but an immortality. Wait before you answer, that I may
deposit the implements of my art and be ready to uproot
my hair."
  Here Hans laid down his pencil and palette, threw himself
backward into a great chair, and hanging limply over the
side, shook his long hair half over his face, lifted his hooked
fingers on each side his head, and looked up with comic
terror at Deronda, who was obliged to smile as he said --
  "Paint as many Berenices as you like, but I wish you could
feel with me -- perhaps you will, on reflection -- that you
should choose another model."
  "Why?" said Hans, standing up, and looking serious again.
  "Because she may get into such a position that her face is
likely to be recognised. Mrs Meyrick and I are anxious for
her that she should be known as an admirable singer. It is
right, and she wishes it, she should make herself independent.
And she has excellent chances. One good introduction
is secured already. And I am going to speak to Klesmer.
Her face may come to be very well known, and -- well, it is
useless to attempt to explain, unless you feel as I do. I
believe that if Mirah saw the circumstances clearly, she
would strongly object to being exhibited in this way -- to
allowing herself to be used as a model for a heroine of this
sort."
  As Hans stood with his thumbs in the belt of his blouse
listening to this speech, his face showed a growing surprise
melting into amusement, that at last would have its way in
an explosive laugh; but seeing that Deronda looked gravely
offended, he checked himself to say, "Excuse my laughing,

*X517
Deronda. You never gave me an advantage over you before.
If it had been about anything but my own pictures, I should
have swallowed every word because you said it. And so you
actually believe that I should get my five pictures hung on
the line in a conspicuous position, and carefully studied by
the public? Zounds, man] cider-cup and conceit never gave
me half such a beautiful dream. My picutres are likely to
remain as private as the utmost hypersensitiveness could
desire."
  Hans turned to paint again as a way of filling up awkward
pauses. Deronda stood perfectly still, recognixing his mistake
as to publicity, but also conscious that his repugnance was
not much diminished. He was the reverse of satisfied either
with himself or with Hans; but the power of being quiet
carries a man well through moments of embarrassment.
Hans had a reverence for his friend which made him feel a
sort of shyness at Deronda's being in the wrong; but it was
not in his nature to give up anything readily, though it were
only a whim -- or rather, especially if it were a whim, and he
presently went on, painting the while --
  "But even supposing I had a public rushing after my
pictures as if they were a railway series including nurses,
babies, and bonnet-boxes, I can't see any justice in your
objection. Every painter worth remembering has painted the
face he admired most, as often as he could. It is a part of his
soul that foes out into his pictures. He diffuses its influence
in that way. He puts what he hates into a caricature. He puts
what he adores into some sacred, heroic form. If a man
could paint the woman he loves a thousand times as the
˛Stella˛ ˛Maris˛ to put courage into the sailors on board a
tousand ships, so much the more honour to her. Isn't that
better than painting a piece of staring immodesty and calling
it by a worshipful name?"
  "Every objection can be ansered if you take broad ground
enough, Hans: no special question of conduct can be properly
settled in that way," said Deronda, with a touch of
peremptoriness. "I might admit all your generalities, and yet
be right in saying you ough not to publish Mirah's face as a
model for Berenice. But I give up the question of publicity. I

*X518
was unreasonable there." Deronda hesitated a moment. "Still,
even as a private affair, there might be good reasons for your
not indulging yourself too ,uch in painting her from the
point of view you mention. You must feel that her situation
at present is a very delicate one; and until she is in more
independence, she should be kept as carefully as a bit of
Venetian glass, for fear of shaking her out of the safe place
she is lodged in. Are you quite sure of your own discretion?
Excuse me, Hans. My having found her binds me to watch
over her. Do you understand me?"
  "Perfectly," said Hans, turning his face into a good-humoured
smile. "You have the very justifiable opinion of me that I am
likely to shatter all the glass in my way, and break my own
skull into the bargain. Quite fair. Since I got into the scrape
of being vorn, everything I have liked best has been a scrape
either for myself or somebody else. Everything I have taken
to heartily has somehow turned into a scrape. My painting is
the last scrape; and I shall be all my life getting out of it.
You think now I shall get into a scrape at home. No; I am
regenerate. You think I must be over head and ears in love
with Mirah. Quite right: so I am. But you think I shall
scream and plunge and spoil everything. There you are
mistaken -- excusably, but transcendently mistaken. I have
undergone baptism by immersion. Awe takes care of me. Ask
the little mother."
  "You don't reckon a hopeless love among your scrapes,
then?" said Deronda, whose voice seemed to get deeper as
Han's went higher.
  "I don't mean to call mine hopeless," said Hans, with provoking
coolness laying down his tools, thrusting his thumbs
into his belt, and moving away a little, as if to contemplate
his picture more deliverately.
  "My dear fellow, you are only preparing misery for yourself,"
said Deronda, decisively. "She would not marry a Christian,
even if she loved him. Have you heard her -- of course
you have -- heard her speak of her people and her religion?"
  "That can't last," said Hans. "She will see no Jew who is
tolerable. Every male of that race is insupportable, -- "insupportably
advancing" -- his nose."

*X519
  "She may rejoin her family. That is what she longs for.
Her mother and brother are probably strict Jews."
  "I'll turn proselyte if she wishes it," said Hans, with a shrug
and a laugh.
  "Don't talk nonsense, Hans. I thought you professed
a serious love for her," said Deronda, getting heated.
  "So I do. You think it desperate, but I don't."
  "I know nothing; I can't tell what has happened. We must
be prepared for surprises. But I canhardly imagine a greater
surprise to me than that there should have seemed to be
anything in Mirah's sentiments for you to found a romantic
hope on." Deronda felt that he was too contemptuous.
  "I don't found my romantic hopes on a woman's sentiments,"
said Hans, perversely inclined to be the merrier when
he was addressed with gravity. "I go to science and philosophy
for my romance. Nature designed Mirah to fall in
love with me. The amalgamation of races demands it -- the
mitigation of human ugliness demands it -- the affinity of
contrasts assures it. I am the utmost contrast to Mirah -- a
bleached Christian, who can't sing two notes in tune. Who
has a chance against me?"
  "I see now; it was all ˛persiflage˛. You don't mean a word of
what you say, Meyrick," said Deronda, laying his hand on
Meyrick's shoulder, and speaking in a tone of cordial relief.
"I was a wiseacre to answer you seriously."
  "Upon my honour I do mean it, though," said Hans, facing
round and laying his left hand on Deronda's shoulder, so
that their eyes fronted each other closely. "I am at the
confessional. I meant to tell you as soon as you came. My
mother says you are Mirah's guardian, and she thinks herself
responsible to you for every breath that falls in Mirah
in herhouse. Well, I love her -- I worship her -- I won't
despair -- I mean to deserve her."
  "My dear fellow, you can't do it," said Deronda, quickly.
  "I shouldhave said, I mean to try."
  "You can't keep your resolve, Hans. You used to resolve
what you would do for your mother and sisters."
  "YYou have a right to reproach me, old fellow," said Hans,
gently.

*X520
  "Perhaps I am ungenerous," said Deronda, not apologetically,
however. "Yet it can't be ungenerous to warn you that
you areindulging mad, Quixotic expectations."
  "Who will be hurt but myself, then?" said Hans, putting
out his lip. "I am not ging to say anything to her, unless I
felt sure of the answer. I dare not ask the oracles: I prefer a
cheerful caliginosity, as Sir Thomas Browne might say. I
would rather mun my chance there and lose, than be sure of
winning anywhere else. And I don't mean to swallow the
poison of despair, though you are disposed to thrust it on
me. I am giving up wine, so let me get a little drunk on hope
and vanity."
  "With all my heart, if it will do you any good," said
Deronda, loosing Han's shoulder, with a little push. He
made his tone kindly, but his words were from the lip only
As to his real feeling he was silenced.
  He was conscious of that peculiar irritation which will
sometimes befall the man whom others are inclined to trust
as a mentor -- the irritation of perceiving that he is supposed
to be entirely off the same plane of desire and temptation as
those who confess to him. Our guides, we pretend, must be
sinless: as if those were not often the best teachers who only
yesterday fot corrected for their mistakes. Throughout their
friendship Deronda had been used to Han's egotism, but he
had never before felt intolerant to it: when Hans, habitually
pouring out his own feelings and affairs, had never cared for
any detail in return, and, if he chanced to know any, had
soon forgotten it. Deronda had been inwardly as well as
outwardly indulgent -- nay, satisfied. But now he noted with
some indignation, all the stronger because it must not be
betrayed, Han's evident assumption that for any danger of
rivalry or jealousy in relation to Mirah, Deronda was as
much out of the question as the angel Gabriel. It is one
thing to be resolute in placing one's self out of the question,
and another to endure that others should perform that exclusion
for us. He had expected that Hans would give him
trouble: what he had not expected was that the trouble
would have a strong element of personal feeling. And he was
rather ashamed that Han's hopes caused him uneasiness in

*X521
spite of his well-warranted conviction that they would never
be fulfilled. They had raised an image of Mirah changing;
and however he might protest that the change would not
happen, the protest kept up the unpleasant image. Altogether,
poor Hans seemed to be entering into Deronda's
experience in a disproportionate manner -- going beyond his
part of rescued prodigal, and rousing a feeling quite distinct
from compassionate affection.
  When Deronda went to Chelsea he was not made as comfortable
as he ought to have been by Mrs Meyrick's evident
release from anxiety about the beloved but incalculable son.
Mirah seemed livelier than before, and for the first time he
saw her laugh. It was when they were talking of Hans, he
being nautrally the mother's first topic. Mirah wished to
know if Deronda had seen Mr Hans going through a sort of
character piece without changing his dress.
  "He passes from one figure to another as if he were a bit of
flame where you fancied the figures without seeing them,"
said Mirah, full of her subject; "he is so wonderfully
quick. I used never to like comic things on the stage -- they
were dwelt on too long; but all in one minute Mr Hans
makes himself a blind bard, and then Rienzi addressing the
Romans, and then an opera-dancer, and then a desponding
young gentleman -- I am sorry for them all, and yet I laugh
all in one" -- here Mirah gave a little laugh that might have
entered into a song.
  "We hardly thought that Mirah could laugh till Hans
came," said Mrs Meyrick, seeing that Deronda, like herself,
was observing the pretty creature.
  "Hans seems in great force just now," said Deronda, in a
tone of congratulation. "I don't wonder at his enlivening you."
  "He's been just perfect ever since he came back," said Mrs
Meyrick, keeping to herself the next clause -- "if it will but
last."
  "It is a great happiness," said Mirah, "to see the son and
brother comeinto this dear home. And I hear them all talk
about what they did together when they were little. That
seems like heaven, to have a mother and brother who talk in
that way. I have never had it."

*X522
  "Nor I," said Deronda, involunatarily.
  "No?" said Mirah, regretfully. "I wish you had. I wish you
had had every good." The last words were uttered with a
serious ardour as if they had been part of a litany, while her
eyes were fixed on Deronda, who with his elbow on the back
of his chair was conpemplating her by the new light of the
impression she had made on Hans, and the possibility of her
being attracted by that extraordinary contrast. It was no
more than what had happened on each former visit of his,
that Mirah appeared to enjoy speaking of what she felt very
much as a little girl fresh from school pours forth spontaneously
all the long-repressed chat for which she has found
willing ears. For the first time in her life Mirah was among
those whom she entirely trusted, and her original visionary
impression that Deronda was a divinely-sent messenger hung
about his image still, stirring always new the disposition to
reliance and openness. It was in this way she took what
might have been the injurious flattery of admiring attention
into which her helpless dependence had been suddenly
transformed: every one around her watched for her looks
and words, and the effect on her was simply that of having
passed from a stifling imprisonment into an exhilarating air
which made speech and action a delight. To her mind it was
all a gift from others' goodness. But that word of Deronda's
implying that there had been some lack in his life which
might be compared with anything she had known in hers,
was an entirely new inlet of thought about him. After her
first expression of sorrowful surprise she went on --
  "But Mr Hans said yesterday that you thought so much of
others you hardly wanted anything for yourself. He told us a
wonderful story of Bouddha giving himself to the famished
tigress to save her and her little ones from starving. And he
said you were like Bouddha. That is what we all imagine of
you."
  "Pray don't imagine that," said Deronda, who had lately
been finding such supposotions rather exasperating. "Even if
it were true that I thought so much of thers, it would not
follow that I had no wants for myself. When Bouddha let the
tigress eat him he might have been very hingry himself."

*X523
  "Perhaps if he was starved he would not mind so much
about being eaten," said Mab, shyly.
  "Please don't thinj that, Mab; it takes way the beauty of
the action," said Mirah.
  "But if it were true, Mirah?" said the rational Amy, having
a half-holiday from her teaching; "you always take what is
beautiful as if it were true."
  "So it is," said Mirah, gently. "If people have thought what
is the most beautiful and the best thing, itmust be true. It is
always there."
  "Now, Mirah, what ˛do˛ you mean?" said Amy.
  "I understand her," said Deronda, coming to the rescue. "It
is a truth in thought though it may never have been carried
out in action. It lives as an idea. Is that it?" He turned to
Mirah, who was listening with a blind look in her lovely eyes.
  "It must be that, because you understand me, but I cannot
quite explain," said Mirah, rather abstractedly -- still searching
for some expression.
  "But ˛was˛ it beautiful for Bouddha to let the tiger eat him?"
said Amy, changing her ground. "It would be a bad pattern."
  "the world would get full of fat tigers," said Mab.
  Deronda laughed, but defended the myth. "It is like a
passionate word," he said; "the exaggeration is a flash of
fervour. It is an extreme image of what is happening every
day -- the transmutation of self."
  "I think I can say what I mean, now," said Mirah, who had
not heard the intermediate talk. "When the best thing comes
into our thoughts, it is like what my mother had been to me.
She has been just as really with me as all the other people
about me -- often more really with me."
  Deronda, inwardly wincing under this illustration, which
brought other possible realities about that mother vividly
before him, presently turned the conversation by saying,
"But we must not get too far away from practical matters. I
came, for one thing, to tell of an interview I had yesterday,
which I hope Mirah will find to have been useful to her. It
was with Klesmer, the great pianist."
  "Ah?" said Mrs Meyrick, with satisfaction. "You think he
will help her?"

*X524
  "I hope so, He is very much occupied, but has promised to
fix a time for receiving and hearing Miss Lapidoth, as we
must learn to call her" -- here Deronda smiled at Mirah -- "if
she consents to go to him."
  "I shall be very grateful," said Mirah, calmly. "He wants to
hear me sing, before hecan judge whether I ought to be
helped."
  Deronda was struck with her plain sense about these
matters of practical concern.
  "It will not be at all trying to you, I hope, if Mrs Meyrick
will kindly go with you to Klesmer's house."
  "Oh no, not at all trying. I have been doing that all my life
-- I mean, told to do things that others may judge of me.
And I have gone through a bad trial of that sort. I am
prepared to bear it, and do some very small thing. Is
Klesmer a severe man?"
  "He is peculiar, but I have not had experience enough of
him to know whether he would be what you would call
severe. I know he is kind-hearted -- kind in action, if not in
speech."
  "I have been used to be frowned at and not praised," said
Mirah.
  "By the by, Klesmer frowns a good deal," said Deronda,
"but there is often a sort of smile in his eyes all the while.
Unhappily he wears spectacles, so you must catch him in the
right light to see the smile."
  "I shall not be frightened," said Mirah. "If he were like a
roaring lion, he only wants me to sing. I shall do what I can."
  "then I feel sure you will not mind being invited to sing in
Lady Mallinger's drawing-room," said Deronda. "She intends
to ask you next month, and will invite many ladies to hear
you, who are likely to want lessons from you for their
daughters."
  "How fast we are mounting]" said Mrs Meyrick, with delight.
"You never thought of getting grand so quickly, Mirah."
  "I am a little frightened of being called Miss Lapidoth,"
said Mirah, colouring with a new uneasiness. "Might I be
called Cohen?"
  "I understand you," said Deronda, promptly. "But, I assure

*X525
you, you must not be called Cohen. The name is inadmisable
for a singer. This is one of the trifles in which we must
conform to vulgar prejudice. We could choose some other
name, however -- such as singers ordinarily choose -- an
Italian or Spanish ane, which would suit your ˛physique˛."
To Deronda just now the name Cohen was equivalent to the
ugliest of yellow badges.
  Mirah reflected a little, anxiously, then said, "No. If Cohen
will not do, I will keep the name I have been called by. I
will not hide myself. I have friends to protect me. And
now -- if ny father were very miserable and wanted help --
no," she said, looking at Mrs Meyrick, "I should think then,
that he was perhaps crying as I used to see him, and had
nobody to pity him, and I had hidden myself from him. He
had none belonging to him but me. Others that made friends
with him always left him."
  "Keep to what you feel right, my child," said Mrs
Meyrick. "˛I˛would not persuade you to the contrary." For her
own part she had no patience or pity for that father, and
would have left him to his crying.
  Deronda was saying to himself, "I am rather base to be
angry with Hans. How can he help being in love with her?
But it is too absurdly presumptuous for him even to frame
the idea of appropriating her, and a sort of blasphemy to
suppose that she could possibly give herself to him."
  What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such
thoughts? He was not one who could quite nai´vely introduce
himself where he had just excluded his friend, yet it was
undeniable that what had just happened made a new stage
in his feeling towards Mirah. But apart from other grounds
for self-repression, reasons both definite and vague made
him shut away that question as he might have shut up a
half-opened writing that would have carried his imagination
too far and given too much shape to presentiments. Might
there not come a disclosure which would hold the missing
determination of his course? What did he really know about
his origin? Strangely in these latter months when it seemed
right that he should exert his will in the choice of a destination,
the passion of his nature had got more and more looked

*X526
by this uncertainty. The disclosure might bring its pain,
indeed the likelihood seemed to him to be all on that side;
but if it helpted him to make his life a sequence which would
take the form of duty -- if it saved him from having to make
an arbitrary selection where he felt no preponderance of
desire? Still more he wanted to escape standing as a critic
outside the activities of men, stiffened into the rediculous
attitude of self-assigned superiority. His chief tether was his
early inwrought affection for Sir Hugo, making him gratefully
deferential to whishes with which he had little agreement;
but gratitude had been sometimes disturbed by
doubts which were near reducing it to a fear of being ungrateful.
Many of us complain that half our birthright is
sharp duty: Deronda was more inclined to complain that he
was robbed of this half; yet he accused himself, as he would
have accused another, of being weakly self-conscious and
wanting in resolve. He was the reverse of that type painted
for us in Faulconbridge and Edmund of Gloster, whose
coarse ambition for personal success is inflamed by a defiance
of accidental disadvantages. To Daniel the words
Father and Mother had the altar-fire in them; and the
thought of all closest relations of our nature held still something
of the mustic power which had made his neck and ears
burn in boyhood. The average man may regard this sensibility
on the question of birth as preposterous and hardly
credible; but with the utmost respect for his knowledge as
the rock from which all other knowledge is hewn, it must be
admitted that many well-proved facts are dark to the
average man, even comcerning the action of his own heart
and the structure of his own retina. A century ago he and all
his forefathers had not had the slightest notion of that
electric discharge by means of which they had all wagged
their tongues mistakenly; and more than they were awake to
the secluded anguish of exceptional sensitiveness into which
many a carelessly-begotten child of man is born.
  Perhaps the ferment was all the stronger in Deronda's
mind because he had never had a confidant to whom he
could open himself on these delicate subjects. He had always
been leaned on instead of being invited to lean. Sometimes

*X527
he had longed for the sort of friend to whom he might
possibly unfold his experience: a young man like himself
who sustained a private grief and was not too confient
about his own career; speculative enough to understand
every moral difficulty, yet socially susceptible, as he himself
was, and having every outward sign of equality either in
bodily or spiritual wrestling; -- for he had found it impossible
to reciprocate confidences with one who looked up to him.
But he had no expectation of meeting the friend he imagined.
Deronda's was not one of those quiveringly-poised
natures that lend themselves to second-sight.

*C38
There be who hold that the deeper tragedy were a Prometheus
Bound not ˛after˛ but ˛before˛ he had well got the celestial fire into
the %na<rtes% whereby it might be conveyed to mortals* thrust by
the Kratos and Bia of instituted methods into a solitude of
despised ideas, fastened in throbbing helplessness by the fatal
pressure of poverty and disease -- a solitude where many pass by,
but none regard.

"SECOND-SIGHT" is a flag over disputed ground. But it is
matter of knowledge that there are persons whose yearnings,
conceptions -- nay, travelled conclusions - continually take
the form of images which have a foreshadowing power: the
deed they would do starts up before them in complete shape,
making a coercive type; the event they hunger for or dread
rises into vision with a seed-like growth, feeding itself fast on
unnumbered impressions. They are not always the less
capable of the argumentative process, nor less sane than the
commonplace calculators of the market: sometimes it may
be that their natures have manifold openings, like the
hundred-gated Thebes, where there may naturally be a
greater and more miscellaneous inrush than through a narrow beadle-watched
portal. No doubt there are abject specimens of the visionary, as there
as there is a minim mammal which

*X528
you might imprison in the finger of your glove. That small
relative of the elephant has no harm inhim; but what great
mental or social type is free from specimens whose insignificance
is both ugly and noxious? One is afraid to think of all
that the genus "patriot" embraces: or of the elbowing there
might be at the day of judgment for those who ranked as
authors, and brought volumes either in their hands or on
trucks.
  This apology for inevitable kinship is meant to usher in
some facts about Mordecai, whose figure had bitten itself
into Deronda's mind as a new question which he felt an
interest in getting answered. But the interest was no more
than a vaguely expectant suspense: the consumptive-looking
Jew, apparently a fervid student of sone kind, getting his
crust vu a quiet handicraft, like Spinoza, fitted into none of
Deronda's anticipations.
  It was otherwise with the effect of their meeting on
Mordecai. For many winters, while he had been conscious of
an ebbing physical life, and a widening spiritual loneliness,
all his passionate desire had concentrated itself in the yearning
for some young ear into which he could pour his mind
as a testament, some soul kindred enough to accept the
spiritual product of his own brief, painful life, as a mission
to be executed. It was remarkable that the hopefulness
which is often the beneficent illusion of consumptive
patients, was in Mordecai wholly diverted from the prospect
of bodily recovery and carried into the current of this yearning
for transmission. The yearning, which had panted upward
from out of overwhelming discouragements, had
grown into a hope -- the hope into a confident belief, which,
instead of being checked by the clear conception he had of
his hastening decline, took rather the intensity of expectant
faith in a prophecy which has only brief space to get fulfilled
in.
  Some years had now gone since he had first begun to
measure men with a keen glance, searching for a possibility
which became more and more a distant conception. Such
distinctness as it had at first was reached chiefly by a method
of contrast: he wanted to find a man who differed from

*X529
himself. Tracing reasons in that self for the rebuffs he had
met with and the hindrances that beset him, he imagined a
man who would have all the elements necessary for sympathy
with him, but in an embodiment unlike his own: he
must be a Jew, intellectually cultured, morally fervid -- in all
this a nature ready to be plenished from Modecai's; but his
face and frame must be beautiful and strong, he must have
been used to all the refinements of social life, his voice must
flow with a full and easy current, his circumstances be free
from sordid need: he must glorify the possibilities of the
Jew, not sit and wander as Mordecai did, bearing the stamp
of his people amid the signs of poverty and waning breath.
Sensitive to physical characteristics, he had, both abroad and
in England, looked at pictures as well as men, and in a
vacant hour he had sometimes lingered in the National
Gallery in search of paintings which might feed his hopefulness
with grave and noble types of the human form, such as
might well belong to men of his own race. But he returned
in disappointment. The instances are scattered but thinly
over the galleries of Europe, in which the fortune or selection
even of the chief masters had given to Art a face at once
young, grand, and beautiful, where, if there is any melancholy,
it is no feeble passivity, but enteres into the foreshadowed
capability of heroism.
  Some observant persons may perhaps remember his
emaciated figure, and dark eyes deep in their sockets, as he
stood in front of a picture that had touched him either to
new or habitual mediation: he commonly wore a cloth cap
with black fur round it, which no painter would have asked
him to take off. But specators would be likely to think of
him as an odd-looking Jew, who probably got money out of
pictures; and Mordecai, when he noticed them, was perfectly
aware of the impression he made. Experience had rendered
him morbidly alive to the effect of a man's poverty and other
physical disadvantagesin cheapening his ideas, unless they
are those of a Peter the Hermit who had a tocsin for the
rabble. But he was too sane and generous to attribute his
spiritual banishment solely to the excusable prejudices of
others: certain imcapacities of his own had made the sentence

*C530
of exclusion; and hence it was that his imagination had
constructed another man who would be something more
ample than the second soul bestowed, according to the
notion of the Cabbalists, to help out the insufficient first --
who would be a blooming human life, ready to incorporate
all that was worthiest in an existence whose visible, palpable
part was burning itself way fast away. His inward need for the
conception of this expanded, prolonged self was reflected as
an outward necessity. The thoughts of his heart (that
ancient phrase best shadows the truth) seemed to him too
preciousm too closely inwoven with the growth of things not
to have a further destiny. And as the more beautiful, the
stronger, the more executive self took shape in his mind, he
loved it beforehand with an affection half identifying, half
contemplative and grateful.
  Mordecai's mind wrought so constantly in images, that his
coherent trains of thought often resembled the significant
dreams attributed to sleepers by waking persons in their
most inventive moments; nay, they often resembled genuine
dreamns in their way of breaking off the passage from the
known to the unknown. Thus, for a long while, he habitually
thought of the Being answering to his need as one distantly
approaching or turning his back towards him, darkly painted
against a golden sky. The reason of the golden sky lay in
one of Mordecai's habits. He was keenly alive to some poetic
aspects of London; and a favourite resort of his, when
strength and leisure allowed, was ro some one of the bridges,
especially about sunrise or sunset. Even when he was bending
over watch-wheels and trinkets, or seated in a small
upper room looking out on dingy bricks and dingy cracked
windows, his imagination spontaneously planted him on
some sport where he had a far$tretching scene; his thought
went on in wide spaces; and wherever he could, he tried to
have in reality the influences of a large sky. Leaning on the
parapet of Blackfriars bridge, and gazing meditateively, the
breadth and calm of the river, with its long vista half hazy,
half luminous, the grand dim masses or tal; forms of buildings
which were the signs of world-commerce, the oncoming
of boats and barges from the still distance into sound and

*X531
colour, entered intohis mood and blent themselves indistinguishably
with his thinking, as a fine symphony to which
we can hardly be said to listen makes a medium that bears
up our spiritual wings. Thus it happened that the figure
representative of Mordecai's longing was mentally seen
darkened by the necess of light in the aerial background.
But in the inevitable progress of his imagination towards
fuller detail, he ceased to see the figure with its back towards
him. It began to advance, and a face became discernible; the
words youthm beauty, refinement, Jewish birth, noble gravity,
turned into hardly imdividual but typical form and colour:
gathered from his memory of faces seen among the Jews of
Holland and Bohemia, and from the paintings which revived
that memory. Reverently let it be said of this mature spiritual
need that it was akin to the boy's and birl's picturing of
the future beloved; but the stirrings of such young desire are
feeble compared with the passionate current of an ideal life
straining to embody itself, made intense by resistance to
imminent dissolution. The visionary form became a companion
and auditor; keeping a place not only in the waking
imagination, but in those dreams of lighter slumber of
which it is truest to say, "I sleep, but my heart waketh" --
when the disturbing trivial story of yesterday is charged
with the impassioned purpose of years.
  Of late the urgency of irredeemable time, measured by the
gradual choking of life, had turned Mordecai's trust into an
agitated watch for the fulfilment that must be at hand. Was
the bell on the werge of tolling, the sentence about to be
executed? The deliverer's footstep must be near -- the deliverer
who was to rescue Mordecai's spiritual travail from
oblivion, and give it an aboding place in the best heritage of
his people. An insane exaggeration of his own value, even if
his ideas had been as true and precious as those of Columbus
or Newton, many would have counted this yearning, taking
it as the sublimer part for a man to say, "If not I, then
another," and to hold cheap the meaning of his own life. But
the fuller nature desires to be an agent, to create, and not
merely to look on: strong love hungers to bless, and not
merely to behold blessing. And while there is warmth

*X532
enough in the sun to feed an energetic life, there will still be
men to feel, "I am lord of this moment's change, and will
charge it with my soul."
  But with that mingling of imconsequence which belongs to
us all, and not unhappily, since it saves us from any effects
of mistake, Mordecai's confidence in the friend to come did
not suffice to mke him passive, and he tried expedients,
pathetically humble, sich as happened to be within his
reach, for communicating something of himself. It was now
two years since he had taken up his abode under Ezra
Cohen's roof, where he was regarded with much good-will as
a compound of workman, dominie, vessal of charity, inspired
idiot, man of piety, and (if he were inquired into) deangerous
heretic. During that time little Jacob had advanced into
knickerbockers, and into that quickness of apprehension
which had been already made manifest in relation to hardware
and exchange. He had also advanced in attachment to
Mordecai, regarding him as an inferior, but liking him none
the worse, and taking his helpful cleverness as he might
have taken the services of an enslaved Djinn. As for Mordecai,
he had given Jacob his first lessons, and his habitual
tenderness easily turned into the teacher's fatherhood.
Though he was fully conscious of the spiritual distance
between the parents and himself, and would never have
attempted any communications to them from his peculiar
world, the boy moved him with that idealising affection
which merges the qualities of the individual child in the
glory of childhood and the possibilities of a long future. And
this feeling had drawn him on, at first without premeditation,
and afterwards with conscious purpose, to a sort of
outpouring in the ear of the boy which might have seemed
wild enough to any excellent man of business who overheard
it. But none overheard when Jacob went up to Mordecai's
room on  a day, for example, in which there was little work to
be done, or at an hour when the work was ended, and after a
brief lesson in English reading or in numeration, was induced
to remain standing at his teacher's knees, or chose to
jump astride the, often to the patient fatigue of the wasted
limbs. The inducement was perhaps the mending of a toy, or

*X533
some little mechanical device in which Mordecai's well-practised
finger-tips had an exceptional skill; and with the boy
thus tethered, he would begin to repeat a Hebrew poem of
his own, into which years before he had poured his first
youthful ardours for that conception of a blended past and
future which was the mistress of his soul, telling Jacob to say
the words after him.
  "The boy will get them engraved within him," thought
Mordecai; "it is a way of printing."
  None readier than Jacob at this fascinating game of
imitating unintelligible words; and if no opposing diversion
occurred, he would sometimes carry on his share on it as long
as the teacher's breath would last out. For Mordecai threw
into each repetition the fervour befitting a sacred occasion.
In such instances, Jacob would show no other distraction
than reaching out and surveying the contents of his pockets;
or drawing down the skin of his cheeks to make his eyes look
awful, and rolling his head to complete the ffect; or alternately
handling his own nose and Mordecai's as if to test the
relation of their masses. Under all this the fervid reciter
would not pause, satisfied if the young organs of speech
would submit themselves. But most commonly a sudden
impulse sent Jacob leaping away into some antic or active
amusement, when, instead of following the recitation, he
would return upon the foregoing words most ready to his
tongue, and mouth or gabble, with a see-saw suited to the
action of his limbs, a verse on which Mordecai had spent
some of his too scanty haert's blood. Yet he waited with such
patience as a prophet needs, and began his strange printing
again undiscouraged on the morrow, saying inwardly --
  "My words may rule him some day. Their meaning may
flash out on him. It is so with a nation -- after many days."
  Meanwhile Jacob's sense of power was increasing and his
time enlivened by a store of magical articulation with which
he made the baby crow, or drove the large cat into a dark
corner, or promised himself to frighten any incidental
Christian of his own years. One week he had unfortunately
seen a street mountebank, and this carried off his muscular
imitatieness in sad divergence from New Hebrew poetry

*X534
after the model of Jehuda ha-Levi. Mordecai had arrived at
a fresh passage in his poem; for as soon as Jacob had got
well used to one portion, he was led on to another, and a
fresh combination of sounds generally answered better in
keeping him fast for a few minutes. The consumptive voice,
originally a strong high baritone with its variously mingling
hoarseness, like a haze amidst illuminations, and its occasional
incipient gasp, had more than the usual excitement,
while it gave forth Hebrew verse with a meaning something
like this:-


  "Away from me the garment of forgetfulness,
   Withering the heart;
   The oil and wine from presses of the Goyim,
   Poisoned with scorn.
   Solitude is on the sides of Mount Nebo,
   In its heart a tomb:
   There the buried ark and golden cherubim
   Make hidden light:
   There the solemn faces gaze unchanged,
   The wings are spread unbroken:
   Shut beneath in silent awful speech
   The Law lies graven.
   Solitude and darkness are my covering,
   And my heart a tomb;
   Smite and shatter it, O Gabriel]
   Shatter it as the clay of the founder
   Around the golden image."



  In the absorbing enthusiasm with which Mordecai had
intoned rather than spoken this last invocation, he was unconscious
that Jacob had ceased to follow him and had
started away from his knees; but pausing he saw, as by a
sudden flash, that the lad had thrown himself on his hands
with his feet in the air, mountebank fashion, and was picking
up with his lips a bright farthing which was a favourite
among his pocket treasures. This might have been reckoned
among the tricks Mordecai was used to, but at this moment
it jarredhim horribly, as if it had been a Satanic grin upon
his prayer.
  "child] child]" he called out with a strange cry that

*X535
startled Jacob to his feet, and then he sank backward with a
shudder, closing his eyes.
  "What?" said Jacob, quickly. Then, not getting an immediate
answer, he pressed Mordecai's knees with a shaking
movement, in order to rouse him. Mordecai opened his eyes
with a fierce expression in them, leaned forward, grasped the
little shoulders, and said in a quick, hoarse whisper --
  "A curse is on your generation, child. They will open the
mountain and drag forth the golden wings and coin them
into money, and the solem faces they will break up into ear-rings
for wanton women] And they shall get themselves a
new name, but the angel of ignominy, with the fiery brand,
shall know them, and their heart shall be the tomb of dead
desires that turn their life to rottenness."
  The aspect and action of Mordecai were so new and mysterious
to Jacob -- they carried such a burthen of obscure
threat -- it was as if the patient, indulgent companion had
turned into something unknown and terrific: the sunken
dark eyes and hoarse accents close to him, the thin grappling
fingers, shook Jacob's little frame into awe, and while
Mordecai was speaking he stood trembling with a sense that
the house was tumbling in and they were not going to have
dinner any more. But when the terrible speech had ended
and the pinch was relaxed, the shock resolved inself into
tears; Jacob lifted up his small patriarchal countance and
wept aloud. This sign of childish grief at once recalled
Mordecai to his usal gentle self: he was not able to speak
again at present, but with a maternal action he drew the
curly head towards him and pressed it tenderly against his
breast. On this Jacob, feeling the danger wellnigh over,
howled at ease, beginning to imitate his own perforance
and improve upon it -- a sort of transition from impulse into
art often obserable. Indeed, the next day he undertook to
terrify Adelaide Rebekah in like manner, and succeeded very
well.
  But Mordecai suffered a check which lasted long, from the
consciousness of a misapplied agitation; sane as well as
excitable, he judged severely his moments of aberration into
futile eagerness, and felt discredited with himself. All the

*X536
more his mind was strained towards the discernment of that
friend to come, with whom he would have a calm certainty
of fellowship and understanding.
  It was just then that, in his usual mid-day guardianship of
the old book-shop, he was struck by the appearance of Deronda,
and it is perhaps comprehensible now why Mordecai's
glance took on a sudden eager interest as he looked at the
new-comer: he saw a face and drame which seemed to him
to realise the long-conceived type. But the disclaimer of
Jewish birth was for the moment a backward thrust of
double severity, the particular disappointment tending to
shake his confidence in the more indefinite expectation.
Nevertheless, when he found Deronda seated at the Cohens'
table, the disclaimer was for the moment nullified: the first
impression returned with added force, seeming to be guaranteed
by this second meeting under circumstances more peculiar
than the former; and in asking Deronda if he knew
Hebrew, Mordecai was so possessed by the new inrush of
belief, that he had forgotten the absence of any other condition
to the fulfilment of his hopes. But the ansering "No"
struck them all down again, and the frustration was more
painful than before. After turning his back on the visitor
that Sabbath evening, Mordecai went through days of a
deep discouragement, like that of men on a doomed ship
who, having strained their eyes after a sail, and beheld it
with rejoicing, behold it never advance, and say, "Our sick
eyes make it." But the long-contemplated figure had come as
an emotional sequence of Mordecai's firmest theoretic convictions;
it had been wrought from the imagery of his most
passionate life; and it inevitably reappeared -- reappeared in
a more specific self-asserting form than ever. Deronda had
that sort of resemblance to the preconceived type which a
finely individual bust or portrait has to the more generalised
copy left in ourminds after a long interval: we renew our
memory with delight, but we hardly know with how much
correction. And now, his face met Mordecai's inward gaze as
if it had always belonged to the awaited friend, raying out,
moreover, some of that influence which belongs to breathing
flesh; till by-and-by it seemed that discouragement had

*X537
turned into a new obstinacy, and the everrecurrent
vison had the force of an outward call to disregard
counter-evidence, and keep expectation awake. It was
Deronda now who was seen in the often painful night-watches,
when we are all liable to be held with the clutch of
a signle thought -- whose figure, never with its back turned,
was seen in moments of soothed reverie or soothed dozing,
painted on that golden sky which was the doubly blessed
symbol of advancing day and of approaching rest.
  Mordecai knew that the nameless stranger was to come
and redeem his ring; and, in spite of contrary chances, the
wish to see him again was growing into a belief that he
should see him. In the January weeks, he felt an increasing
agitation of that subdued hidden quality which hinders
nervous people from any steady occupation on the eve of an
anticipated change. He couldnot go on with his printing of
Hebrew on little Jacob's mind; or with his attendance at a
weekly club, which was another effort of the same forlorn
hope: something else was coming. The one thing he longed
for was to get as far as the river, which he could do but seldom
and with difficulty. He yearned with a port's yearning for the
wide sky, the far-reaching vista of bridges, the tender and
flucuating lights on the water which seems to breath with a
life that can shiver and mourn, be comforted and rejoice.

*C39
MOMENTOUS things happened to Deronda the very evening
of that visit to the small house at Chelsea, when there was
the discussion about Mirah's public name. But for the family

*X538
group there, what appeared to be the chief sequence connected
with it occurred two days afterwards. About four
o'clock wheels paused before the door, and there came one of
those knocks with an accompanying ring which serve to
magnify the sense of social existence in a region where the
most enlivening signals are usually those of the muffin-man
All the girls were at hime, and the two rooms were thrown
together to make space for Kate's drawing, as well as a
great length of embroidery which had taken the place of the
satin cushions -- a sort of ˛pie>ce˛ ˛de˛ ˛re<sistance˛ in the courses of
needlework, taken up by any clever fingers that happened to
be at liberty. It stretched across the front room picturesquely
enough, Mrs Meyrick bending over it at one corner,
Mab in the middle, and Amy at the other end. Mirah, whose
performances in point of sewing were on the makeshift level
of the tailor-bird's, her education in that branch having been
much neglected, was acting as reader to the party, seated on
a camp-stool; in which position she also served Kate as
model for a title-page vignette, symbolising a fair public
aborbed in the successive volumes of the Family Tea-table.
She was giving forth with charming distinctness the delightful
Essay of Elia, ˛The˛ ˛Praise˛ ˛of˛ ˛Chimney-sweeps˛, and all
were smiling over the "innocent blackness", when the imposing
knock and ring called their thoughts to loftier
spheres, and they looked up in wonderment.
  "Dear me]" said Mrs Meyrick; "can it be Lady Mallinger?
Is there a grand carriage, Amy?"
  "No -- only a hansom cab. It must be a gentleman."
  "The prime Minister, I should think," said Kate, drily.
"Hans says the greatest man in London may get into a
hansom cab."
  "oh, oh, oh]" cried Mab. "Suppose it should be Lord
Russell]"
  The five bright faces were all looking amused when the
old maid-servant bringing in a card distractedly left the
parlour-door open, and there was seen bowing towards Mrs
Meyrick a figure quite unlike that of the respected Premier --
tall and physically impressive even in his kid and kersey-mere,
with massive facem flamboyant hair, and gold spectacles:

*X539
in fact, as Mrs Meyrick saw from the card, ˛Julius˛ ˛Klesmer˛.
  Even embarrassment could hardly have made the "little
mother" awkward, but quick in her perceptions she was at
once aware of the situation, and fetl well satisfied that the
great personage had come to Mirah instead of requiring her
to come to him; taking it as a sign of active interest. But
when he entered, the rooms shrank into closets, the cottage
piano, Mab thought, seemed a ridiculous toy, and the entire
family existence as petty and private as an establishment of
mice in the Tuileries. Klesmer's personality, especially his
way of glancing round him, immediately suggested vast
areas of a multitudinous audience, and probably they
made the usual scenery of his consciousness, for we all
of us carry on our thinking in some habitual ˛locus˛ where
there is a presence, of other souls, and those who take in
a larger sweep than their neighbours are apt to seem
mightily vain and affected. Klemser was vain, but not more
so than many contemporaries of heavy aspect, whose
vanity leaps out and startles one like a spear out of a
walking-stick; as to his carriage and gestures, these were as
natural to him as the length of his fingers; and the rankest
affectation he could have shown would have been to look
difident and demure. While his grandiose air was making
Mab feel herself a ridiculous toy to match the cottage piano,
he was taking in the details around him with a keen and
thoroughly kend sensibility. He remembered a home no
larger than this on the outskirts of Bohemia; and in the
figurative Bohemia too he had had large acquaintance with
the variety and romance which belong to small incomes. He
addressed Mrs Meyrick with the utmost deference.
  "I hope I have not taken too great a freedom. Being in the
neighbourhood, I ventured to save time by calling. Our
friend Mr Deronda mentioned to me an understanding that
I was to have the honour of becoming acquainted with a
young lady here -- Miss Lapidoth."
  Klesmer had really discerned Mirah in the first moment of
entering, vut with subtle politeness he looked round bowingly
at the three sisters as if he were uncertain which was
the young lady in question.

others demand? But if his loves lies deeper than any earons
to be found? Man finds his pathways: at first they were
foot-tracks, as those of the beast in the wilderness; now they
are swift and invisible: his thought dives through the ocean,
and his wishes thread the air: has he found all the pathways

*X561
yet? What reaches him,stays with him, rules him: he must
accept it, not knowing its pathway. Say, my expectation of
you has grown but as false hopes grow, That doubt is in
your mind? Well, my expectation was there, and you are
come. Men have died of thirst. But I was thirsty, and the
water is on my lips. What are doubts to me? In the hour
when you come to me and say, "I reject your soul: I know
that I am not a Jew: we have no lot in common" - I shall
not doubt. I shall be certain -- certain that I have been
deluded. That hour will never come]"
  Deronda felt a new chord sounding in this speech: it was
rather imperious than appealing -- had more of conscious
power than of the yearning need which had acted as a
beseeching grasp on him before. And usually, though he was
the reverese of pugnacious, such a change of attitude towards
him would have weakened his inclination to admit a claim.
But here there was something that balanced his resistance
and kept it aloof. This strong man whose gaze was sustainedly
calm and his finger-nails pink with health, who was
exercised in all questioning, and accused of excessive mental
independence, still felt a subduing inflence over him in the
tenacious certitude of the fragile creature before him, whose
pallid uellow nostril was tense with effort as his breath
laboured under the burthen of eager speech. The influence
seemed to strengthen the bond of sympathetic obligation. In
Deronda at this moment the desire to escape what might
turn into a trying embarrassment was no more likely to
determine action than the solicitations of indolence are
likely to determine it in one with whom industry is a daily
law. He answered simply --
  "It is my wish to meet and satisfy your wishes wherever
that is possible to me. It is certain to me at least that I desire
not to undervalue your toil and your suffering. Let me know
your thoughts. But where can we meet?"
  "I have thought of that," said Mordecai. "It is not hard for
you to come into this meighbourhood later in the evening?
You did so once."
  "I can manage it very well occasionally," said Deronda. "You
live under the same rook with the Cohens, I think?"

*X562
  Before Mordecai could answer. Mr Ram re-entered to take
his place behind the counter. He was an elderly son of
Abraham, whose childhood had fallen on the evil times at
the beginning of this century, and who remained amid this
smart and instructed generation as a preserved specimen,
soaked through and through with the effect of the poverty
and contempt which were the common heritage of most
English Jews seventy years ago. He had none of the oily
cheerfulness observable in Mr Cohen's aspect: his very
features -- broad and chubby -- showed that tendency to look
mongrel without due cause which, in a miscellaneous
London neighbourhood, may perhaps be compared with the
marvels of imitation in insects, and may have been nature's
imperfect effort on behalf of the purer Caucasian to shield
him from the shame and spitting to which purer features
would have been exposed in the times of zeal. Mr Ram dealt
ably in books in the same way that he would have dealt in
tins of meat and other commodities -- without knowledge or
responibility as to the proportion of rottennness or nourishment
they might contain. But he believed in Mordecai's
learning as something marvellous, and was not sorry that his
conversation should be sought by a bookish gentleman,
whose visits had twice ended in apurchase. He greeted
Deronda with a crabbed goodwill, and, putting on large silver
spectacles, appeared at once to abstract himself in the daily
accounts.
  But Deronda and Mordecai were soon in the street together,
and, without any explicit agreement as to their direction,
were walking towards Ezra Cohen's.
  "We can't meet there: my room is too narrow," said Mordecai,
taking up the thread of talk where they had dropped
it. "But there is a tavern not far from here where I sometimes
go to a club. It is the ˛Hand˛ ˛and˛ ˛Banner˛, in the street at the
next turning, five doors down. We can have the parlour
there any evening."
  "We can try that for once," said Deronda. "But you
will perhaps let me provide you with some lodging, which
would give you more comfort than where you
are."

*X563
  "No; I need nothing. My outer life is as nought. I will take
nothing less precious from you than your soul's brotherhood.
I will think of nothing else yet. But I am glad you are rich.
You did not need money on that diamond ring. You had
some other motive for bringing it."
  Deronda was a little startled by this clear-sightedness; but
before he cold reply, Mordecai added -- "It is all one. Had
you been in needof money, the great end would have
been that we should meet again. But you are rich?" he ended,
in a tome of interrogation.
  "Not rich, except in the sense that every one is rick who had
more than he needs for himself."
  "I desired that your life should be free," said Mordecai,
dreamily -- "mine has been a bondage."
  It was clear that he had no interest in the fact of Derona's
appearance at the Cohens' beyond its relation to his
own ideal purpose. Despairing of leading easily up to the
question he wished to ask, Deronda determined to put it
abruptly, and said --
  "Can you tell me why Mrs Cohen, the mother, mustnot be
spoken to about her daughter?"
  There was no immediate answer, and he thought that he
should have to repeat the question. The fact was that Mordecai
had heard the words, but had to drag his mind to a
new subject away from his passionate preoccupation. After a
few moments, he replied, with a careful effort such as he
would have used if he had been asked the road to Holborn --
  "I know the reason. But I will not speak even of trivial
family affairs which I have heard in the privacy of the
family. I dwell in their tent as in a sanctuary. Their history,
so far as they injure none other, is their own possession."
  Deronda felt the blood mounting to his cheeks as a sort of
rebuke he was little used to, and he also found himself
painfully baffled where he had reckoned with some confidence
on getting decisive knowledge. He became the
more conscious of emotional strain from the excitements of the
day; and although he had the money in his pocket to redeem
his ring, he recoiled from the further task of a visit to
the Cohens', which must be made not only under the former

*X564
uncertainly, but under a new disappointment as to the posibility
of its removal.
  "I will part from you now," he said, just before they could
reach Cohen's door; and Mordecai paused, looking up at
him with an anxious fatigued face under the gaslight.
  "When will you come back?" he said, with slow emphasis.
  "May I leave that unfixed? May I ask for you at the
Cohens' any evening after your hour at the book-shop?
There is no objection, I suppose, to their knowing that you
and I meet in private?"
  "None," said Mordecai. "But the days I wait now are longer
than the years of my strength. Life shrinks: what was but a
tithe is now the half. My hope abides in you."
  "I will be faithful," said Deronda -- he could not have left
those words unuttered. "I will come the first evening I can
after seven: in Saturday or Monday, if possible. Trust me."
  He put out his ungloved hand. Mordecai, clasping it
eagerly, seemed to feel a new instreaming of confidence, and
he said with some recovered energy -- "This is come to pass
and the rest will come."
  That was their good-bye.

*X565
BOOK SIX

REVELATIONS

*X567

*C41
IMAGINE the conflict in a mind like Deronda's, given not
only to feel strongly but to question actively, on the evening
after that interview with Mordecai. To a young man of
much duller susceptibilities the adventure might have
seemed enough out of the common way to divide his
thoughts; but it had stirred Deronda so deeply, that with the
usual reaction of his intellect he began to examine the
grounds of his emotion, and consider how far he must resist
its guidance. The consciousness that he was half dominated
by Mordecai's energetic certitude, and still more by his fervent
trust, roused his alarm. It was his characteristic bias to
shrink from the moral stupidity of valuing lightly what had
come close to him, and of missing blindlu in his own life of
to-day the cries which he recognised as momentous and
sacred in the historic life of men. If he had read of this
incident as having happened centuries ago in Rome, Greece,
Asia Minor, Palestine, Cairo, to some man young as himself,
dissatisfied with his neutral life, and wanting some closer
fellowship, some more special duty to give him ardour for
the possible consequences of his work, it would have appeared
to him quite natural that the incident should have
created a deep impression on that far-off man, whose clothing
and action would have been seen in his imagination as
part of an age chiefly known to us through its more serious
effects. Why should he be ashamed of his own agitated
feeling merely because he dressed for dinner, wore a white
tie, and lived among people who might laugh at his owning
any conscience in the matter as the solemn folly of taking
himself too seriously? -- that bugbear of circles in which the
lack of grave emotion passes for wit. From such cowardice
before modish ignorance and obtuseness, Deronda shrank.
But he also shrank from having his course determined by
mere contagion, without consent of reason; or from allowing

*X568
a reverential pity for spiritual struggle to hurry him along
a dimly-seen path.
  What, after all, had really happened? He knew quite
accurately the answer Sir Hugo would have given: "A consumptive
Jew, possessed by a fanaticism which obstacles and
hastening death intensified, had fixed on Deronda as the
anti-type of some visionary image, the offspring of wedded
hope and despair: despair of his own life, irrepressible hope
in the propagation of his fanatical beliefs. The instance was
perhaps odd, exceptional in its form, but substantially it was
not rare. Fanaticism was not so common as bankruptcy, but
takin in all its aspects it was abundant enough. While Mordercai
was waiting on the bridge for the fulfilment of his
visions, another man was convinced that he had the mathematical
key of the universe which would supersede Newton,
and regarded all known physicists as conspiring to stifle his
discovery and keep the universe locked; another, that he had
the metaphysical key, with just that hear's-breadth of difference
from the old wards which would make it fit exactly.
Scattered here and there in every direction youmight find a
terrible person, with more or less power of speech, and with
an eye either glittering or preternaturally dull, on the lookout
for the man who must hear him; and in most cases he
had volumes which it was difficult to get printed, or if
printed to get read. This Mordecai happened to have a more
pathetic aspect, a more passionate, penetrative speech than
was usual with such monomaniacs: he was more poetical
than a social reformer with coloured views of the new moral
world in parallelograms, or than an enthusiast in sewage;
still he came under the same class. It would be only right
and kind to indulge him a little, to comfort him with such
help as was practicable; but what likelihood was there that
his notions had the sort of value he ascribed to them? In
such cases a man of the world knows what to think beforehand.
And as to Mordecai's conviction that he had found a
new executive self, it might be preparing for him the worst
of disappointments -- that which presents itself as final."
  Deronda's ear caught all these negative whisperings; nay,
he repeated them distinctly to himself. It was not the first

*X569
but it was the most pressing occasion on which he had had to
face this question of the family likeness among the heirs
of enthusiasm, whether prophets or dreamers of dreams,
whether the

     "Great benefactors of mankind, deliverers,"

or the devotees of phantasmal discovery -- from the first
beliver in his own unmanifested inspiration, down to the
last inventor of an ideal machine that will achieve perpetual
motion. The kinship of human passion, the sameness of
mortal scenery, inevitably fill fact with burlesque and
parody. Error and folly have had their hecatombs of
martyrs. Reduce the grandest type of man hitherto known to
an abstract statement of his qualities and efforts, and he
appears in dangerous company: say that, like Copernicus
and Galileom he was immovably convinced in the face of
hissing incredulity; but so is the contriver of perpetual
motion. We cannot fairly try the spirits by this sort of test. If
we want to avoid giving the dose of hemlock or the sentence
of banishment in the wrong case, nothing will do but a
capacity to understand the subject-matter on which the
immovable man is convinced, and fellowship with human
travail, both near and afar, to hinder us from scanning any
deep experience lightly. Shall we say, "Let the ages try the
spirits, and see what they are worth"? Why, we are the
beginning of the ages, which can only be just by virtue of
just judgments in seperate human breasts -- seperate yet
combined. Even steam-engines could not have got made
without that condition, but must have stayed in the mind of
James Watt.
  This track of thinking was familiar enough to Deronda to
have saved him from any contemptuous pre-judgment of
Mordecai, even if their communication had been free from
that peculiar claim on himself strangely ushered in by some
long-growing preparation in the Jew's agitated mind. This
claim, indeed, considered in what is called a rational way,
might seem justifiably dismissed as illusory and even preposterous;
but it was precisely what turned Mordecai's hold on
him from an appeal to his ready sympathy into a clutch on

*X570
his struggling conscience. Our consciences are not all of the
same pattern, an inner deliverance of fixed laws: they are
the voice of semsibilities as various as our memories (which
also have their kinship and likeness). And Deronda's conscience
included sensibilites beyond the common, enlarged
by his early habit of thinking himself imaginatively into the
experience of others.
  What was the claim this eager soul make upon him? --
"You must believe my beliefs -- be moved by my reasons --
hope my hopes -- see the vision I point to -- behold a glory
where I behold it]" To take such a demand in the light of an
obligation in any direct s4ense would have been preposterous
-- to have seemed to admit it would have been dishonesty;
and Deronda, looking on the agitation of those moments,
felt thankful that in the midst of his compassion he had
preserved himself from the bondage of false concessions.
The claim hung, too, on a supposition which might be -- nay,
probably was -- in discordance with the full fact: the supposition
that he, Deronda, was of Jewish blood. Was there ever
a more hypothetic appeal?
  But since the age of thirteen Deronda had associated the
deepest experience of his affection with what was a puure
supposition, namely, that Sir Hugo was his father: that was a
hypothesis which had been the source of passionate struggle
within him; by its light he had been accustomed to subdue
feelings and to cherish them. He had been well used to
find a notive in a conception which might be disproved; and
he had been also used to think of some revelation that might
influence his view of the particular duties belonging to him.
To be in a state of suspense which was also one of emotive
activity and scruple, was a familiar attitude of his conscience.
  And now, suppose that wish-begotten belief in his Jewish
birth, and that extravagant demand of discipleship, to be the
foreshadowing of an actual discovery and a genuine spiritual
result: suppose that Mordecai's ideads made a real conquest
over Deronda's conviction? Nay, it was conceivable that as
Mordecai needed and believed that he had found an active
replenishment of himself, so Deronda might receive from
Mordecai's mind the complete ideal shape of that personal

*X571
duty and citizenship which lay in his own thought like
sculptured fragments certifying some beauty yearned after
but not traceable by divination.
  As that possibility presented itself in his meditations, he
was aware that it would be called dreamy and began to
defend it. If the influence he imagined himself submitting to
had been that of some honoured professor, some authority
in a seat of learning, some philosopher who had been accepted
as a voice of the age, would a thorough receptiveness
towards direction have been ridiculed? Only by those who
hold it a sign of weakness to be obliged for an idea, and
prefer to h9nt that they have implicitly held in a more
correct form whatever others have stated with a sadly shortcoming
explicitness. After all, what was there but vulgarity
in taking the fact that Mordecai was a poor Jewish workman,
and that he was to be met perhaps on a sanded floor in
the palour of the ˛Hand˛ ˛and˛ ˛Banner˛, as a reason for determining
beforehand that there was not some spiritual force
within him that might have a determining effect on a whitehanded
gentleman? There is a legend told of the Emperor
Domitian, that having heard of a Jewish family, of the
house of David, whence the ruler of the world was to spring,
he sent for its members in alarm, but quickly released him
on observing that they had the hands of work-people -- being
of just the opposite opinion with that Rabbi who stood
waiting at the gate of Rome in confidence that the Messiah
would be found among the destitute who entered there.
Both Emperor and Rabbi were wrong in their trust of outward
signs: poverty and poor clothes are no sign of inspiration,
said Deronda to his inward objector, but they have
gone with it in some remarkable cases. And to regard discipleship
as out of the question because of them, would be
mere dulness of imagination.
  A more plausible reason for putting discipleship out of the
question was the strain of visionary excitement in Mordecai,
which turned his wishes into overmastering impressions, and
made him read outward facts as fulfilment. Was such a
temper of mind likely to accompany that wise estimate of
consequences which is the only safeguard from fatal error,

*X572
even to ennnobling motive? But it remained to be seen
whether that rare conjunction existed or not in Mordecai:
perhaps his might be one of the natures where a wise estimate
of consequences is fused in the fires of that passionate belief
which determines the consequences it believes in. The inspirations
of the world have come in that way too: even strictly-measuring
science could hardly have got on without that
forecasting ardour which feels the agitations of discovery beforehand,
and has a faith in its preconception that surmounts
many failures of experiment. And in relation to human
motives and actions, passionate belief has a fuller efficacy.
Here enthusiasm may have the validity of proof, and, happening
in one soul, give the type of what will one day be general.
  At least, Deronda argued, Mordecai's visionary excitability
was hardly a reason for concluding beforehand that he was
not worth listening to except for pity's sake. Suppose he had
introduced himself as one of the strictest reasoners: do they
form a body of men hitherto free from false conclusions and
illusory speculations? The driest argument has its hallucinations,
too hastily concluding that its net will now at last be
large enough to hold the universe. Men may dream in
demonstrations, and cut out an illusory world in the shape of
axioms, definitions, and propositions, with a final exclusion
of fact signed Q.E.D. No formulas for thinking will save us
mortals from mistake in our imperfect apprehension of the
matter to be thought about. And since the unemitional
intellect may carry us into a mathematical dreamland where
nothing is but what is not, perhaps an emotional intellect
may have absorbed into its passionate vision of possibilities
some truth of what will be -- the more comprehensive massive
life feeding theory with new material, as the sensibility
of the artist seizes combinations which science explains and
justifies. At any rate, presumptions to the contrary are not to
be trusted. We must be patient with the inevitable makeshift
of our human thinking, whether in its sum total or in the
seperate minds that have made the sum. Columbus had
some impression about himself which we call superstitiouns,
and used some srguments which we disapprove; but he had
also some true physical conceptions, and he had the passionate

*X573
patience of genius tomake them tell on mankind. The
world had made up its mind rather contemptuously about
those who were deaf to Columbus.
  "My contempt for them binds me to see that I don't adopt
their mistake on a small scale," said Deronda, "and make
myself deaf with the assumption that there cannot be any
momentous relation between this Jew and me, simply because
he has clad it in illusory notions. What I can be to
him, or he to me, may not at all depend on his persuasion
about the way we came together. To me the way seems
made up of plainly discernible links. If I had not found
Mirah, it is probable that I should not have begun to be
specially interested in the Jews, and certainly I should not
have gone on that loitering search after an Ezra Cohen
which mademe pause at Ram's book-shop abnd ask the price
of ˛Maimon˛. Mordecai, on his side, had his visions of a
disciple, and he saw me by their light; I corresponded well
enough with the image his longing had created. He took me
for one of his race. Suppose that his impression -- the elderly
Jew at Frankfort seemed to have something like it -- suppose,
in spite of all presumptions to the contrary, that his impression
should somehow be proved true, and that I should come
actually to share any of the ideas he is devoted to? This is
the only question which really concerns the effect of our
meeting on my life.
  "But if the issue should be quite different? -- well, there will
be something painful to go through. I shall almost inevitably
have to be an active cause of that poor fellow's crushing
disappointment. Perhaps this issue is the one I had need
prepare myself for. I fear that no tenderness of mine can
make his suffering lighter. Would the alternative -- that I
should not disappoint him -- be less painful to me?"
  Here Deronda wavered. Feelings had lately been at work
within him hich had very much modified the reluctance he
would formerly have had to think of himself as probably a
Jew. And, if you like, he was romantic. That young energy
and spirit of adventure which have helped to create the
world-wide legends of youthful heroes foing to seek the
hidden tokens of their birth and its inheritance of tasks,

*X574
gave him a certain quivering interest in the bare possibility
that he was entering on a like track -- all the more because
the track was one of thought as well as action.
  "The bare possibility." He could not admit it to be more.
The belief that his father was an Englishman only grew
firmer under the weak assaults of unwarrented doubt. And
that a moment should ever come in which that belief was
declared a delusion, was something of which Deronda would
not say, "I should be glad." His lifelong affection for Sir
Hugo, stronger than all his resentment, made him shrink
from admitting that wish.
  Which way soever the truth might lie, he repeated to
himself what he had said to Mordecai -- that he could not
without farther reason undertake to hasten its discovery.
Nay, he was tempted now to regard his uncertainty as a
condition to be cherished for the present. If further intercourse
revealed nothing but illusions as what he was expected
to share in, the want of any valid evidence that he
was a Jew might save Mordecai the worst shock in the
refusal of fraternity. It might even be justifiable to use the
uncertainty on this point in keeping up a suspense which
would induce Mordecai to accept those offices of friendship
that Deronda longed to urge in him.
  These were the meditations that busied Deronda in the
interval of four days before he would fulfil his promise to call
for Mordecai at Ezra Cohen's, Sir Hugo's demands on him
often lasting to an hour so late as to put the evening expedition
to Holborn out of the question.

*X575
*C42
"IF there are ranks of suffering, Isreal takes precedence of all
the nations -- if the duration of sorrows and the patience
with which they are borne ennoble, the Jews are among the
aristocracy of every land -- if a liturature is called rich in the
possession of a few classic tragedies, what shall we say to a
National Tragedy lasting for fifteen hundred years, in which
the poets and the actors were also the heroes?"
  Deronda had lately been reading that passage of Zunz,
and it occurred to him by way of contrast when he was
going to the Cohens, who certainly bore no obvious stamp of
distinction in sorrow or in any other form of aristocracy.
Ezra Cohen was not clad in the sublime pathos of the martyr,
and his taste for money-getting seemed to be favoured with
that success which has been the most exasperating difference
in the greed of Jews during all the agesof their dispersion.
This Jeshurun of a pawnbroker was not a symbol of the
great Jewish tragedy; and yet was there not something typical
in the fact that a life like Mordecai's -- a frail incorporation
of the national consciousness, breathing with difficult
breath -- was nested in the self-gratulating ignorant prosperity
of the Cohens?
  Glistening was the gladness in their faces when Deronda
reappeared among them. Cohen himself took occasion to
initmate that although the diamond ring, let alone a little
longer, would have bred more money, he did not mind ˛that˛
-- not a sixpence -- when compared with the pleasure of the
women and children in seeing a young gentleman whose first
visit had been so agreeable that they had "done nothing but

*X576
talk of it ever since." Young Mrs Cohen was very sorry that
baby was asleep, and then very glad that Adelaide was not
yet gone to bed, entreating Deronda not to stay in the shop
but to go forthwith into the parlour to see "mother and the
children." He willingly accepted the invitation, having provided
himself with portable presents; a set of paper figures
for Adelaide, and an ivory cup and ball for Jacob.
  The grandmother had a pack of cards before her and was
making "plates" with the chldren. A plate had just been
thrown down and kept itself whole.
  "Stop]" said Jacob, running up to Deronda as he entered.
"Don't tread on my plate. Stop and see me throw it up again."
  Deronda complied, exchanging a smile of understanding
with the grandmother, and the plate bore several tossings
before it came to pieces; then the visitor was allowed to come
forward and seat himself. He observed that the door from
which Mordecai had issued on the former visit was now
closed, but he wished to show his interest in the Cohens before
disclosing a yet stronger interest in their singular inmate.
  It was not until he had Adelaide on his knee, and was
setting up the paper figures in their dance on the table, while
Jacob was already practising with the cup and ball, that
Deronda said --
  "Is Mordecai in just now?"
  "Where is he, Addy?" said Cohen, who had seized an
interval of business to come and look on.
  "In the workroom there," said his wife, nodding towards
the closed door.
  "The fact is, sir," said Cohen. "we don't know what's come
to him this last dayor two. He's always what I may call a
little touched, you know" -- here Cohen pointed to his own
forehead -- "not quite to say rational in all things, like you
and me; but he's mostly wonderful regular and industrious
as far as a poor creature can be, and takes as much delight in
the boy as anybody could. But this last day or two he's been
moving about like a sleep-walker, or else sitting as still as a
wax figure."
  "It's the disease, poor dear creature," said the grandmother,
tenderly. "I doubt whether he can stand long against it."

*X577
  "No; I think it's only something he's got in his head," said
Mrs Cohen the younger. "He's been turning over writing
continually, and when I speak to him it takes him ever so
long to hear and answer."
  "You may think us a little weak ourselves," said Cohen,
apologetically. "But my wife and mother wouldn't part with
him if he was a still worse encumbrance. It isn't that we
don't know the long and short of matters, but it's our principle.
There's fools do business at a loss and don't know it.
I'm not one of 'em."
  "Oh, Mordecai carries a blessing inside him," said the
grandmother.
  "He's got something the matter inside him," said Jacob,
coming up to correct this erratum of his grandmother's. "He
said he couldn't talk to me, and he wouldn't have a bit 'o
bun."
  "So far from wondering at your feeling for him," said
Deronda, "I already feel something of the same sort myself. I
have lately talked to him at Ram's book-shop -- in fact, I
promised to call for him here, that we might go out
together."
  "That's it then]" said Cohen, slapping his knee. "He's been
expecting you, and it's taken hold of him. I suppose he talks
about his learning to you. It's uncommonly kind of ˛you˛, sir;
for I don't suppose there's much to be got out of it, else it
wouldn't have left him where he is. But there's the shop."
Cohen hurried out, and Jacob, who had been listening inconveniently
near to Deronda's elbow, said to him with
obliging familiarity, "I'll call Mordecai for you, if you like."
  "No, Jacob," said his mother; "open the door for the gentleman,
and let him go in himself. Hush] don't make a noise."
  Skilful Jacob seemed to enter into the play, and turned the
handle of the door as noiselessly as possible, while Deronda
went behind him and stood on the threshold. The small
room was lit only be a dying fire and one candle with a
shade over it. On the board fixed under the window, various
objects of jewellry were scattered: some books were heaped
in the corner beyond them. Mordecai was seated on a high
chair at the board with his back to the door, his hands

*X578
resting on each other and on the board, a watch propped on
a stand before him. He was in a stateof expectation as
sickening as that of a prisoner listening for the delayed
deliverance -- when he heard Deronda's voice saying, "I am
come for you. Are you ready?"
  Immediately he turned without speaking, seized his furred
cap which lay near, and moved to join Deronda. It was but a
mement before they were both in the sitting-room, and
Jacob, noticing the change in his friend's air and expression
seized him by the arm and said, "See my cup and ball]"
sending the ball up close to Mordecai's face, as something
likely to cheer a convalescent. It was a sign of the relieved
tension in Mordecai's mind that he could smile and say,
"Fine, fine]"
  "You have forgotten your greatcoat and comforter," said
young Mrs Cohen, and he went back into the workroom and
got them.
  "He's come to life again, do you see?" said Cohen, who had
re-entered -- speaking in an undertone. "I told you so: I'm
mostly right." Then in his usual voice, "Well, sir, we mustn't
detain you now, I suppose; but I hope this isn't the last time
we shall see you."
  "Shall you come again?" said Jacob, advancing. "See, I can
catch the ball; I'll bet I catch it without stopping, if you
come again."
  "He has cleverhands," said Deronda, looking at the grandmother.
"Which side of the family does he get them from?"
  But the grandmother only nodded towards her son, who
said promptly, "My side. My wife's family are not in that
line. But, bless your soul] ours is a sort of cleverness as good
as gutta percha; you can twist it which way you like. There's
nothing some old gentlemen won't do if you set'em to it."
Here Cohen winked down at Jacob's back, but it was doubtful
whether this judicious allusiveness answered its purpose, for
its subject gave a nasal whinnying laugh and stamped about
singing, "Old gentlemen, old gentlemen," in chiming cadence.
  Deronda thought, "I shall never know anything decisive
about these people until I ask Cohen point-blank whether he
lost a sister named Mirah when she was six years old." The

*X579
decisive moment did not yet seem easy for him to face. Still
his first sense of repulsion at the commonness of these people
was beginning to be tempered with kindlier feeling. However
unrefined their airs and speech might be, he was forced to
admit some moral refinement in thier treatment of the consumptive
workman, whose mental distinction impressed
them chiefly as a harmless, silent raving.
  "The Cohens seem to have an affection for you," said
Deronda, as soon as he and Mordecai were off the doorstep.
  "And I for them," was the immediate answer. "They have
the heart of the Isrealite within them, though they are as
the horse and the mule, without understanding beyond the
narrow path they tread."
  "I have caused you some uneasiness, I fear," said Deronda,
"by my slowness in fulfilling my promise. I wished to come
yesterday, but I found it impossible."
  "Yes -- yes, I trusted you. But it is true I have been uneasy,
for the spirit of my youth has been stirred within me, and
this body is not strong enough to bear the beating of its
wings. I am as a man bound and imprisoned through long
years: behold him brought to speech of his fellow and his
limbs set free: he weeps, he totters, the joy within him
threatens to break and overthrow the tabernacle of flesh."
  "You must not speak too much in this evening air," said
Deronda, feeling Mordecai's words of reliance like so many
cords binding him painfully. "Cover your mouth with the
woollen scarf. We are going to the ˛Hand˛ ˛and˛ ˛Banner˛, I
suppose, and shall be in private there?"
  "No, that is my trouble that you did not come yesterday.
For this is the evening of the club I spoke of, and we might
not have any minutes alone until late, when all the rest are
gone. Perhaps we had better seek another place. But I am
used to that only. In new places the outer world presses on
me and narrows the inward vision. And the people there are
familiar with my face."
  "I don't mind the club if I am allowed to go in," said
Deronda. "It is enough that you like this place best. If we
have no enough time, I will come again. What sort of club
is it?"

*X580
  "It is called, "The Philosophers". They are few -- like the
cedars of Lebanon -- poor men given to thought. But none so
poor as I am; and sometimes visitors of higher worldly rank
have been brought. We are allowed to introduce a friend,
who is interested in our topics. Each orders beer or some
other kind of drink, in payment for the room. Most of them
smoke. I have gone when I could, for there are other men of
my race who come, and sometimes I have broken silence. I
have pleased myself with a faint likeness between these poor
philosophers and the Masters who handed down the thought
of our race -- the great Transmitters, who laboured with
their hands for scant bread, but preserved and enlarged for
us the heritage of memory, and saved the soul of Isreal alive
as a seed among the tombs. The heart pleases itself with
faint resemblances."
  "I shall be very glad to go and sit among them, if that will
suit you. It is a sort of meeting I should like to join in," said
Deronda, not without relief in the prospect of an interval
befor he went through the strain of his next private concersation
with Mordecai.
  In three minutes they had opened the glazed door with
the red curtain, and were in the little parlour, hardly much
more than fifteen feet square, where the gaslight shone
through a slight haze of smoke on what to Deronda was a
new and striking scene. Half-a-dozen men of various ages,
from between twenty and thirty to fifty, all shabbily dressed,
most of them with clay pipes in their mouths, were listening
with a look of concentrated intelligence to a man in a pepper-and-salt
dress, with blond hair, short nose, broad forehead
and general breadthm who, holding his pipe slightly uplifted
in the left hand, and beating his knee with the right, was
just finishing a quotation from Shelley the comparison of
the avalanche in his "Prometheus Unbound") --
   "As thought by thought is piled, till sone great truth
    Is loosened, and the nations echo round."
  The enterance of the new-comers broke the fixity of attention,
and called for a rearrangement of seats in the too
narrow semicicle round the fireplace and the table holding

*X581
the glasses, spare pipes, and tobacco. This was the soberest of
clubs; but sovriety is no reason why smoking and "taking
something" should be less imperiously needed as a means of
getting a decent status in company and debate. Mordecai
was received with welcoming voices which had a slight
cadence of compassion in them, but naturally all glances
passed immediately to his companion.
  "I have brought a friend who is interested in our subjects,"
said Mordecai. "He has travelled and studied much."
  "Is the gentleman anonymous? Is he a Great Unknown?"
said the broad-chested quoter of Shelley, with a humorous air.
  "My name is Daniel Deronda. I am unknown, but not in
any sense great." The smile breaking over the stranger's
grave face as he said this was so agreeable, that there was a
general indistinct murmur, equivalent to a "Hear, hear," and
the broad man said --
  "You recommend the name, sir, and are welcome. Here,
Mordecai, come to this corner gainst me," he added, evidently
wishing to give the coziest place to the one who most
needed it.
  Deronda was well satisfied to get a seat on the opposite
side, where his general survey of the party easily included
Mordecai, who remained an eminently striking object in this
group of sharply-characterised figures, more than one of
whom, even to Deronda's little exercised discrimina6ion
seemed probably of Jewish descent.
  In fact, pure English blood (if leech or lancet can furnish
us with the precise product) did not declare itself predominantly
in the party at present assembled. Miller, the broad
man, an exceptional second-hand bookseller who knew the
insides of books, had at least grandarents who called themselves
German, and possibly far-away ancestors who denied
themselves to be Jews; Buchan, the saddler, was Scotch;
Pash, the watchmaker, was a small dark, vivacious, triple-baked
Jew; Gideon, the optical instrument maker, was a Jew
of the red-haired, generous-featured type easily passing for
Englishmen of unusually cordial manners; and Croop, the
dark-eyed shoemaker, was probably more Celtic than he
knew. Only three would have been discernible everyhwere as

*X582
Englishmen: the wood-inlayer Goodwin, well-built, open@c-faced,
pleasant-voiced; the florid laboratory assistant Marrables;
and Lilly, the pale, neat-faced copying clerk, whose
light-brown hair was set up in  a samll parallelogram above
his well-filled forehead, and whose shirt, taken with an
otherwise seedy costume, had a freshness that might be
called insular, and perhaps even something narrower.
  Certainly a company select of the select among poor men,
being drawn together by a taste not prevalent even among
the privileged heirs of learning and its institutions; and not
likely to amuse any genlteman in search of crime or low
comedy as the ground of interest in people whose weekly
income is only divisible into shillings. Deronda, even if he
had not been more than usually inclined to gravity under
the influence of what was pending between him and Mordercai,
would not have set himself to find food for laughter in
the various shades of departure from the tone of polished
society sure to be observable in the air and talk of these men
who had probably snatched knowledge as most of us snatch
indulgences, making the utmost of scant opportunity. He
looked around him with the quiet air of respect habitual to
him among equals, ordered whiskey and water, and offered
the contents of his cigar-case, which, characteristically
enought, he always carried and hardly ever used for his own
behoof, having reasons for not smoking himself, but liking
to indulge others. Perhaps it was his weakness to be afraid of
seeming strait-laced, and turning himself into a sort of
diagram instead of a growth which can exercise the guiding
attraction of fellowship. That he made a decidedly winning
impression on the company was proved by their showing
themselves no less at ease than before, and desirous of
wuickly resuming their interrupted talk.
  "This is what I call one of our touch and go nights, sir,"
said Miller, who was implicitly accepted as a sort of moderator
-- addressing Deronda by way of explanation, and nodding
towards each person whose name he mentioned. "Sometimes
we stick pretty close to the point. But to-night our
friend Pash, there, brought up the law of progress, and we
got on statistics; then Lilly, there, saying we knew well

*X583
enough before counting that in the same state of society the
same sort of things would happen, and it was no more
wonder that quantities should remain the same than that
qualities should remain the same, for in relation to society
numbers are qualities -- the number of drunkards is a quality
in society -- the numbers are an index to the qualities, and
give us no instruction, only setting us to consider the causes
of difference between different social states -- Lilly saying
this, we went off on the causes of social change, and when
you came in I was going upon the power of ideas, which I
hold to be the main transforming cause."
  "I don't hold with you there, Miller," said Goodwin, the
inlayer, more concerned to carry on the subject than to wait
for a word from the new guest. "For either you mean so
many sorts of things by ideas that I get no knowledge by
what you say, any more than f you said light was a cause; or
else you mean a particular sort of ideas, and then I go
against your meaning as too narrow. For, look at it in one
way, all actions men put a bit of thought into are ideas -- say,
sowing seed, or making a canoe, or baking clay; and such
ideas as these work themselves into life and go on growing
with it, but they don't@wcan't go apart from the material that set
them to work and makes a medium for them. It's the nature
of wood and stone yielding to the knife that raises the idea
of shaping them, and with plenty of wood and stone the
shaping will go on. I look at it, that such ideas as are mixed
straight away with all the other elements of life are powerful
along with 'em. The slower the mxing, the less power the
have. And as to the causes of social change, I look at it in
this way -- ideas are a sort of parliament, but there's a
commonwealth outside, and a good deal of the commonwealth
is working at change without knowing what the
parliament is doing."
  "But if you take ready mixing as your test of power," said
Pash, "some of the least practical ideas beat everything. They
spread without being understood, and enter into the language
without being thought of."
  "They may act by changing the distribution of gases,"
said Marrables; "instruments are getting so fine now, men

*X584
may come to register the spread of a theory by observed
changes in the atmosphere and corresponding changes in
the nerves."
  "Yes," said Pash, his dark face lighting up rather impishly,
"there is the idea of mationalities; I dare say the wild asses are
snuffing it, and getting more gregarious."
  "You don't share that idea?" said Deronda, finding a
piquant incongruity between Pash's sarcasm and the strong
stamp of race on his features.
  "Say rather, he does not share that spirit," said Mordercai,
who had turned a melancholy glance on Pash. "Unless
nationality is a feeling, what force can it have as an idea?"
  "Granted, Mordecai," said Pash, quite good-humouredly.
"And as the feeling of mationality is dying, I take the idea to
be no better than a ghost, already walking to announce the
death."
  "A sentiment may seem to be dying and yet revive into
strong life," said Deronda. "Nations have revived. We may
live to see a great outburst of force in the Arabs, who are
being inspired with a new zeal."
  "Amen, amen," said Mordecai, looking at Deronda with a
delight which was the beginning of recovered energy: his
attitude was more upright, his face was less worn.
  "That may hold with backward nations," said Pash, "but
with us in Europe the sentiment of nationality is destined to
die out. It will last a little longer in the quarters where
oppression lasts, but nowhere else. The whole current of
progress is setting against it."
  "Ay," said Buchan, in a rapid thin Scotch tone which was
like the letting in of a little cool air on the conversation,
"ye've done well to bring us round to the point. Ye're all
agreed that societies change -- not always and everywhere --
but on the whole and in the long-run. Now, with all deference,
I would beg t'observe that we have got to examine the
nature of changes before we have a warrant to call them
progress, which word is supposed to include a bettering,
thought I apprehend it to be ill chosen for that purpose, since
mere motion onward may carry us to a bog or a precipice.
And the questions I would put are three: Is all change in

*X585
the direction of progress? if now, how shall we discern which
change is progress and which not? and thirdly, how far and
in what ways can we act upon the corse of change so as to
promote it where it is beneficial, and divert it where it is
injurious?"
  But Buchan's attempt to impose his method on the talk
was a failure. Lilly immediately said --
  "Change and progress are merged in the idea of development.
The laws of development are being discovered, and
changes taking place according to them are necessarily progressive;
that is to say, if we have any notion of progress or
improvement opposed to them, the notion is a mistake."
  "I really can't see how you arrive at that sort of certitude
about changes by calling them development," said Deronda.
"There will still remain the degrees of inevitablesness in relation
to our own will and acts, and the degrees of wisdom in
hastening or retarding; there will still remain the danger of
mistaking a tendency which should be resisted for an inevitable
law that we must adjust ourselves to, -- which seems to
me as bad a superstition or false god as any that has been set
up without the ceremonies of philosophising."
  "That is a truth," said Mordecai. "Woe to the men who see
no place for resistance in this generation] I believe in a
growthm a passage, more charged with the elements that
are pregnant with diviner form. The life of apeople grows, it
is knit together and yet expanded, in joy and sorrow, in
thought and action; it absorbs the thought of other nations
into its own forms, and gives back the thought as new
wealth to the world; it is a power and an organ in the great
body of the nations. But there may come a check, an arrest;
memories may be stifled, and love may be faint for the lack
of them; or memories may shrink into withered relics -- the
soul of a people, whereby they know themselves to be one,
may seem to be dying for want of common action. But who
shall saym "The fountain of their life is dried up, they shall
for ever cease to be a nation"? Who shall say it? Not he who
feels the life of his people stirring within his own. Shall he
say. "That way events are wending, I will not resist"? His

*X586
veru soul is resistance, and is as a seed of fire that may
enkindle the souls of multitudes, and make a new pathway
for events."
  "I don't deny patriotism," said Gideon, "but we all know
you have a particular meaning, Mordecai. You know Mordecai's
way of thinkinh, I suppose." Here Gideon had turned to
Deronda, who sat next to him; but without waiting for an
answer, he went on. "I'm a rational Jew myself. I stand by
my people as a sort of family relations, and I am for keeping
up our worship in a rational way. I don't approve of our
people getting baptised, because I don't believe in a Jew's
conversion to the Gentile part of Christianity. And now we
have political equality, there's no excuse for a pretence of
that sort. But I am for getting rid of all our superstitions and
exclusiveness. There's no reason now why we shouldn't melt
gradually into the populations we live among. That's the
order of the day in point of progress. I would as soon my
children married Christians as Jews. And I'm for the old
maxim, "A man's country is where he's well off.""
  "That country's not easy to find, Gideon," said the rapid
Pash, with a shrug and grimace. "You get ten shillings aweek
moe than I do, and have only helf the number of
children. If somebody will introduce a brisk trade in watches
among the "Jerusalem wares", I'll go -- eh, Mordecai, what
do you say?"
  Dearonda, all ear for these hints of Mordecai's opinion, was
inwardly wondering at his persistence in coming to this club.
For an enthusiastic spirit to meet continually the fixed indifference
of men familiar with the object of his enthusiasm
is the acceptance of a slow martyrdom, besides which the fate
of a missionary tomakawked without any considerate rejection
of his doctrines seems hardly wirthy of compassion. But
Mordecai gave no sign of shrinking: this was a moment of
spiritual fulness, and he cared more for the utterance of his
faith than for its immediate reception. With a fervour which
had no temper in it, but seemed rather the rush of feeling in
the opportunity of speech, he answered Pash:-
  "What I say ism let every man keep far way from the
brotherhood and the inheritance he despises. Thousands on

*X587
thousands of our race have mixed with the Gentile as Celt
with Saxon, and they may inherit the blessing that belongs
to the Gentile. You cannot follow them. You are one of the
multitudes over this globe who must walk among the
nations and be known as Jews, and with words on their lips
which mean, "I wish I had not been born a Jew, I disown
any bond with the long travail of my race, I will outdo the
Gentile in mocking at our separateness," they all the while
feel breathing on them the breath of contempt because they
are Jews, and they will breathe it back poisonously. Can a
fresh-made garment of citizenship weave itself straightway
into the flesh and change the slow deposit of eighteen centuries?
What is the citizenship of him who walks among a
people he had no hearty kindred and fellowship with, and
has lost the senseof brotherhood with his own race? It is a
charter of selfish ambition and rivalry in low greed. He is an
alien spirit, whatever he may be in form; he sucks the
blood of mankind, he is not a man. Sharing in no love,
sharing in no subjection of the soul, he mocks at all. Is it not
truth I speak, Pash?"
  "Not exactly, Mordecai," said Pash, "if you mean that I
think the worse of myself for being a Jew. What I thank our
fathers for is that there are fewer blockheads among us than
among other races. But perhaps you are right in thinking
the Christians don't like me so well for it."
  "Catholics and Protestants have not liked each other much
better," said the genial Gideon. "We must wait patiently for
prejudices to die out. Many of our people are on a footing
with the best, and there's been a good filtering of our blood
into high families. I am for making our expectations rational."
  "And so am I]" said Mordecai, quickly, leaning forward
with the eagerness of one who pleads in some decisive crisis,
his long thin hands clasped together on his laps. "I too claim
to be a rational Jew. But what is it to be rational -- what is it
to feel the light of the divine reason growing stronger within
and without? It is to see more and more of the hidden bonds
that bind and consecrate change as a dependent growth --
yea, consecrate it with kinship: the past becomes my parents,
and the future stretches towards me the appealing arms of

*X588
children. Is it rational to drain away the sap of special
kindred that makes the families of man rich in interchanged
wealth, and various as the forests are various wity the glory
of the cedar and the palm? When it is rational to say, "I
know not my father or my mother, let my children be aliens
to me, that no prayer of mine may touch them," then it will
be rational for the Jew to say, "I will seek to know no
difference between me and the Gentile, I will not cherish the
prophetic consciousness of our nationality -- let the Hebrew
cease to be, and let all his memorials be antiquarian trifles,
dead as the wall-paintings of a conjectured race. Yet let his
child learn by rote the speech of the Greek, where he adjures
his fellow-citizens by the bravery of those who fought foremost
at Marathon -- let him learn to say, that was noble in
the Greek, that is the spirit of an immortal nation] But the
Jew has no memories that bind him to action; let him laugh
that his nation is degraded from a nation; let him hold
the monuments of his law which carried within its frame the
breath of social justice, of charity, and of household sanctities
-- let him hold the energy of the prophets, the patient
care of the Masters, the fortitude of martyred generations, as
mere stuff of a professorship. The business of the Jew in all
things is to be even as the rich Gentile.""
  Mordecai threw himself back in his chair, and there was a
moment's silence. Not one member of the club shared his
point of view or his emotion; but his whole personality and
speech had on them the effect of a dramatic representation
which had some pathos in it, though no practical consequences;
and usually he was at once indulged and contradicted.
Deronda's mind went back on what must have been
the tragic pressure of outward conditions hindering this man,
whose force he felt to be telling on himself, from making
any world for his thought in the minds of others -- like a poet
among people of a trange speech, who may have a poetry of
their own, but have no ear for his cadence, no answering
thrill to his discovery of latent virtues in his mother tongue.
  The cool Buchan was the first to speak, and hint the loss
of time. "I submit," said he, "taht ye're travelling away from
the questions I put concerning progress."

*X589
  "Say they're levanting, Buchan," said Miller, who liked his
joke, and would not have objected to be called Voltairian.
"Never  mind. Let us have a Jewish night; we've not had one
for a long while. Let us take the discussion on Jewish
ground. I suppose we've no prejudice here: we're all philosophers;
and we like out friends Mordecai, Pash, and Gideon,
as well as if they were no more kin to Abraham than the
rest of us. We're all related through Adam, until further
showing to the contrary, and if you look into history we've
all got some discreditable forefathers. So I mean no offence
when I say I don't think any great things of the part the
Jewish people have played in the world. What then? I think
they were iniquitously dealt by in past times. And I suppose
we don't want any men to be maltreated, white, black,
brown, or yellow -- I know I've just given my half-crown to
the contrary. And that reminds me, I've a curious old German
book -- I can't read it myself, but a friend was reading
out of it to me the other day -- about the prejudices against
the Jews, and the stories used to be told against 'em, and
what do you think one was? Why, that they're punished
with a bad odour in their bodies, and ˛that˛, says the author,
date 1715 (I've just been pricing and marking the book this
very morning) --- that is true, for the ancients spoke of it. But
then, he says, the other things are fables, such as that the
odour goes away all at once when they're baptised, and that
every one of the ten tribes, mind you, all the ten being
concerned in the crucifixion, has got a particular punishment
over and above the smell: -- Asher, I remember, has the
right arm a hardbreadth shorter than the left, and Naphthali has pigs' ears
and a smell of live pork. What do you
think of that? There's been a good deal of fun made of
rabbinical fables, but in point of fables my opinion is, that
all over the world it's six of one and half-a-dozen of the
other. However, as I said before, I hold with the philosophers
of the last century that the Jews have played no
great part as a people, though Pash will have it they're
clever enough to beat all the rest of the world. But if so, I
ask, why haven't they done it?"
  "For the same reason that the cleverest men in the country

*X590
don't get themselves or their ideas into Parliament," said the
ready Pash; "because the blockheads are too many for 'em."
  "That is a vain question," said Mordecai, "whether our
people would beat the restof the world. Each nation has its
own work, and is a member of the world, enriched by the
evi first said, that
Isreal is the heart of mankind, if we mean by heart the
core of affection which binds a race and its families in
dutiful love, and the reverence for the human body which
lifts the needs of our animal life into religion, and the
tenderness which is merciful to the poor and weak and to
the dumb creature that wears the yoke for us."
  "They'RE NOT BEHIND ANY NATION IN ARROGANCE<" said Lilly;
"and if they have got in the rear, it has not been because
they were over-modest."
  "Oh, every nation brags in its turn," said Miller.
  "Yes," said Pash, "and some of them in the Hebrew text."
  "Well, whatever the Jews contributed at one time, they are
a standstill people," said Lilly. "They are the type of obstinate
adherence to the superannuated. They may show good abilities
when they take up liberal ideas, but as a race they have
no development in them."
  "That is false]" said Mordecai, leaning forward again with
his former eagerness. "Let their history be known and examined;
let the seed be sifted, let its beginning be traced to the
weed of the wilderness -- the more glorious will be the energy
that transformed it. Where else is there a nation of whom it
may be as truly said that their religion and law and moral
life mingled as the stream of blood in the heart and made
one growth -- where else a people who kept and enlarged
their spiritual store at the very time when they were hunted
with ahatred as fierce as the forest-fires that chase the wild
beast from his covert? There is a fable of the Roman, that
swimming to save his life heheld the roll of his writings between
his teeth and saved them from the waters. But how
much more than that is true of our race? They struggled to
keep their place among the nations like heroes -- yea, when
the hand was hacked off, they clung with the teeth; but
when the plugh and the harrow had passed over the last

*X591
visible signs of their national covenant, and the fruitfulness
of their land was stifled with the blood of the sowers and
planters, they said, "The spirit is alive, let us make it a
lasting habitation -- lasting vecause movable -- so that it may
be carried from generation to generation, and our sons unborn
may be rich in the things that have been, and possess a
hope built on an unchangeable foundation." They said it
and they wrought it, though often breathing with scant life,
as in a coffin, or as lying wounded amid a heap of slain.
Hooted and scared like the unowned dog, the Hebrew made
himself envied for his wealth and wisdom, and was bled of
them to fill the bath of Gentile luxury; he absorbed knowledge,
he diffused it; his dispersed race was a new Pho+enicia
working the mines of Greece and carrying their products to
the world. The native spirit of our tradition was not to stand
still, but to use records as a seed, and draw out the compressed
virtues of law and prophecy; and while the Gentile,
who had said, "What is yours is ours, and no longer yours,"
was reading the letterof our law as a dark inscription, or was
turning its parchments into shoe-soles for an army rabid
with lust and cruelty, our Masters were still enlarging and
illuminating with fresh-fed interpretation. But the dispersion
was wide, the yoke of oppression was a spiked torture as well
as a load; the exile was forced afar among brutish people,
where the consciousness of his race was no clearer to him
than the light of the sun to our fathers in the Roman
persecution, who had their hiding-place in a cave, and knew
not that it was day save by the dimmer burning of their
candles. What wonder that multitudes of our people are
ignorant, narrow, superstitious? What wonder?"
  Here Mordecai, whose seat was next the fireplace, rose and
leaned his arm on a little shelf; his excitement had risen,
though his voice, which had begun with unusual strength,
was getting hoarser.
  "What wonder? The night is unto them, that they have no
vision; in their darkness they are unable to divine; the sun is
gone down over the prophets, and the day is dark above
them; their observances are as nameless relics. But which
among the chief of the Gentile nations has not an ignorant

*X592
multitude? They scorn our people's ignoant observance; but
the most accursed ignorance is that which has no observance
-- sunk to the cunning greed f the fox, to which all law is no
more than a trap or the cry of the worrying hound. There is
a degradation deep down below the memory that has
withered into superstition. In the multitudes of the ignoant
on three continents who observe our rites and make tje
confession of the divine Unity, the soul of Judaism is not
dead. Revive the organic centre: let the unity of Isreal
which has made the growth and form of its religion be an
outward reality. Looking towards a land and a polity, our
dispersed people in all the ends of the earth may share the
dignity of a national life which has a voice among the
peoples of the East and the West -- which will plant the
wisdom and skill of our race so that it may be, as of old, a
medium of transmission and understanding. Let that come
to pass, and the lving warmth will spread to the weak
extremities of Isreal, and superstition will vanish, not in the
lawlessness of the renegade, but in the illumination of great
facts which widen feeling, and make all knowledge alive as
the young offspring of beloved memories."
  Mordecai's voice nad sunk, but with the hectic brilliancy
of his gaze it was not the less impressive. His extraordinary
excitement was certainly due to Deronda's presence: it was
to Deronda that he was speaking, and the moment had a
testamentary solemnity for him which rallied all his powers.
Yet the presence of those other familiar men promoted
expression, for they embodied the indifference which gave a
resistant energy to his speech. Not that he looked at
Deronda: he seemed to see nothing immediately around
him, and if any one had grasped him he would probably not
have known it. Again the former words came back to
Deronda's mind -- "You must hope my hopes -- see the vision
I point to -- behold a glory where I behold it." They came
now with gathered pathos. Before him stood, as a living,
suffering reality, what hitherto he had only seen as an effort
of imagination, which, in its comparative faintness, yet carried
a suspicion of being exaggerated: a man steeped in
poverty and obscurity, weakened by disease, consciously

*X593
within the shadow of advancing death, but living an intense
life in an invisible past and future, careless of his personal
lot, except for its possibly making some obstruction to a
conceived good which he would never share except as a brief
inward vision -- a day afar off, whose sun would never warm
him, but into which he threw his soul's desire, with a passion
often wanting to the personal motives of healthy youth. It
was something more than a grandiose transfiguration of the
parental love that toils, renounces, endures, resists the
suicidal promptings of despair -- all because of the little ones,
whose future becomes present to the yearning gaze of
anxiety.
  All eyes were fixed on Mordecai as he sat down again, and
none with unkindness; but it happened that the one who felt
the most kindly was the most prompted to speak in opposition.
This was the genial and rational Gideon, who also was
not without a sense that he was addressing the guest of the
evening. He said --
  "You have your own way of looking at things, Mordecai,
and, as you say, your own way seems to you rational. I know
you don't hold with the restoration to Judea by miracle,
and so on; but you are as well aware as I am that the subject
has been mixed with a heap of nonsense both by Jews and
Christians. And as to the connection of our race with Palestine,
it has been preverted by superstition till it's as demoralising
as the old poor-law. The raff and scum go there to be
maintained like able-bodied paupers, and to be taken special
care of by the angel Gabriel when they die. It's no use
fighting against facts. We must look where they point; that's
what I call rationality. The most learned and liberal men
among us who are attached to our religion are for clearing
our liturgy of all such notions as a literal fulfilment of the
prophecies about restoration, and so on. Prune it of a few
useless rites and literal interpretations of that sort, and our
religion is the simplest of all religions, and makes no barrier,
but a union, between us and the rest of the world."
  "As plain as a pike-staff," said Pash, with an ironical laugh.
"You pluck it up by the roots, strip off the leaves and bark,
shave off the knots, and smooth it at top and bottom; but it

*X594
where you will, it will do no harm, it will never sprout. You
may make a handle of it, or you may throw it on the bonfire
of scoured rubbish. I don't see why our rubbish is to be held
sacred any more than the rubbish of Brahmanism or
Bouddhism."
  "No," said Mordecai, "no, Pash, because you have lost the
heart of the Jew. Community was felt before it was called
good. I praise no superstition, I praise the living fountains of
enlarging belief. What is growth, completion, development?
You began with that question, I apply it to the history of
our people. I say that the effect of our separateness will not
be completed and have its highest transformation unless our
race takes on again the character of a nationality. That is
the fulfilment of the religious trust that moulded them into
a people, whose life has made half the inspiration of the
world. What is it to me that the ten tribes are lost untraceably,
or that multitudes of the children of Judah have mixed
themselves with the Gentile populations as a river with
rivers? Behold our people still] Their skirts spread afar; they
are torn and soiled and trodden on; but there is a jewelled
breastplate. Let the wealthy men, the monarchs of commerce,
the learned in all knowledge, the skilful in all arts,
the speakers, the political counsellors, who carry in their
veins the Hebrew blood which has maintained its vigour in
all climates, and the pliancy of the Hebrew genius for which
difficulty means new device -- let them say, "we will lift up a
standard, we will unite a labour hard but glorious like
that of Moses and Ezra, a labour which shall be worthy
fruit of the long anguish whereby our fathers maintained
their seperateness, refusing the ease of falsehood." They
have wealth enough to redeem the soil from debauched and
paupered conquerors; they have the skill of the statesman to
devise, the tongue of the orator to persuade. And is there no
prophet or poet among us to make the ears of Christian
Europe tingle with shame at the hideous obloquy of Christian
strife whic the Turk gazes at as at the fighting of
beasts to which he has lent an arena? There is store of
wisdom among us to found a new Jewish polity, grand,
simple, just, like the old -- a republic where there is equality

*X595
of protection, sn equality which shone like a star on the
forehead of our ancient community, and gave it more than
the brightness of Western freedom amid the despotisms of
the East. Then our race shall have an organic centre, a heart
and brain to watch and guide and execute; the outraged Jew
shall have a defence in the court of nations, as the outraged
Englishman or American. And the world will gain as Isreal
gains. For there will be a community in the van of the East
which carries the culture and the sympathies of every great
nation i its bosom; there will be a land set for a halting-place
of enmities, a neutral ground for the East as Belgium
is for the West. Difficulties? Iknow there are difficulties. But
let the spirit of sublime achievement move in the great
among our people, and the work will begin."
  "Ay, we may safely admit that, Mordecai," said Pash.
"When there are great men on 'Change, and high-flying
professors converted to your doctrine, difficulties will vanish
like smoke."
  Deronda, inclined by nature to take the side of those on
whom the arrows of scorn were falling, could not help replying
to Pash's outfling, and said --
  "If we look back to the history of the efforts which have made
great changes, it is astonishing how many of them seemed
hopeless to those who looked on in the beginning. Take
what we have all heard and seen something of -- the effort
after the unity of Italy, which we are sue soon to see
accomplsihed to the very last boundary. Look into Mazzini's
account of his first yearning, when he was a boy,
after a restored greatness and a new freedom to Italy, and of
his first efforts as a young man to rouse the same feelings in
other young men, and get them to work towards a united
nationality. Almost everything seemed against him: his
countrymen were ignorant or indifferent, governments hostile,
Europe incredulous. Of course the scorners often seemed
wise. Yet you see the prophecy lay with him. As long as
there is a remnant of national consciousness, I suppose nobody
will deny that there may be a new stirring of memories
and hopes which may inspire arduous action."
  "Amen," said Mordecai, to whom Deronda's words were a

*X596
cordial. "What is needed is the leaven -- what is needed is the
seed of fire. The heritage of Isreal is beating in the pulses of
millions; it lives in their veins as a power without understanding,
like the morning exultation of herds; it is the inborn
half of memory, moving as in a dream among writings
on the walls, which it sees dimly but cannot divide into
speech. Let the torch of visible community be lit] Let the
reason of Isreal disclose itself in a great outward deed, and
let there be another great migration, another choosing of
Isreal to be a nationality whose members may still stretch to
the ends of the earth, even as the sons of England and
Germany, whom enterprise carries afar, but who still have a
national hearth and a tribunal of national opinion. Will any
say "It cannot be?" Baruch Spinoza had not a faithful
Jewish heart, though he had sucked the life ofhis intellect
at the breasts of Jewish tradition. He laid bare his father's
nakedness and said, "They who scorn him have the higher
wisdom." Yet Baruch Spinoza confessed, he saw not why
Isreal should not again be a chosen nation. Who says that
the history and literature of our race are dead? Are they not
as living as the history and literature of Greece and Rome,
which have inspired revolutions, enkindled the thought of
Europe, and made the unrighteous p˛owers tremble? These
were an inheritance dug from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance
that has never ceased to quiver in millions of human
frames."
  Mordecai had stretched his arms upward, and his long
thin hands quivered in the air for a moment after he had
ceased to speak. Gideon was certainly a little moved, for
though there was no long pause before he made a remark in
objection, his tone was more mild and deprecatory than
before; Pash, meanwhile, pressing his lips together, rubbing
his black head with both his hands and wrinkling his brow
horizontally, with the expression of one who differs from
every speaker, but does not think it worth while to say so.
There is a sort of human paste that when it comes near the
fire of enthusiasm is only baked into harder shape.
  "It may seem well enough on one side to make so much of
our memories and inheritance as you do, Mordecai," said

*X597
Gideon; "but there's another side. It isn't all gratitude and
harmless glory. Our people have inherited a good deal of
hatred. There's a pretty lot of curses still flying about, and
stiff settled rancour inherited from the times of persecution.
How will you justify keepingone sort of memory and throwing
away the other? There are ugly debts standing on both
sides."
  "I justify the choice as all other choice is justified," said
Mordecai. "I cherish nothing for the Jewish nation, I seek
nothing for them, but the good which promises good to all
the nations. The spirit of our religious life, which is one with
our national life, is not hatred of aught but wrong. The
Masters have said, an offence against man is worse than an
offence against God. But what wonder if there is hatredin
the breasts of Jews, who are children of the ignorant and
oppressed -- what wonder, since there is hatred in the breasts
of Christians? Our national life was a growing light. Let the
central fie be kindled again, and the light will reach afar.
The degraded and scorned of our race will learn to think of
their sacred land, not as a place for saintly beggary to await
death in loathsome idleness, but as a republic where the
Jewish spirit manifests itself in a new order founded on the
old, purifed, enriched by the experience our greatest sons
have gathered from the lofe of the ages. How long is it? --
only two centuries since a vessal carried over the ocean the
beginning of the great North American nation. The people
grew like meeting waters -- they were various in habit and
sect -- there came a time, a century ago, when they needed a
polity, and there were heroes of peace among them. What
had they to form a polity with but memories of Europe,
corrected by the vision of a better? Let our wise and wealthy
show themselves heroes. They have the memories of the
East and West, and they have the full vision of a better. A
new Persia with a purifed religion magnified itself in art and
wisdom. So will a new Judea, poised between East and West
-- a covenant of reconciliation. Will any say, the prophetic
vision of your race has been hopelessly mixed with folly and
bigotry; the angel of progress has no message for Judaism --
it is a half-buried city for the paid workers to lay open -- the

*X598
waters are rushong but it as a forsaken field? I say that the
strongest principle of growth lies in human choice. The sons
of Judah have to choose that God may again choose them.
The Messianic time is the time when Isreal shall will the
planting of the national ensign. The Nile overflowed and
rushed onward: the Egyptian could not choose the overflow,
but he chose to work and make channels for the fructifying
waters, and Egypt became the land of corn. Shall man,
whose soul is set in the royalty of discernment and resolve,
deny his rank and say, I am an onlooker, ask no choice or
purpose of me? That is the blasphemy of this time. The
divine principle of our race is action, choice, resolved
memory. Let us contradict the blasphemy, and helpt to will
our own better future and the better future of the world --
not renounce our higher gift and say, "Let us be as if we
were not among the populations;" but choose our full heritage,
claim the brotherhood of our nation, and carry into it a
new brotherhood with the nations of the Gentiles. The vision
is there; it will be fulfilled."
  With the last sentence, which was no more than a loud
whisper, Mordecai let his chin sink on his breast and his
eyelids fall. No one spoke. It was not the first time that he
had insisted on the same ideas, but he was seen to-night in a
new phase. The quiet tenacity of his ordinary self differed as
much from his present exaltation of mood as a man in
private talk, giving reasons for a revolution of which no sign
is discerible, differs from one who feels himself an agent in
a revolution begun. The dawn of fulfilment brought to his
hope by Deronda's presence had wrought Mordecai's conception
into a state of impassioned conviction, and he had
found strength in his excitement to pour forth the unlocked
floods of emotive argument, with a sense of haste as at a
crisis which must be seized. But now there had come with
the quiescence of fatigue a sort of thankful wonder that he
had spoken -- a contemplation of his life as a journey which
had come at last to this bourne. After a great excitement,
the abbing strength of impulse is apt to leave us in this
aloofness from our active self. And in the moments after
Mordecai had sunk his head, his mind was wandering along

*X599
the paths of his youth, and all the hopes which had ended in
bringing him hither.
  Every one felt that the talk was ended, and the tone of
phlegmatic discussion made inseasonable by Mordecai's
high-pitched solemnity. It was as if they had come together
to hear the blowing of the ˛shophar˛, and had nothing to do
now but to disperse. The movement was unusually general,
and in less than ten minutes the room was empty of all
except Mordecai and Deronda. "Good-nights" had been
given to Mordecai, but it was evident he had h-cnot heard
them, for he remained rapt and motionless. Deronda would
not diturb this needful rest, but waited for a spontaneous
movement.

*C43
AFTER a few minutes the unwonted stillness had penetrated
Mordecai's consciousness, and he loooked up at Deronda, not
in the least with bewilderment and surprise, but with a gaze
full of reposing satisfaction. Deronda rose and placed his
chair nearer, where there could be no inagined need for
raising the voice. Mordecai felt the action as a patient feels
the gentleness that eases his pillow. He began to speak in a
low tone, as if he were only thinking articulately, not trying
to reach an audience.
  "In the doctrine of the Cabbala, souls are born again and
again in new bodies till they are perfected and purified, and
a soul liberated from a worn-out body may join the fellow-soul
that needs it, that they may be perfected together, and
their earthly work accomplished. Then they will depart from

*X600
the mortal region, and leave place for new souls to be born
out of the store ib the eternal bosom. It is the lingering
imperfection of the souls already born into the mortal region
that hinders the birth of new souls and the preparation of
the Messianic time: -- thus the mind has given shape to
what is hippen, as the shadow of what is known, and has
spoken truth, though it were only in parable. When my long-wandering
soul is liberated from this weary body, it will join
yours, and its work will be perfected."
  Mordecai's pause seemed an appeal which Deronda's feeling
would not let him leave unanswered. He tried to make it
truthful; but for Mordecai's ear it was inevitably filled with
unspoken meanings. He only said --
  "Everything I can in conscience do to make your life effective
I will do."
  "I know it," said Mordecai, in the tome of quiet certainty
which dispense with further assurance. "I heard it. You see
it all -- you are by my side on the mount of vision, and
behold the paths of fulfilment which others deny."
  He was silent a moment or two, and then went on meditatively --
  "You will take up my life where it was broken. I feel myself
back in that day when my life was broken. The bright
morning sun was on the quay -- it was at Trieste -- the
garments of men from all nations shone like jewels -- the
boats were pushing off -- the Greek vessal that would land us
at Beyrout was to start in an hour. I was going with a
merchant as his clerk and companion. I said, I shall behold
the lands and people of the East, and I shall speak with a
fuller vison. I breathed then as you do, without labour; I
had the light step and the enduranceof youth; I could fast, I
could sleep on the hard ground. I had wedded poverty, and I
loved my bride -- for poverty to me was freedom. My heart
exulted as if it had been the heart of Moses ben Maimon,
strong with the strength of threescore years, and knowing
the work that was to fill them. It was the first time I had
been south: the soul within me felt its former sun; and
standing on the quay, where the ground I stood on seemed
to send forth light, and the shadows had an azure glory as of

*X601
spriits become visible, I felt myself in the flood of a glorious
life, wherein my own small year-counted existence seemed to
melt, so that I knew it not; and a great sob arose within me
as at the rush of waters that were too strong a bliss. So I
stood there awaiting my companion; and I saw him not till
he said: "Ezra, I have been to the post, and there is your
letter.""
  "Ezra]" exclaimed Deronda, unable to contain himself.
  "Ezra," repeated Mordecai, affirmatively, engrossed in
memory. "I was expecting a letter; for I wrote continually to
my mother. And that sound of my name was like the touch
of a wand that recalled me to the body wherefrom I had
been released as it were to mingle with the ocean of human
existence, free from the pressure of individual bondage. I
opened the letter; and the name came again as a cry that
would have disturbed me in the bosom of heaven, and made
me yearn to reach where that sorrow was. -- "Ezra, my son]""
  Mordecai paused again, his imagination arrested by the
grasp of that long-past moment. Deronda's mind was almost
breathlessly suspended on what was coming. A strange posibility
had suddenly presented itself. Mordecai's eyes were
cast down in abstracted contemplation, and in a few
moments he went on --
  "She was a mother of whom it might have come -- yea,
might have come to be said, "Her children arise up and call
her blessed." In her I understood the meaning of that
Master who, perceiving the footsteps of his mother, rose up
and said, "The majesty of the Eternal someth near]" And
that letter was her cry from the depths of anguish and
desolation -- the cry of a mother robbed of her little one. I
was her eldest. Death had taken four babes, one after the
other. Then came late my little sister, who was more than all
the rest the desire of her mother's eyes; and the letter was a
piercing cry to me -- "Ezra, my son, I am robbed of her. He
has taken her away, and left disgrace behind. They will
never come again."" -- Here Modercai lifted his eyes suddenly,
laid his hand on Deronda's arm, and said, "Mine was
the lot of Isreal. For the sin of the father my soul must go
into exile. For the sin of the father the work was broken, and

*X602
the day of fulfilment delayed. She who bore me was desolate,
disgraced, destitute. I turned back. On the instant I turned --
her spirit, and the spirit of er fathers, who had worthy
Jewish hearts, moved within me, and drew me. God, in
whom dwells the universe, was within me as the strength of
obedience. I turned and travelled with hardship -- to save the
scant money which she would need. I left the sunshine, and
travelled into freezing cold. In the last stage I spent a night
in exposure to cold and snow. And that was the beginning of
this slow death."
  Mordecai let his eyes wander again and removed his hand,
Deronda resolutely repressed the questions which urged
themselves within him. While Mordecai was in this state of
emotion, no other confidence must be sought than what
came spontaneously: nay, he himself felt a kindred emotion
which made him dread his own speech as too momentous.
  "But I worked. We were destitute -- everything had been
seized. And she was ill: the clutch of anguish was too strong
for her, and wrought with some lurking disease. At times she
could not stand for the beating of her heart, and the images
in her brain became as chambers of terror, where she beheld
my sister reared in evil. In the dead of night I heard her
crying for her child. Then I rose, and we stretched forth our
arms together and prayed. We poured forth our souls in
desire that Mirah might be delivered from evil]"
  "Mirah?" Deronda repeated, wishing to assure himself that
his ears had not been deceived by a forecasting imagination.
"Did you say Mirah?"
  "That was my little sister's name. After we had prayed for
her my mother would rest awhile. It lasted hardly four years,
and in the minutes before she died, we were praying the
same prayer -- I aloud, she silently. Her soul went out upon
its wings."
  "Have you never since heard of your sister?" said Deronda,
as quietly as he could.
  "Never. Never have I heard whether she was delivered
according to our prayer. I know not, I know not. Who shall
say where the pathways lie? The poisonous will of the
wicked is strong. It poisoned my life -- it is slowly stifling this

*X603
breath. Death delivered my mother, and I felt it a blessed-ness
that I was alone in the winters of suffering. But what
are the winters now? -- they are far off" -- here Mordecai
again rested his hand on Deronda's arm, and looked at him
with that joy of the hectic patient which pierces us to sadness
-- "there is nothing to wail in the withering of my body.
The work will be the better done. Once I said, the work of
this beginning is mine, I am born to do it. Well, I shall do it.
I shall live in you. I shall live in you."
  His grasp had become convulsive in its force, and
Deronda, agitated as he had never been before -- the certainty
that this was Mirah's brother suffusing his own
strange relation to Mordecai with a new solemnity and tenderness
-- felt his strong young heart beating faster and his
lips paling. He strank from speech. He feared, in Mordecai's
present state of exaltation (already an alarming strain on his
feeble frame) to utter a word of revelation about Mirah. He
feared to make an answer below that high pitch of expectation
which resembled a flash from a dying fire, making
watchers fear to see it dying faster. His dominant impulse
was to do as he had once done before: he laid his firm
gentle hand on the hand that grasped him. Mordecai's, as if
it had a soul of its own -- for he was not distinctly willing to
do what he did -- relaxed its grasp, and turned upward under
Deronda's. As the two palms met and pressed each other,
Mordecai recovered some sense of his surroundings, and
said --
  "Let us go now. I cannot talk any longer."
  And in fact they parted at Cohen's door without having
spoken to each other again -- merely with another pressure of
the hands.
  Deronda felt a weight on him which was half joy, half
anxiety. The joy of finding in Mirah's brother a nature even
more than worthy of that relation to her, had the weight of
solemnity and sadness: the reunion of brother and sister was
in reality the first stage of a supreme parting -- like that
farewell kiss which resembles greeting, that last glance of
love which become the sharpest pang of sorrow. Then there
was the weight of aniety about the revelation of the fact on

*X604
both sides, and the arrangements it would be desirable to
make beforehand. I suppose we should all have flet as
Deronda did, without sinking into snobbishness or the
notion that the primal duties of life demand a morning and
an evening suit, that it was an admissible desire to free
Mirah's first meeting with her brother from all jarring outward
conditons. His own sense of deliverance from the
dreaded relationship of the other Cohens, notwithstanding
their good nature, made him resolve if possible to keep them
in the background for Mirah, until her acquaintance with
them would be an unmarred rendering of gratitude for any
kindness they had shown towards her brother. On all
accounts he wished to give Mordecai surroundings not only
more suited to his frail bodily condition, but less of a hindrance
to easy intercourse, even apart from the decisive
prospect of Mirah's taking up her abode with her brother,
and tending him through the precious remnant of his life. In
the heroic drama, great recognitions are not encumbered
with these details; and certainly Deronda had as reverential
an interest in Mordecai and Mirah as he could have had in
the offspring of Agamemnon; but he was caring for destinies
still moving in the dim streets of our earthly life, not
yet lifted among the constellations, and his task presented
itself to him as difficult and delicate, especially in persuading
Mordecai to change his abode and habits. Concerning
Mirah's feelings and resolve he had no doubt: there would
be a complete union of sentiment towards the departed
mother, and Mirah would understand her brother's greatness.
Yes, greatness: that was the word which Deronda now
deliberately chose to signify the impression that Mordecai
made on him. He said to himself, perhaps rather defiantly
towards the more megative spirit within him, that this man,
however erratic some of his interpretations might be -- this
consumptive Jewish workman in threadbare clothing, lodged
by charity, delivering himself to hearers who took his
thoughts without attaching more consequences to them than
the Flemings to the ethereal chimes ringing above their
market  laces -- had the chief elements of greatness: a mind
consciously, energetically moving with the larger march of

*X605
human destinies, but not the less full of conscience and
tender heart for the footsteps that tread near and need a
leaning-place; capable of conceiving and choosing a life's
task with far-off issues, yet capable of the unapplauded
heroism which turns off the road of achievement at the call
of the nearer duty whose effect lies within the beatings of
the hearts that are close to us, as the hunder of the unfledged
bird to the breast of its parent.
  Deronda to-night was stirred with the feeling that the brief
remnant of this fervid life had become his charge. He had
been peculiarly wrought on by what he had seen at the club
of the friendly indifference which Mordecai must have gone
on encountering. His own experience of the small room that
ardour can make for itself in ordinary minds had had the
effect of increasing his reserve; and while tolerance was the
easiest attitude to him, there was another bent in him also
capable of becoming a weakness -- the dislike to appear
exceptional or to risk an ineffective insistance on his own
opinion. But such caution appeared contemptible to him just
now, when he for the first time saw in a complete picture
and felt as a reality the lives that burn themselves out in
solitary enthusiasm: martyrs of obscure circumstances, exiled
in the rarity of their own minds, whose deliverances in other
ears are no more than a long passionate solioquy -- unless
perhaps at last, when they are nearing the invisible shores,
signs of recognition and fulfilment may penetrate the cloud
of loneliness; or perhaps it may be with them as with the
dying Copernicus made to touch the first printed copy of his
book when the
book when the sense of touch was gone, seeing it only as a
dim object through the deepening dusk.
  Deronda had been brought near to one of those spiritual
exiles, and it was in his nature to feel the relation as a strong
claim, ney, to feel his imagination moving without repugnance
in the direction of Mordecai's desires. With all his
latent objection to schemes only definite in their generality
and nebulous in detail -- in the poise of his sentiments he felt
at one with this man who had made a visionary selection of
him: the lines of what may be called their emotional theory
touched. He had not the Jewish consciousness, but he had a

*X606
yearning, grown the stronger for the denial which had been
his grievance, after the obligation of avowed filifal and social
ties. His feeling was already for difficult obedience. In this way
it came that he set about his new task ungrudgingly; and
again he thought of Mrs Meyrick as his chief helper. To her
first he must make known the discovery of Mirah's brother,
and with her he must consult on all preliminaries of bringing
the mutually lost together. Happliy the best quarter for
a consumptive patient did not lie too far off the small house
at Chelsea, and the first office Deronda had to perform for
this Hebrew prophet who claimed him as a spiritual inheritor,
was to get him a healthy lodging. Such is the irony of
earthly mixtures, that the heroes have not always had carpets
and tea-cups of their own; and, seen through the open
window by the mackerel-vendor, may have been invited with
some hopefulness to pay three hundred per cent in the form
of fourpence. However, Deronda's mind was busy with a
prospective arrangement for giving a furnished lodging
some faint likeness to a refined home by dismantling his own
chambers of his best old books in vellum, his easiest chair,
and the bas-reliefs of Milton and Dante.
  But was not Mirah to be there? What furniture can give
such finish to a room as a tender woman's face? -- and is
there any harmony of tints that has such stirrings of delight
as the sweet modulations of her voice? Here is one good, at
least thought Deronda, that comes to Mordecai from his
having fixed his imagination on me. He has recovered a
perfect sister, whose affection is waiting for him.

*X607
*C44

   Fairy fold a-listening
   Hear the seed sprout in the spring,
   And for music to their dance
   Hear the hedgerows wake from trance,
   Sap that trembles into buds
   Sending little rhythmic floods
   Of fairy sound in fairy ears.
   Thus all beauty that appears
   Has birth as sound to finer sense
   And lighter-clad intelligence.

AND GWENDOLEN? -- She was thinking of Deronda much more
than he was thinking of her -- often wondering what were
his ideas "about things", and how his life was occupied. But a
lap-dog would be necessarily at a loss in framing to itself the
motives and adventures of doghood at large; and it was as
far from Gwendolen's conception that Deronda's life could
be determined by the historical destiny of the Jews, as that
he could rise into the air on a brazen horse, and so vanish
from her horizon in the form of a twinkling star.
  With all the sense of inferiority that had been forced upon
her, it was inevitable that she should imagine a larger place
for herself in his thoughts than she actually possessed. They
must be rather old and wise persons who are not apt to see
their own anxiety or elation about themselves reflected in
other minds; and Gwendolen, with her youth and inward
solitude, may be excused for dwelling on signs of special interest
in her shown by the one person who had impressed her
with the feeling of submission, and for mistaking the colour
and proportion of those signs in the mind of Deronda.
  Meanwhile, what would he tell her that she ought to do?
"He siad, I must get more interest in others, and more
knowledge, and that I must care about the best things -- but
how am I to begin?" She wondered what books he would tell
her to take up to her room, and recalled the famous
writers that she had either not looked into or had found the
most unreadable, with a half-smiling wish that she could

*X608
*X608
mischievously ask Deronda if they were not the books called
"Medicine for the mind." Then she repented of her sauciness, and
when she was safe from observation carried up a miscellaneous
selection -- Descartes, Bacon, Locke, Butler, Burke, Guizot --
knowing, as a clever young lady of education that
these authors were ornaments of mankind, feeling sure that
Deronda had read them, and hoping that by dipping into
them  all in succession, with her rapid understanding she
might get a point of view nearer to his level.
  But it was astonishing how little time she found for these
vast mrntal excursions. Constantly she had to be on the
scene as Mrs Grandcourt, and to feel herself watched in that part
by the exacting eyes of a husband who had found a
motive to exercise his tenacity -- that of  making his marriage
answer all the ends he chose, and with the morecompleteness the more
he discerned any opposing will in her. And
she herself, whatever rebellion might be going on within her,
could not have made up her mind to failurein her representation.
No feeling had yet reconciled her for a moment to any act, word, or look that w
would be a confession to the world;
and what she most dreaded in herself was any violent impulse that would make an involuntary
involuntary confession: it was
the will to be silent in every other direction that had thrown
the more impetuosity into her confidences towards Deronda,
to whom her thought continually turned as a help against
herself. Her riding, her hunting, her visiting and receiving of
visits, were all performed in a spirit of achievement which
served instead of zest and young gladness, so that all round
Diplow, in those weeks of the New Year, Mrs Grandcourt
was regarded as wearing her honours with triumph.
  "She disguises it under an air of taking everything as a
matter of course," said Mrs Arrowpoint. "A stranger might
suppose that she had condescended rather than risen. I always
noticed that doubleness in her."
  To the mother most of all Gwendolen was bent on acting
complete satisfaction, and poor Mrs Davilow was so far deceived
that she took the unexpected distance at which she was kept, in spite of what
she felt to be Grandcourt's handsome
behaviour in providing  for her, as a comparative
*X609
indifference in her daughter, now that marriage had created new interests.
To be fetched and then to dinner along with the Gascoignes,
to be driven back soon after breakfast the next morning, and to have brief call
from Gwendolen in which her husband waited for her outside
either on horseback or sitting in the carriage, was all the
intercourse allowed to the mother.
  The truth was, that the second time Gwendolen proposed
to invite her mother with Mr and Mrs Gascoigne, Grandcourt
had at first been silent, and then drawled, "We can't be
having /those/ /people/ always. Gascoigne talks too much.
Country clergy are always bores -- with their confounded
fuss about everything."
  That speech was full of foreboding for Gwendolen. To
have her mother classed under "those people" was enough to
confirm the previous dread of bringing her too near. Still,
she could not give the true reasons -- she could not say to her
mother, "Mr Grandcourt wants to recognise you as little as
possible; and besides it is better you should not see much of
my married life, else you might find out that I am miserable." So she waived
as lightly as she could every allusion to
the subject; and when Mrs Davilow again hinted the possibility
of her having a house close to Ryelands, Gwendolen
said, "It would not be so nice for you as being near the
Rectory here, mamma. We shall perhaps be very little at
Ryelands. You would miss my aunt and uncle."
  And all the while this contemptuous veto of her husband's
on any intimacy with her family, making her proudly shrink
from giving them the aspect of troublesome pensioners, was
rousing more inward inclination towards them. She had
never felt so kindly towards  her uncle, so much disposed to
look back on his  cheerful, complacent activity and spirit of
kind mamagement, even when mistaken, as more of a comfort
than a  neutral loftiness which was every day chilling
her. And here perhaps she was unconsciously finding some
of that mental enlargment which it was so hard to get from
her occasional dashes into difficult authors, who instead of
blending themselves with her daily agitations required her
to dismiss them.
*X610
  It was a delightful surprise one day when Mr and Mrs
Gascoigne were at Offendene to see Gwendolen ride up without
her husband -- with the groom only. All, including the
four girls and Miss Merry, seated in the diningroom at
lunch, could see the welcome approach; and even the elder
ones were not without something of Isabel's romantic sense
that the beautiful sister on the splendid chesnut, which held
its head as if proud to bear her, was a sort of Harriet Byron
or Miss Wardour reappearing out of her "happiness ever after."
  Her uncle went to the door to give her his hand, and she
sprang from her horse with an air of alacrity which might
well encourage that notion of guaranteed happiness; for
Gwendolen was particularly bent today on setting her
mother's heart at rest, and her unusual sense of freedom in being
able to make this visit alone enabled her to bear up
under the pressure of painful facts which were urging themselves
anew. The seven family kisses were not so tiresome as
they used to be.
  "Mr Grandcourt is gone out, so, I determined to fill up the
time by coming to you, mamma," said Gwendolen, as she laid
down her hat and seated herself next to her mother; and
then looking at her with a playfully monitory air, "That is a
punishment to you for not wearing better lace on your head.
You didn' think I should come and detect you -- you dreadfully
carelessaboutyourself mamma]" She gave a caressing
touch to the dear head.
  "Scold me, dear," said Mrs Davilow, her delicate worn face
flushing with delight. "But I wish there was something you
could eat after your ride -- instead of these scraps. Let Jacosa
make a cup of chocolate in your old way. You used to
like that."
  Miss Merry immediately rose and went out, though Gwemdolen said,
"Oh no, a piece of bread, or  one of those hard biscuits. I can't think about eating
about eating. I am come to say goodbye."
  "What] going to Ryelands again?" said Mr Gascoigne.
  "No, we are going to town," said Gwendolen, beginning to
break up a pice of bread, but putting no morsel into her
mouth.

*X611
  "It is rather early to to to town," said Mrs Gascoigne, "and
Mr Grandcourt not in Parliament."
  "Oh, there is only one more day's hunting to be had, and
Henleigh has some business in town with lawyers, I think,"
said Gwendolen. "I am very glad. I shall like to go to town."
  "You will see your house in Gosvenor Square," said Mrs
Davilow> She and the girls were devouring with their eyes
every moment of their goddess, soon to vanish.
  "Yes," said Gwendolen, in a tone of assent to the interest of
theat expectation. "And there is so much to be seen and done
in town."
  "I wish, my dear Gwendolen," said Mr Gascoigne, in a tone
of cordial advice, "that you would use your influence with
Mr Grandcourt to induce him to enter Parliament. A man of
his position should make his weight felt in politics. The best
judges are confident that the ministry will have to appeal to
the country on this question of further Reform, and Mr
Grandcourt should be ready for the opportunity. I am not
quite sure that his opinions and mine accord entirely; I have
not heard him express himself very fully. But I don't look at
the matter from that point of view. I am thinking of your
husband's standing in the country. And he has now come to
that stage of life when a man like him should enter into
public affairs. A wife has great influence with her husband.
Use yours in that direction, my dear."
  The Rector felt that he was acquitting himself of a duty
here, and giving something like the aspect of a public benefit
to his niece's match. To Gwendolen the whole speech had
the flavour of bitter comedy. If she had been merry, she
must have laughed at her uncle's explanation to her that he
had not heard Grandcourt express himself very fully on
politics. And the wife's great influence] General maxims
about husbands and wives seemed now of a precarioususefulness.
Gwendolen herself had once believed in her future
influence as an onnipotence in mamaging -- she did not
know exactly what. But her chief concern at present was to
give an answer that would be felt appropriate.
  "I should be very glad, uncle. But I think Mr Grandcourt
would not like the trouble of an election -- at least, unless it
*X612
could be without his making speeches. I thought candidates
always make speeches."
  "Not necessarily -- to any grat extent," said Mr Gascoigne.
"A man of position and weight can get on without much of
it. A country member need have very little trouble in that
way, and both out of the House and in it it is liked the better
for not being a speechifier. Tell Mr Grandcourt that I say so."
  "Here comes Jacosa with my chocolate after all," said
Gwendolen, escaping from a promise to give information
that would certainly have been received in a way inconceivable
to the good Rector, who, pushing his chair a little aside
from the table and crossing his leg, looked as well as felt like
a worthy specimen of a clergyman and magistrate giving
experienced advice. Mr Gascoigne had come to the conclusion
that Grandcourt was a proud man, but his own selflove,
calmed through life by the consciousness of his general
value and personal advantages, was not irritable enough to
prevent him from hoping the best about his niece's husband
bacause her uncle was kept rather haughtily at a distance. A
certain aloofness must be allowed to the representative of an
old family; you would not expect him to be on intimate
terms even with abstractions. But Mrs Gascoigne was less dispassionate
on her husband's account, and felt Grandcourt's
haughtiness as something a little blameable in Gwendolen.
  "Your uncle and Anna will very likely be in town about
Easter," she said, with a vague sense of expressing a slight
discontent. "Dear Rex hopes to come out with honours and a
fellowship, and he wants his father and Anna to meet him in
London, that they may be jolly together, as he says. I
shouldn't wonder if Lord Brackenshaw invited them, he has
been so very kind since he came back to the Castle."
  "I hope my uncle will bring Anna to stay in Gosvenor Suquare,"
said Gwendolen, risking herself so far, for the sake
of the present moment, but in reality wishing that she might
never be obliged to bring any of the family near Grandcourt
again. "I am very glad of Rex7s good fortune."
  "We must not be premature, and rejoice tto much beforehand,"
said the Rector, to whom this topic was the happiest in the world, and altogether
allowable, now that the issue of
*X613
that little affair about Gwendolen had been so satisfactory.
"Not but that I am in correspondence with impartial judges,
who have the highest hopes about my son, as a singularly
clerlyheaded young man. And of his excellent  disposition
and principle I have had the best evidence."
  "We shall have him a great lawyer some time," said Mrs
Gascoigne.
 "How very nice]" said Gwendolen, with a concealed sceptticism
as to niceness in general, which made the word quite
applicable to lawyers.
  "Taking of Lord Brackenshaw's kindness," said Mrs
Davolow, "you don't know how delightful he has been,
Gwendolen. He has begged me to consider myself his guest in
this house till I can get another that I like -- he did it in hte
most graceful way. But now a house has turned up. Old Mr
Jodson is dead, and we can have his house. It is just what I
want; small, but with nothing hideous to make you miserable
thinking about it. And it is only a mile from the
Rectory. You remember the low white house nearly hidden
by the trees, as we turn up the lane to the church?"

  "Yes, but you have no furniture, poor mamma," said Gwendolen,
in a melancholy tone.
  "Oh, I am saving money for that. You know who has made
me rather rich, dear," said Mrs Davilow, laying her hand on
Gwendolen's. "And Jocosa really makes so little do for housekeeping --
it is quite wonderful."
  "Oh, please let me go upstairs with you and arrange my
hat, mamma," said Gwendolen, suddenly putting up her
hand to her hair and perhaps creating a desired disarrangement.
Her heart was swelling, and she was ready to cry. Her
mother  /must/ have been worse off, if it had not been for
Grandcpurt. "I suppose I shall never see all this again," said
Gwendolen,, looking round her, as they entered the black and
yellow bedroom, and then throwing herself into a chair in
front of the glass with a little groan as of bodily fatigue. In
the resolve not to cry she had become very pale.
  "You are not well, dear?" said Mrs Davilow.
  "No; that chocolate has made me sick," said Gwendolen,
putting up her hand to be taken.
*X614
  "I should be allowed to come to you if you were ill, darling,"
said Mrs Davilow, rather timidly, as she pressed the
hand to her bosom. Something had made her sure today
that her child loved her -- needed her as much as ever.
  "Oh yes," said Gwendolen, leaning her head against her mother, though speaking
as lightly as she could. "But you
know I never am ill. I am as strong as possible; and you must
not take to fretting about me, but make yourself as happy as
you can with the girls. They are better children to you than
I have been, you know." She turned up her face with a smile.
  "You have always been good, my darling. I remember
nothing else."
  "Why, what did I ever do that was good to you, except
marry Mr Grandcourt?" said Gwendolen, starting up with a
desperate resolve to be playful, and keep no more on the
perilous edge of agitation. "And I should not have done /that/ unless
it had pleased myself." She  tossed up her chin, and
reached her hat.
  "God forbid, child] I would not have had you  marry for
my sake. Your happiness by itself is half mine."
  "Very well," said Gwendolen, arranging her hat fastidiously,
"then you will please to consider that you are half happy, which is more than I am used
am used to seeing you." With
the last words she again turned with her old playful smile to
her mother. "Now I am ready; but oh, mamma, Mr Grandcourt
gibes me a quantity of money, and expect me to spend
it, and I can't spend it; and you know I can't bear charity
children and all that; and here are thirty pounds. I wish the
girls would spend it for me on little things for themselves
when you go to the new house. Tell them so. Gwendolen put
the notes into her mother's  hand and looked away hastily,
moving towards the door.
  "God bless you, dear," said Mrs Davilow. "It will please them
so that you should have thought of /them/ in particular."
  "Oh, they are troublesome things; but they don't trouble
me, now," said Gwendolen, turning and nodding playfully.
She hardly understood her own feeling in this act towards
her sisters, but at any rate she did not wish it to be taken
as anything serious. She was glad to have got out of the
*X615
bedroom without showing more signs of emotion, and she went through
the rest of her visit and all the goodbyes with a
quiet  propriety that mede her say to herself sarcastically as
she rode away, "I think I am making a very good Mrs
Grandcourt."
  She believed that her husband was gone to Gadsmere that
day -- had inferred this, as she had long ago inferred who
were the inmates of what he had described as "a doghutch
of a place in a black country;" and the strange conflict of
feeling within her had had the characteristic effect of sending
her to Offendene with a tightened resolve -- a form of
excitement which was native to her.
  She wondered at her own contradictions. Why should she
feel it bitter to her that Grandcourt showed concern for the
beings on whose account she herself was undergoing remorse?
Had she not before her marriage inwardly determined
to speak and act on their behalf? -- and since he had
lately implied that he wanted to be in town because he was
making arrangements about his will, she ought to have been
glad of any sign that he kept a conscience awake towards
those at Gadsmere; and yet, now that she was a wife, the
sense that Grandcourt was gone to Gadsmere was like red
heat near a burn. She had brought on herself this indignity
in her own eyes -- this humiliation of being doomed to a
terrified silence lest her husband should discover with what
sort of consciousness she had married him; and as she had
said to Deronda, she "must go on." After the intensest
moments of secret hatred towards this husband who from
the very first had cowed her, ther always come back the
spiritual pressure which made her submission inevitable. There
was no effort at freedom that would not bring fresh and
worse humiliation. Gwendolen could dare nothing except in

impulsive action -- least of all could she dare premeditatedly
a vague future in which the only certain condition was
indignity. In spite of remorse, it still seemed the worst result
of her marriage that she should in any way make a spectacle
of herself; and her humiliation was lightened by her thinking
that only Mrs Glasher was aware of the fact which
caused it. For Gwendolen had never referred the interview at
*X616
the Whispering Stones to Lush's agency; her disposition to
vague error investing with shadowy omnipresence any
threat of fatal power over her, and so hindering her from
imagining plans and channels by which news had been conveyed to the woman
who had the poisoning skill of a sorceress.
To Gwendolen's mind the secret lay with Mrs Glasher, and there were
words in the horrible letter which
implied that Mrs Glasher would dread disclosure to the
husband, as much as the usurping Mrs Grandcourt.
  Something else, too, she thpught of as more than a secret
from her husband than it really was -- namely, that suppressed
struggle of desperate rebellion which she herself
dreaded. Grandcourt could not indeed fully imagine how
things effected Gwendolen: he had no imagination of anything
in her but what affected the gratification of his own
will; but on this point he had the sensibility which seems
like divination. What we see exclusively we are apt to see
with some mistake of proportions; and Grandcourt was not
likely to be infallible in his judgments concerning this wife
who was governed by many shadowy powers, to him non-existent.
He magnified her inward resistance, but that did
not lessen his satisfaction in the mastery of it.
*C45

       Behold my lady's carriage stop the way,
       With powdered lacquey and with champing bay:
       She sweeps the matting, treads the crimson stair,
       Her arduous function solely "to be there".
       Like Sirius rising o'er the silent sea,
       She hides her heart in lustre loftily.

So the Grandcourts were in Gosvenor Square in time to
receive a card for the musical party at Lady Mallinger's,
there being reasons of business which made Sir Hugo know
beforehand that his illbeloved nephew was coming up. It was
only the third evening after their arrival, and Gwendolen

*X617
made rather an absentminded acquaintance with her
new ceilings and furniture, preoccupied with the certainty
that she was going to speak to Deronda again, and also to see
the Miss Lapidoth who had gone through so much, and
was "capable of submitting to anything in the form of duty."
For Gwendolen had remembered nearly every word that
Deronda had said about Mirah, and especially that phrase,
which she repeated to herself bitterly, having an illdefined
consciousness that her own submission was something very different.
She would have been obliged to allow, if any one
had said it to her, that what she submitted to could not take
the shape of duty, but was submission to a yoke drawn on her
by an action she was ashamed of, and worn with a strength
of selfish motives that left no weight for duty to carry.
  The drawingrooms in Park Lane, all white, gold, and pale
crimson, were agreeable furnished, and not crowded with
guests, before Mr and Mrs Grandcourt entered; and more
than half an hour of instrumental music was being followed
by an interval of movement and chat. Klesmer was there
with his wife, and in his generous interest for Mirah he
proposed to accompany her singing of Leo's /"O patria mia,"/
which he had before recommended her to  choose, as more
distinctive of her than better known music. He was already
at the piano, and Mirah was standing there conspicuously,
when Gwendolen, magnificent in her pale green velvet and
poisoned diamonds, was ushered to a seat of honour well in
view of them. With her long sight and selfcommand she
had the rare power of quickly distinguishing persons and
objects on entering a full room, and while turning her
glance towards Mirah she did not neglect to exchange a bow
and smile with Klesmer as she passed. The smile seemed to
each a lightningflash back on that morning when it had
been her ambition to stand as the "little Jewess" was standing,
and survey a grand audience from the higher rank of her talent --
instead of which she was of the ordinary
crowd in silk and gems, whose utmost performance it must
be to admire or find faults. "He thinks I am in the right road
now", said the lurking resentment within her.
  Gwendolen had not caught sight of Deronda in her
*X618
passage, and while she was seated acquitting herself in chat
with Sir Hugo, she glanced round her with careful ease,
bowing a recognition here and there, and fearful lest an
anxiouslooking exploration in search of Deronda might be
observed by her husband, and afterwards rebuked as something
"damnably vulgar." But all travelling, even that of a
slow gradual glance round the room, brings a liability to
undesired encounters, and amongst the eyes that met Gwendolen's,
forcing her into  a slight bow, were those of the
"amateur t too fond of Meyerbeer," Mr Lush, whom Sir Hugo
continued to find useful as a half caste among gentlemen.
He was standing near her husband, who, however, turned a
shoulder towards him, and was being understood to listen to
Lord Pentreath. How was it that at this moment, for the first
time, there darted through Gwendolen, like a disagreeable


sensatio, the idea that this man knew all about her husband's life?
He had been banished from her sight, according
to her will, and she had been satisfied; he had sunk entirely
into the background of her thoughts, screened away from
her by the agitating figures that kept up an inward drama in
which Lush had no place. Here suddenly he reappeared at
her husband's elbow, and there sprang up in her, like an
instantaneously fabricated memory in a dream, the sense of
his being connected with the secrets that made her wretched.
She was conscious of effort in turning her head away from
him, trying to continue her wandering survey as if she had
seen nothing of more consequence than the picture on the
wall, till she discovered Deronda. But he was not looking
towards her, and she withdrew her eyes from him, without
having got any recognition, consoling herself with the assurance
that he must have seen her come in. In fact, he was
standing not far from the door with Hans Meyrick, whom
he had been careful to bring into Lady Mallinger's list. They
were both a little  more anxious than was comfortable lest
Mirah should not be heard to advantage. Deronda even felt
himself on the brink to betraying emotion, Mirah presence
not being linked with crowding images of what had gone
before and was to come after -- all centring in the brother
whom he was soon to reveal to her; and he had escaped as
*X619

soon as he could from the side of Lady Pentreath, who had
said in her violoncello voice-
  "Well, your Jewess is pretty -- there's no denying that. But
where is her Jewish impudence? She looks as demure as a
nun. I suppose she learned that on the stage."
  He was beginning to feel on Mirah behalf something of
what he had felt for himself in his seraphic boyish time,
when Sir Hugo asked him if he  would like to be a great
singer -- an indignant dislike to her being remarked on in a
free and easy way, as if she were an imported commodity
disdainfully paid for by the fashionable public; and he
winced the  more because Mordecai, he knew , would feel that
the name "Jewess" was taken as a sort of stamp like the
lettering of Chinese silk. In this susceptible mood he saw the
Grandcourts enter, and was immediately appealed to by
Hans about "that Vandyke duchess of a beauty." Pray excuse
Deronda that in this moment he felt a transient renewal of his
first repulsion from Gwendolen, as if she and her beauty and
her feelings were to blame for the undervaluing of Mirah as
a woman -- a feeling something like class animosity, which
affection for what is not fully recognised by others, whether
in persons or in poetry, rarely allows us to escape. To
Hans admiring Gwendolen with his habitual hyperbole, he
answered, with a sarcasm that was not quite goodhumoured -
  "I thought you could admire no style of woman but your Berenice."
  "That is the style I worship -- not admire," said Hans.
"Other styles of woman I might make myself wicked for, but
for Berenice I could make myself -- well, pretty good, which
is something much more difficult."

  "Hush]" said Deronda, under the pretext that the singing
was going to begin. He was not so delighted with the answer
as might have been expected, and was relieved by Hans's
movement to a more advanced spot.
  Deronda had never before heard Mirah sing /"O patria mia."/
He knew well Leopardi's fine Ode to Italy (when Italy
sat like a disconsolate mother in chains, hiding her face on her knees
and weeping), and the few selected words were
filled for him with the grandeur of the whole, which seemed
*X620
to breathe as inspiration through the music. Mirah singing
this, made Mordecai more than ever one presence with her.
Certain words not included in the song nevertheless rang
with Deronda as harmonies from one invisible --

                              "Non ti difende
                  Nessun de' tuoi? L'armi, qua l'armi: io solo
                  Combattero', procombero' sol io"*-

they seemed the very voice of that heroic passion which is
falsely said to devote itself in vain when it achieves the
godlike end of manifesting unselfish love. And that passion
was present to Deronda now as  the vivid image of a man
dying helplessly away from the possibility of battle.
  Mirah was equal to his wishes. While the general applause
was sounding, Klesmer gave a more valued testimony, audible
to her only --"Good, good -- the crescendo better than
before." But her chief anxiety was to know that she had
satisfied Mr Deronda: any failure on her part this evening
would have pained her as an especial injury to him. Of
course all her prospect were due to what he had done for
her; still this occasion of singing in the house that was his
home brought a peculiar demand. She looked towards him
in the distnace, and he could see that she did; but he
remained where he was, and watched the stream of emulous
admires closing round her, till presently they parted to
make way for Gwendolen, who was taken up to be introduced
by Mrs Klesmer. Easier now about "the little Jewess",
Daniel relented towards poor Gwendolen in her splendour,
and his memory went back, with some penitence for his
momentary hardness, over all the signs and confessions that
she too needed a rescue, and one much more difficult than
that of the wanderer by the river -- a rescue for which he felt
himself helpless. The silent question --"But is it not cowardly
to make that a reason for turning away?" was the form in
which he framed his resolve to go near her on the first
opportunity, and show his regard for her on the first past confidence, in
spite of Sir Hugo's unwelcome hints.
  *Do none of thy children defend thee? Arms]bring me arms]
alone I will fight, alone I will fall.
*X621

  Klesmer, having risen to Gwendolen as she approached,
and being included by her in the opening conversation with
Mirah, continued near them a little while, looking down
with a smile, which was rather in his eyes than on his lips, at
the piquant contrast of the two charming young creatures
seated on the red divan. The solicitude seemed to be all on
the side of the splendid one.
  "You must let me say how much I am obliged to you," said
Gwendolen. "I had heard from Deronda that I should
have a great treat in your singing, but I was too ignorant to
imagine how great."


  "You are very good to say so, " answered Mirah, her mind
chiefly occupied in contemplating Gwendolen. It was like a
new kind of stage-experience to her to be close to genuine
grand ladies with genuine brilliants and complexions, and they
impressed her vaguely as coming out of some unknown drama,
in which their parts perhaps get more tragic as they went on.
  "We shall all want to learn of you -- I, at least," said
Gwendolen. "I sing very badly, as Herr Klesmer will tell you" --
here she glanced upward to that higher power rather archly,
and continued -- "but I have been rebuked for not liking to
be mdddling, since I can be nothing more. I think that is a
different doctrine from yours?" She was still looking at
Klesmer, who said quickly --
  "Not if it means that it would be worth while for you
to study further, and for Miss Lapidoth to have the pleasure of
helping you." With that he moved away, and Mirah, taking
everything with /naive/ seriousness, said --
  "If you think I could teach you, I shall be very glad. I am
anxious to teach, but I have only just begun. If I do it well,
it must be by remembering how my master taught me."
  Gwendolen was in reality too uncertain about herself to be
prepared for this simple promptitude of Mirah's, and in her
wish to change the subject said, with some lapse from the
good taste of her first address --
"You have not been long in London, I think? -- but you
were perhaps introduced to Mr Deronda abroad?"
  "No," said Mirah; "I never saw him before I came to
England in the summer."
*X622
  "But he has seen you often and heard you sing a great
deal, has he not?" said Gwendolen, led on partly by the wish
to hear anything about Deronda, and partly by the awkwardness
which besets the readiest person in carrying on a
dialogue when empty  of matter. "He spoke of you to me with
the highest praise. He seemed to know you quite well."
  "Oh, I was poor, and needed help," said Mirah, in a new tone
of feeeling, "and Mr Deronda has given me the best friends in the
world. That is the only way he came to know anything
about me -- because he was sorry for me. I had no friends
when I came. I was in  distress. I owe everything to him."
  Poor Gwendolen, who had wanted to be a struggling artist
herself, could nevertheless not escape the impression that a
mode of inquiry which could have been rather rude towards
herself was an amiable condescension to this Jewess who was
ready to give her lessons. The only effect on Mirah as always
on any  mention of Deronda, was to stir reverential gratitude
and anxiety that she should be undestood to have the
deepest obligation to him.
  But both he and Hans, who were noticing the pair  from a
distance, would have felt rather indignant if they had known
that the conversation had led up to Mirah's representation
of herself in this light of needeness. In the movement that
prompted her, however, there was an exquisite delicacy,
which perhaps she could have not stated explicity -- the
feeling that she ought not to allow any one to assume in
Deronda a relation of more equality or less generous interest
towards her than actually existed. Her answer was delightful
to Gwendolen: she thought of nothing but the ready compassion,
which in another form she had trusted in and found
for herself; and on the signals that Klesmer was about to
play she moved away in much content, entirely without
presentiment that this Jewess /protegee/ would ever make a
more important difference in her life than the possible improvement
of her singing -- if the leisure and spirits of a Mrs Grandcourt
would allow of other lessons than such as the
world was giving her at rather a high charge.
  With her wonted alteration from resolute care of appearances
to some rash indulgence of an impulse, she chose, under
*X623
the pretext of getting farther from the instrument, not to go
again to her former seat, but placed herself on a settee where
she could not only have one neighbour. She was nearer to
Deronda than before: was it surprising that he came up in
time to shake hands before the music began -- then, that
after he had sttod a little while by the labow of the settee at
the empty end, the torrentlike confluences of bass and
trebel seemed, like a convulsion of nature, to cast the conduct
of petty mortals into insignificance, and to warrant his
sitting down?
  But when at the end of Klesmer's playing there came the
outburst of talk under which Gwendolen had hoped to speak
as  she would to Deronda, she observed that Mr Lush was
within hearing, leaning agaist the wall close by them. She
could not help her flush of anger, but she tried to have only
an air of polite indifference in saying -
  "Miss Lapidoth is everything you described to be."
  "You have been very quick in discovering that," said Deronda,
ironically.
  "I have not found out all the excellences you spoke of -- I
don't mean that," said Gwendolen; "but I think her singing is
charming,  and herself too. Her face is lovely -- not in the
least common; and she is such a complete little person. I
should think she will be a great success."
  This speach was grating to Deronda, and he would not
answer, but looked gravely before him. She knew that he
was displeased with her, and she was getting so impatient
under the neighbourhood of Mr Lush, which prevented her
from saying any word she wanted to say, that she meditated
some desperate step to get rid of it, and remained silent too.
That constraint seemed to last a long while, neither Gwendolen
nor Deronda looking at the other  till Lush slowly
relieved the wall of his weight, and joined some one at a
distnace.
  Gwendolen immediately said, "You despise me for  talking
artificially."
  "No," said Deronda, looking at her cooly; "I think that is
quite excusable sometimes. But I did not think what you
were last saying was altogether artificial."
*X624
  "There was something in it that displeased you," said
Gwendolen. "What was it?"
  "It is impossible to explain such things," said Deronda
"One can never communicate niceties of feeling about words
and manner."
  "You think I am shut out from understanding them," said
Gwendolen, with a slight tremor in her voice, which she was
trying to conquer. "have I shown myself so very dense to
everything you have said?" There was an indescibable look
of suppressed tears in her eyes, which were turned on him.
  "Not at all," said Deronda, with some softening of voice.
"But experience differs for diffrent people. We don't all
wince at the same things. I have had plenty of proof that
you are not dense." He smiled at her.
"But one may feel things and not be able to do anything
better for all that," said Gwendolen, not smiling in return --
the distance to  which Deronda's words seemed to throw her
chilling her tto much. "I begin to think we can only get
better by having people about us who raise good feelings.
You must not be surprise at  anything in me. I think it is
too late for me to alter. I don't know how to set about being
wise, as you told me to be."
  "I seldom find I do any good by my preaching. I might  as
well have kept from meddling," said Deronda, thinking rather
sadly that his interference about that unfortunate necklace
might end in nothing but an added pain to him in seeing her
after all hardened to another sort of gambling than roulette.
  "Don't say that," said Gwendolen, hurriedly, feeling that
this might be her only chance of getting the words uttered,
and dreading the incrise of her own agitation. "If you
despair of me, I shall despair. Your saying that I should not
go on being selfish and ignorant has been some strength to
me. If you say you wish you had not meddled -- that means,
you despair of me and forsake me. And then you will decide
for me that I shall not be good. It is you who will decide;
because you might have made me different by keeping as
near to me as you could, and believing in me."
  She had not been looking at him as she spoke, but at the
handle of the fan which she held closed. With the last words

*X625
she rose and left him, returning to her former place, which
had been left vacant; while every one was settling into
quietude in expectation of Mirah's voice, which presently,
with that wonderful, searching quality of subdued song in
which the melody seems simply an effect of the emotion,
gave forth, /Per/ /pieta'/ /non/ /dirmi/ /addio./
  In Deronda's ear the strain was for the moment a continuance
of Gwendolen's pleading -- a painful urging of
something vague and difficult, irreconciliable with pressing
conditions, and yet cruel to resist. However strange the
mixture in her of a resolute pride and a precocious air of
knowing the world, with a precipitate, guileless indiscretion,
he was quite sure now that the mixture existed. Sir Hugo's
hints had made him alive to dangers that his own disposition
might have neglected; but that Gwendolen's reliance on him
was unvisited by any dream of his being a man who could
misinterpret her was as manifest as morning, and made up an
appeal which wrestled with his sense of present dangers, and
with his foreboding of a growing incompatible claim on him
in her mind. There was a foreshadowing of some painful
collision: on the one side the grasp of Mordecai's dying
hand on him, with all the ideals and prospects it aroused; on
the other this fair creature in silk and gems, with her hidden
wound and her selfdread, making a trustful effort to lean
and find herself sustained. It was as if he had a vision of
hinself besought with outstretched arms and cries, while he
was caught by the waves and compelled to mount the vessel
bound for a faroff coast. That was the strain of excited
feeling in him that went along with the notes of Mirah's
song; but when it ceased he moved from his seat with the
reflection that he had been falling into an exaggeration of
his own importance, and a ridiculous readiness to accept
Gwendolen's view of himself, as if he could really have any
decisive power over her.
  "What an enviable fellow you are," said Hans to him,
"sitting on a sofa with that young duchess, and having an
interesting quarrel with her]"
  "Quarrel with her?" repeated Deronda, rather uncomfortably.
*X626
  "Oh, about theology, of course; nothing personal. But she told
you what you ought to think, and then left you with a
grand air which was admirable> Is she an Antinomian? -- if
so, tell her I am an Antinomian painter, and introduce me. I
should like to paint her and her husband. He was the sort of
handsome /physique/ that the Duke ought to have in /Lucrezia/ /Borgia/
if it could go with a fine baritone, which it can't."
  Deronda devoutly hoped that Hans's account of the impression
his dialogue with Gwendolen had made on a distnat
beholder was no more than a bit of fantastic representation,
such as was common with him.
  And Gwendolen was not without her afterthoughts that
her husband's eyes might have seen her, extracting
something to reprove -- some offence against her dignity as
his wife; her consciuousness telling her that she had not kept
up the perfect air of  equability in public which was
her own ideal. But Grandcourt made no observation on her behaviour.
All he said as they were driving home was --
  "Lush will dine with us among the other people tomorrow,
You will trat him civilly."
  Gwendolen's heart began to beat violently. The words that
she wanted to utter, as one wants to return a blow, were
  "You are breaking a promise to me -- the first promise you
made me." But she dared not utter them. She was as frightened
at a quarrel as if she had foreseen that it would end
with throttling fingers on her neck. After a pause, she said in
the tone rather of defeat than resentment-
  "I thought you did not intend him to frequent the house
again."
  "I want him just now. He is useful to me; and he must be
treated civilly."
  Silence. There may come a moment when even an excellent husband who
has dropt smoking under more or less of a
pledge during courtship, for the first time will introduce his
cigarsmoke between himself and his wife, with the tacit
understanding that she will have to put up with it. Mr Lush
was, so to speak, a very large cigar.
  If these are the sort of lovers' vows at which Jove laughs,
he must have a merry time of it.
*X627
*C46

"If any one should importune me to give a reason why I loved him,
I feel it could no otherwise be expressed than by making answer,
"Because it was he; because it was I." There is, beyond what I am
able to say, I know not what inexplicable and inevitable power
that brought on this union."- Montaigne: /On/ /Freindship./


The time had come to prepare Mordecai for the revelation
of the restored sister and for the change of abode which was
desirable before Mirah's meetign with her brother. Mrs
Meyrick, to whom Deronda had confided everything except
Mordecai's peculiar relation to himself, had been active in
helping him to find a suitable lodging in Brompton, not
many minutes' walk from her own house, so that the brother
and sister would be within reach of her motherly care. Her
happy mixture of Scottish caution with her Scottish fervour
and gallic liveliness had enabled her to keep the secret close
from the girls as well as from Hans, any betrayal to them
being likely to reach Mirah in some way that would raise an
agitating suspicion, and spoil the important opening of that
work which was to secure her independence, as we rather
arbitrarily call one of the more arduous and dignified forms
of our dependence. And both Mrs Meyrick and Deronda
had more reasons than they could have expressed for desiring
that Mirah should be able to maintain herself. Perhaps
"the little mother" was rather helped in her secrecy by some
dubiousness in her sentiment about the remarkable brother
described to her; and certainly, if she felt any joy and
anticipatory admiration, it was due to her faith in Deronda's
judgment. The consumption was a sorrowful fact that appealed
to her tenderness; but how was she to be very glad of
an enthusiasm which, to tell the truth, she could only contemplate
as Jewish pertinacity, and as rather an undesirable
introduction among them all of a man whose conversation
would not be more modern and encouraging than that of
Scott's Covenanters? Her mind was anything but prosaic,
and she had her soberer share of Mab's delight in the
*X628
romance of Mirah's story and of her abode with them; but
the romantic or unusual in real life requires some adaptation.
We sit up at night to read about Cakya-Mouni, Saint
Francis, or Oliver Cromwell; but whether we should be glad
for any one at all like them to call on us the next morning, still more,
to reveal himself as a new relation, is quite another
affair. Besides, Mrs Meyrick had hoped, as her children
did, that the intensity of Mirah's feeling about Judaism
would slowly subside , and be merged in the gradually deepening
current of loving interchange with her new friends. In
fact, her secret favourite continuation of the romance had
been no discovery of Jewish relations, but something much
more favourable to the hopes she discerned in Hans. And
now -- here was a brother who would dip Mirah's mind over
again in the deepest dye of Jewish sentiment. She could not
help saying to Deronda -
  "I am as glad as you are that the pawnbroker is not her
brother: there are Ezras and Ezras in the world; and really
it is a comfort to think that all Jews are not like those
shopkeepers who /will/ n/not/ let you get out of their shops; and
besides, what he said to you about his mother and sister
mekes me bless him. I am sure he's good. But I never did
like anything fanatical. I suppose I heard a little too much
preaching in my  youth, and lost my palate for it."
  "I don't think you will find that Mordecai obtrudes any
preaching," said Deronda. "He is not what I should call
fanatical. I call a man fanatical when his enthusiasm is
narrow and hoodwinked, so that he has no sense of proportions,
and becomes unjust and unsympathetic to men who
are out of his own track. Mordecai is an enthusiast: I should
like to keep that word for the highest order of minds -- those
who care supremely for grand and general benefits to
mankind. He is not a strictly orthodox Jew, and is full of
allowances for others: his conformity in many things is an
allowance for the condition of other Jews. The people he
lives with are as fond of him as possible, and they can't in
the least understand his ideas."
  "Oh, well  I can live up to the level of the pawnbroker's
mother, and like him for what I see to be good in him; and
*X629
for what I don't see the merits of I will take your word.
According to your definition, I suppose one might be fanatical
in worshipping commonsense; for my husband used
to say the world would be a poor place if there were nothing
but commonsense in it. However, Mirah's brother will have
good bedding -- that I have taken care of; and I shall have this
extra window pasted up with paper to prevent draughts." (The
conversation was taking place in the destined lodging.) "It is a
comfort to think that the people of the house are no strangers
to me -- no hypocritical harpies. And when the children
know, we shall be able to make the rooms much prettier."
  "The next stage of the affair is to tell all to Mordecai, and
get him to move -- which may be a more difficult business,"
said Derona.
  "And will you tell Mirah before I say anything to the
children?" said Mrs Meyrick. But Deronda hesitated, and she
went on in a tone of persuasive deliberation -- "No, I think
not. Let me tell Hans and the girls the evening before, and
they will be away the next morning."
  "Yes, that will be best. But do justice to my account of
Mordecai -- or Ezra, as I suppose Mirah will wish to call
him: don't assist their imagination by referring to Habakkuk Mucklewrath,"
said Deronda, smiling, -- Mrs Meyrick
herself having used the comparison of the Covenanters.
  "Trust me, trust me," said the little mother. "I shall have no
to persuade them so hard to be glad, that I shall convert
myself. When I am frightened I find it a good thing to have
somebody to be angry with  for not being brave: it warms
the blood."
  Deronda might have been more argumentative or persuasive
about the view to be taken of Mirah's brother, if he
had been less anxiously preoccupied with the more important
task immediately before him, which he desired to acquit
himself of without wounding the Cohens. Mordecai, by a
memorable answer, had made it evident that he would be
keenly alive to any inadvertence in relation to their feelings.
In the interval, he had been meeting Mordecai at the /Hand/ /and/
Banner,/ but now after due reflaction he wrote to him
saying that he had particular reasons for wishing to see him
*X630
in his own home the next  evening, and would beg to sit with
him in his workroom for an hour, if the Cohens would not
regard it as an intrusion. He would call with the understand
understanding that if there were any objection, Mordecai would accompany
him elsewhere. Deronda hoped in this way to create
a little expectation that would have a preparatory effect.
  He was received with the usual friendliness, some some additional
costume in the women and children, and in all the
elders a slight air of wondering which even in Cohen was not
allowed to pass the bounds of silence -- the guest's transactions
with Mordecai being a sort of mystery which he was
rather proud to think lay outside the sphere of light which
enclosed his own understanding. But when Deronda said , "I
suppose Mordecai is at home and expecting me," Jacob, who
had profited by the family remarks, went up to his knee and
said, "What do you want to talk to Mordecai about?"
  "Something that is very interesting to him," said Deronda,
pinching the lad's ear, "but that you can't understand."
  "Can you say this?" said Jacob, immediately giving forth a
string of his rotelearned Hebrew verses with a wonderful
mixture of the throaty and the nasal, and nodding his small
head at his hearer, with a sense of giving formidable evidence
which might rather alter their mutual position.
  "No, really," said Deronda, keeping grave; I can't say anything
like it."
  "I thought not," said Jacob, performing a dance of triumph
with his small scarlet legs, while he took various objects out
of the deep pokets of his knickerbockers and returned them
thither, as a slight hint of his resources; after which running
to the door and workroom, he opened it wide, set it back
against it, and said, "Mordecai, here's the young swell" -- a
copying of his father's phrase which seemed to him well
fitted to cap the recitation of Hebrew.
  He was called back with hushes by mother and grandmother,
and Deronda, entering and closing the dorr behind
him, saw that a bit of carpet had been laid down, a chair
placed, and the fire and the lights attended to, in sign of the
Cohens' respect. As Mordecai rose to greet him, Deronda
was struck with the air of solemn expectation in his face,
*X631
such as would have seemed perfectly natural if  his letter had
declared that some revelation was to be made about the lost
siste. Neither of them spoke, till Deronda, with his udual
tenderness of manner, had drawn the vacant chair from the
opposite side of the hearth and had seated himself near to
Mordecai, who then said, in a tone of fervid certainty -
  "You are come to tell me something that my soul longs
for."
  "It is true that I have something very weighty to tell you -
something, I trust, that you will rejoice in," said Deronda, on
his guard against the probability that Mordecai had been
preparing himself for something quite different from the fact.
  "It is all revealed - it is made clear to you," said Mordecai,
more eagerly, leaning forward with  clasped hands. "You are
even as my brother that sucked the breasts of my mother --
the heritage is yours -- there is no doubt to divide us."
  "I have learned nothing new about myself," said Deronda.
The disappointment was inevitable: it was better not to let
the feeling be strained longer in a mistaken hope.
  Mordecai sank back in his chair, unable for the moment
to care what was really coming. The whole day his mind had
been in a state of tension towards one fulfilment. The reaction
was sickening, and he closed his eyes.
  "Except," Deronda went on gently after a pause, --"except
that I had really some time ago come into another sort of
hidden connection with you, besides what you have spoken
of as existing in your own  feelings."
  The eyes were not opened, but there was a  fluttering in the
lids.
  "I had made the acquaintance of one in whom you are
interested."
  Mordecai opened his eyes and fixed them in a quiet gaze
on Deronda: the former painful check repressed all activity
of conjecture.
  "One who is closely related to your departed mother,"
Deronda went on, wishing to make the disclosure gradual;
but noticing a shrinking movement in Mordecai, he added --
"whom she and you held dear above all others."
  Mordecai, with a sudden start, laid a spasmodic grasp on
*X632
*X632
Derona's wrist; there was a great terror in him. And
Deronda devined it. A tremor was perceptible in his clear
tones as he said-
  "What was prayed for has come to pass: Mirah has been
delivered from evil."
  Mordecai's grasp relaxed a little, but he was panting with
a sort of tearless sob.
  Derona went on: "Your sister is worthy of the mother
you honoured."
  He waited there, and Mordecai, throwing himself backward
in his chair, again closed his eyes, uttering himself
almost inaudibly for some minutes in Hebrew, and then
subsiding into a happylooking silence. Deronda, watching
the expression in his uplifted face,  could have imagined that
he was speaking with some beloved object: there was a new
suffused sweetness, something like that on the faces of the
beautiful dead. For the first time Deronda thought he discerned
a family resemblance to Mirah.
  Presently, when Mordecai was ready to listen, the rest was
told. But in accounting for Mirah's fight he made the statements
about the father's conduct as vague as he could and
threw the emphasis on her yerning to come to England as
the place where she might find her mother. Also he kept
back the fact of Mirah's intention to drown herself, and his
own part in rescuing her; merely describing the home she
has found with friends of his, whose interest in her and
efforts for her he had shared. What he dwelt on finally was
Mirah's feeling about her mother and brother; and in relation
to  this he tried to give every detail.
  "It was in search of them," said Deronda, smiling, "that I
turned into this house: the name Ezra Cohen was just then
the most interesting name in the world to me. I confess I
had a fear for a long while. Perhaps you will forgive me now
for having asked you that question about  the elder Mrs
Cohen's daughter. I cared very much what I should find
Mirah's friends to be. But I had found a brother worthy of
her when I knew that her Ezra wa s disuised under the
name of Mordecai."
  "Mordecai is really my name -- Ezra Mordecai Cohen."
*X633
  Is there any kinship between this family and yours? said
Deronda.
  "only the kinship of Israel. My soul clings to these people,
who have shelteredme and given me succour out of pale
the affection that abides in Jewish hearts, as a sweet odour in
things long crushed and hidden from the outer air. It is
good for me to bear with their ignorance and be bound to
them in gratitude, that I may keep in mind the spiritual
poverty of the Jewish million, and not put impatient knowledge
in the stead of loving wisdom.
  "But you don't feel bound to continue with them now
there is a closer tie to draw you?" said Deronda, not without
fear that he might find an obstacle to overcome. "it seems to
me right now -- is it not? -- that you should live with your
sister; and I have prepared a home to take you to in the
neighbourhood of her friends, that she may join you there.
Pray grant me this wish. It will enable me to be with you
often in the hours when Mirah is obliged to leave you. That
is my selfish reason. But the chief reason is, that Mirah will
desire to watch over you, and that you ought to give  to her
the guardianship of a brother's presence. You shall have
books about you. I shall want you to learn  of you, and to take
you out to see the river and trees. And you will have the rest
and comfort that you will be more and more in need of --
nay, that I need for you. This is the claim I make on you,
now that we have found each other."
  Deronda, grasping his own coatcollar rather nervously,
spoke in a tone of earnest affectionate pleading, such as he
might have used to a venerated elder brother. Mordecai's
eyes were fixed on him with a listening contemplation, and
he was silent for a little while after Deronda had ceased to
speak. Then he said, with an almost reproachful emphasis -
  "And you would have me told it doubtful whether you
were born a Jew] Have we not from the first touched each
other with invisible fibres -- have we not quivered together
like the leaves from a common stem with stirrings from a
common root? I know what I am outwardly -- I am one
among the crowd of poor -- I am stricken, I am dying. But
our souls knew each other. They gazed in silence as those
*X634
who have long been parted and meet again, but when  they
found voice they were assured, and all their speech is understanding.
The life of  Israel is in your veins."
  Deronda sat perfectly still, but felt his face tingling.It was
impossible either to deny or assent. He waited, hoping that
Mordecai would presently give him a more direct answer.
And after a pause of meditation he did say firmly-
  "What you wish of me I will do. And our mother -- may
the blessing of the Eternal be with her in our souls] - Would
have wished it tto. I will accept what your lovingkindness
has prepared, and Mirah's home shall be mine." He paused a
moment, and then added in a more melancholy tone, "But I
shall grieve to part from these parents and the little ones.
You must tell them, for my heart wold fail me."
  "I felt that you would want me to tell them. Shall we go
now at once?" said Deronda, much relieved by this unwavering
compliance.
  "Yes; lrt us not defer it. It must be done," said Mordecai,
rising with the air of a man who has to perform a painful
duty. Then came, as an afterthought, "But do not dwell on
my sister more than is needed."
  When they enter the parlour he said to the alert Jacob
"Ask your father to come, and tell Sarah to mind the shop.
My friend has something to say," he continued, turning to
the elder Mrs Cohen. It seemed part of Mordecai's eccentricity
that he should call this gentlemen his friend; and the
two women tried to show their better manners by warm
politeness in begging Deronda t to seat himself in the best
place.
  When Cohen entered with a pen behind his ear, he rubbed
his hands and said with a loud satisfaction, "Well, sir] I'm glad
you're doing us the honour to join our family party again.
We are pretty comfortable, I think."
  He looked  round with shiny gladness. And when all were
seated on the hearth the scene was worth peeping in upon:
on one side Baby under her scarlet quilt in the corner being
 rocked by the young mother, and Adelaide Rabekah
seated on the grandmother's knee; on the other, Jacob between
his father's legs; while the two markedly different
*X635
figures of Deronda and Mordecai were in the middle --
Mordecai a little backward in the shade, anxious to conceal
his agitated susceptibility to what was going on around him.
The chief light came from the fire, which brought out the rich
colour on a depth of shadow, and seemed to turn into speech
the dark gems of eyes looked at each other kindly.
  "I have just been telling Mordecai of an event that makes a
great change in his life," Deronda began, "but I hope you will
agree with me that it is a joyful one. Since he think of you as
his best fiends, he wishes me to tell you for him at once."
  "Relations with money, sir?" burst in Cohen, feeling a
power of divination which it was a pity to nullify by waiting
for the fact.
  "No; not exactly," said Deronda, smiling. "But a very precious
relation wishes to be reunited to him -- a very good and
lovely young sister, who will care for his comfort in every
way."
  "Married,sir?"
  "No, not married."
  "But with a maintenance?"
  "With talents which will secure  her a maintenance. A
home is already provided for Mordecai."
  There was silence for a moment or two before the grandmother
said in a wailing tone -
  "Well, well] and so you are going away from us, Mordecai."
  "And where there's no children as there is here," said the
mother,  catching the wail.
  "No Jacob, and no Adelaide, and no Eugenie]" wailed the
grandmother again.
  "Ay, ay, Jacob's learning 'ill all wear out of him. He must
go to school. It will hard times for Jacob," said Cohen, in a
tone of decision.
  In the wideopen ears of Jacob his father's words sounded
like a doom, giving an awful finish to the dirgelike effect of
the whole announcement. His face had been gathering a
wondering incredulous sorrow at the notion of Mordecai's
going away: he was unable to imagine the change as anything
lasting; but at the mention of "hard times for Jacob"
there was no further suspence of feeling, and he broke forth
*X636
in loud lamentation> Adelaide Rabekah always cried when
her brother cried, and now began to howl with astonishing
suddenness, whereupon baby awaking contributed angry
screams, and required to be taken out of the cradle. A great
deal of hushing was necessary, and Mordecai, feeling the
cries pierce him, put out his arms to Jacob who in the midst
of his tears and sobs was turning his head right and felt for
general observation. His father, who had been saying, "Never
mind, old man; you shall go to the riders," now released
him, and he went to Mordecai, who clasped him, and laid his
cheek on the little black head without speaking. But Cohen,
sensible that the master of the family must make some
apology for all this weakness, and that the occasion called
for a speech, addressed Deronda with some elevation of
pitch, squaring his elbows and resting a hand on each knee:-
  "It's not as we're the people to grudge anybody's good luck,
sir, or the portion of their cup being made fuller, as I may
say. "I'm not an envious man, and if anybody offered to set
up Mordecai in a shop of my sort two doors lower down, ˛I˛
shouldn't make wry faces about it. I'm not one of them that
had need have a poor opinion of themselves, and be frightened
at anybody else getting a chance. If I'm offal; let a
wise man come and tell me, for I've never heard it yet.
And in point of business, I'm not a class of goods to be in
danger. If anybody takes to rolling me, I can pack myself up
like a caterpillar, and find my feet when I'm let alone. And
though, as I may say, you're taking some of our good works
from us, which is a property bearing interest, I'm not saying
but we can afford that, though my mother and my wife had
the good will to wish and do for Mordecai to the last; and a
Jew must not be like a servant who works for reward -though
I see nothing against a reward if I can get it. And as
to the extra outlay in schooling, I'm neither poor nor greedy
- I wouldn't hang myself for sixpence, nor half a crown
neither. But the truth of it is, the women and children are
fond of Mordecai. You may partly see how it is, sir, by your
own sense. A man is bound to thank God, as we do every
Sabbath, that he was not made a woman; but a woman has
to thank God that He has made her according to His will.
*X637
And we all know what He has made her -- a childbearing,
tenderhearted thing is the woman of our people. Her
children are mostly stout, as I think you'll say Addy's are,
and she's not mushy, but her heart is tender. So you must
excuse present company, sir, for not being glad all at once.
And to this young lady -- for by what you say "young
lady" is the proper term" -- Cohen  here threw some additional emphasis
into his look and tune -- "we shall all be glad
for Mordecai's sake byandby, when we cast up our accounts
and see where we are."
  Before Deronda could summon any answer to this oddly
mixed speech, Mordecai exclaimed -
  "Friends, friends] For food and raiment and shelter I
would not have sought better than you have given me. You
have sweetened the morsel with love; and what I thought of
as a joy that would be left to me even in the last months of
my waning  strength was to go on teaching the lad. But now
I am as one who had clad himself beforehand in his shroud,
and used himself to making the grave his bed, and the
divine command came, "Arise, and go forth; the night is not
yet come." For no light matter would I have turned away
from your kindness to take another's. But it has been taught
us, as you know, that ˛the˛ reward˛ ˛of˛ ˛one˛ ˛duty˛ ˛is˛ ˛the˛ ˛power˛ ˛to˛
˛fulfil˛ ˛another˛ -- so said Ben Azai. You have made your duty
to one of the poor among your brethren a joy to you and
me; and your reward shall be that you will not rest without
the joy of like deeds in the time to come. And may not
Jacob come and visit me?"
  Mordecai had turned with his question to Deronda, who said-
  "Surely that can be be managed. It is no further than
Brompton."
  Jacob, who had been gradually calmed by the need to hear
what was going forward, began now to see some daylight on
the future, the word "visit" having the lively charm of cakes
and general relaxation at his grandfather's, the dealer in
knives. He danced away from Mordecai, and took up a
station of survey in the middle of the hearth with his hands
in his knickerbockers.
*X638
  "Well, said the grandmother, with a sigh of resignation, "I
hope there'll be nothing in the way of your getting ˛kosher˛
meat, Mordecai. For you'll have to trust to those you live
with."
  That's all right, that's all right, you may be sure, mother,"
said Cohen, as if anxious to cut off inquiry on matters in
which he was uncertain of the guest's position. "So, sir," he
added, turning with a look of amused enlightenment to
Deronda, "it was better than learning you had to talk to
Mordecai about] I wondered to myself at the time, I
thought somehow there was something."
  "Mordecai will perhaps explain to you how it was that I
was seeking him," said Deronda, feeling that he had better
go, and rising as he spoke.
  It was agreed that he should come again and the final
move  be made on the next day but one; but when he was
going Mordecai begged to walk with him to the end of the
street, and wrapped himself in coat and comforter. It was a
March evening, and Deronda did not mean to let him go far
but he understood the wish to be outside the house with him
in communicative silence, after the exciting speech that had
been filling the last hour. No word was spoken until Deronda
had proposed parting, when he said-
  "Mirah would wish to thank the Cohens for their goodness. You would wish her
to do so -- to come and see them, would you not?"
  Mordecai did not answer immediately, but at length said -
  "I cannot tell. I fear not. There is a family sorrow, and the
sight of my sister might be to them as the fresh bleeding of
wounds. There is a daughter and sister who will never be
restored as Mirah is. But who knows the pathways? We are
all of us denying or fulfilling prayers -- and men in their
careless deeds walk amidst invisible outstretched arms and
pleadings made in vain. In my ears I have the prayers of
generations past and to come. My life is as nothing to me
but the beginning of fulfilment. And yet I am only another
prayer -- which you will fulfil."
  Deronda pressed his hand, and they parted.
*X639
*C47

                  "And you must love him ere to you
                     He will seem worthy of your love."
                                                 -Wordsworth.

One might be tempted to envy Deronda providing new
clothes for Mordecai, and pleasing himself as if he were
sketching a picture in imagining the effect of the fine grey
flannel shirts and a dressinggown very much like a Franciscan's
brown frock, with Mordecai's head and neck above
them. Half his pleasure was the sense of seeing Mirah's
brother through her eyes, and securing her fervid joy from
any perturbing impression. And yet, after he had made all
things ready, he was visited with a doubt whether he were not
mistaking her, and putting the lower effect for the higher:
was she not just as capable as he himself had been of feeling
the impressive distinction in her brother all the more for that
aspect of poverty which was among the memorials of his
past? But there were the Meyricks to be propitiated towards
this too Judaic brother; and Deronda detected himself piqued
into getting out of sight everything that might feed the ready
repugnance in minds unblessed with that "precious seeing",
that bathing of all objects in a solemnity as of sunsetglow,
which is begotten of a loving reverential emotion.
  And his inclination would have been the more confirmed
if he had heard the dialogue round Mrs Meyrick's fire  late in
the evening, after Mirah had gone to her room. Hans,
settled now in the Chelsea room, had stayed late, and Mrs
Meyrick, poking the fire into a blaze, said-
  "Now, Kate, put out your candle, and all come round the
fire cosily. Hans, dear, do leave off laughing at those poems
for the ninetyninth time, and come too. I have something
wonderful to tell you."
  "As if I didn't know that, ma. I have seen it in the corner
of you eye ever so long, and in your pretence of errands,"
said Kate, while the girls came to put their feet on the
fender, and Hans, pushing his chair near them, sat astride it,
resting his fists and chin on the back.
*X640
  "Well, then, if you are so wise, perhaps you know that
Mirah's brother is found]" said Mrs Meyrick, in her clearest
accents.
  "Oh, confound it] said Hans, in the same moment.
  "Hans, that is wicked," said Mab. "Supoose we had lost you."
  "I ˛can˛ ˛not˛ help being rather sorry," said Kate. "And her
mother?" - where is she?"
  "Her mother is dead."
  "I hope the brother is not a bad man," said Amy.
  "Nor a fellow all amiles and jewellery -- a Crystal Palace
Assyrian with a hat on," said Hans, in the worst humour.
  "Were there ever such unfeeling children?" said Mrs
Meyrick, a little strengthened by the need for opposition.
  "You don't think the least bit of Mirah's joy in the matter."
  "You know, ma, Mirah hardly remembers her brother,"
said Kate.
  "People who are lost for twelve years should never come
back again," said Hans. "They are always in the way."
  "Hans]" said Mrs Meyrick, reproachfully. "If you had lost
me for ˛twenty˛ years, I should have thought-"
  "I said twelve years," Hans broke in. "Anywhere about
twelve years is the time at which lost relations should keep
out of the way."
  "Well, but it's nice finding people -- there is something to
tell," said Mab, clasping her knees. "Did Prince Camaralzaman
find him?"
  Then Mrs Meyrick, in her neat narrative way, told all she
knew  without interruption. "Mr Deronda has the highest
admiration for him," she sdded -"seems quite to look up to
him. And he says Mirah is just the sister to understand this
brother."
  "Deronda is getting perfectly proposterous about those
Jews," said Hans with disgust, rising and setting his chiar
away with a bang. "He wants to do everything he can to
encourage Mirah in her prejudices."
  "Oh, for shame, Hans] - to speak in that way of Mr
Deronda," said Mab. And Mrs Meyrick's face showed something
like an undercurrent of expression to get
to the surface.
*X641
  "And now we shall never be all together," Hans went on,
walking about with his hands thrust into the pockets of his
brown velveteen coat, "but we must have this prophet Elijah
to tea with us, and Mirah will think of nothing but sitting
on the ruins of Jerusalem. She will be spoiled as an artist -- mind
that -- she will get as narrow as a nun. Everything will
be spoiled -- our home and everything. I shall take to drinking."
  "Oh, really, Hans," said Kate, impatiently, "I do think men
are the most contemptible animals in all creation. Every one
of them must have evrything to his mind, alse he is unbearable."
  "Oh, oh, oh, it's very dreadful]" cried Mab. "I feel as if
ancient Niniveh were come again."
  "I should like to know what is the good of having gone to
the university and knowing everything, if you are so childish, Hans," said Amy. "You ought
to put up with a man that Providence sends you to be kind to. ˛We˛ shall have
to put up with him."
  "I hope you will all of you like the new Lamentations of
Jeremiah -- "to be continued in our next" -- that's all" , said
Hans, seizing his wideawake. "It's no use being one thing
more than another if one has to endure the company of
those men with a fixed idea -- staring blankly at you, and
requiring all your remaks to be small footnotes to their texts.
If you're to be under a petrifying well, you'd better be an old
boot. I don't feel myself an old boot." Then abruptly, "Goodnight,
little mother," bending to kiss her brow in a hasty,
desperate manner, and condescendingly, on his way to the
dorr, "Goodnight, girls."
  "Suppose Mirah knew how you are behaving," said Kate.
But her answer was a slam of the door. "I ˛should˛ like to see
Mirah when Mr Deronda tells her," she went on, to her
mother. "I know she will look so beautiful."
  But Deronda on second thoughts had written a letter
which Mrs Meyrick received the next morning, begging her
to make the revelation instead of waiting for him, not giving
the real reason -- that he shrank from going again through
a narrative in which he seemed to be making himself
*X642
important, and giving himself a character of general beneficence --
but saying that he wished to remain with Mordecai
while Mrs Meyrick would bring Mirah on what was to be
understood as a visit, so that there might be a little interval
before that change of abode which heexpected that Mirah
herself would propose.
  Deronda secretely felt some wondering anxiety how far
Mordecai, after years of solitary preoccupation with ideas
likely to have become the more exclulsive from continual
diminuition of bodily strength, would allow him to feel a
tender interest in his sister over and above the rendering of
pious duties. Hisfeeling for the Cohens, and especially for
little Jacob, showed a persistent activity of affection; but
those objects had entered into his daily life for years; and
Deronda felt it noticeable that Mordecai asked no new questions
about Mirah, maintaining, indeed, an unusual silence
on all subjects, and appearing simply to submit to the
changes that were coming over his personal life. He donned
his new clothes obediently, but said afterwards to Deronda
with a faint smile, "I must keep my old garments by me for a
rememberance." And when they were seated awaiting Mirah,
he uttered no word, keeping his eyelids closed, but yet showing
restless feeling  in his face and hands. In fact, Mordecai
was undegoing that particular nervous perturbation only
known to those minds, long and habitually moving
with strong impetus in one current, are suddenly compelled
into a new or reopened channel. Susceptible people whose
strength has been long absorbed by a dominant bias dread
an interview that imperiously revives the past, as they
would dread a threatening illness. Joy may be there, but joy
too, is terrible.
  Deronda felt the infection of excitement, and  when he
heard the ring at the dorr, he went out not knowing exactly
why, that he might see and greet Mirah beforehand. He was
startled to find that she had on the hat and cloak in which
he had first seen her -- the memorable cloak that had once
been wetted for a windingsheet. She had come downstairs
equipped in this way, and when Mrs Meyrick said, in a tone
of question, "You like to g o in that dress, dear?" she
*X643
answered, "My brother is poor, and I want to look as much
like him as I can, else he may feel distant from me" --
imagining that she should meet him in the workman's dress.
Deronda could not make any remark, but felt secretly rather
ashamed of his own fastidious arrangements. They shook
hands silently, for Mirah looked pale and awed.
  When Deronda opened the door for her, Mordecai had
risen, and had his eyes  turned towards it with an eager gaze.
Mirah took only two or three steps, and then stood still.
They looked at each other, motionless. It was less their own
presence that they felt than onother's; they were meeting
first in memories, compared with which touch was no union.
Mirah was the first to break the silence, standing where the
was.
  "Ezra," she said, in exactly the same tone as when she was
telling of her mother's call to him.
  Mordecai with a sudden movement advanced and laid his
hands on her shoulders. He was the head taller, and looked
down at her tenderly while he said, "That was our mother's
voice. You remember her calling me?"
  "Yes, and how you answered her - "Mother]" - and I knew
you loved her." Mirah threw her arms round her brother's
neck, clasped her little hands behind it, and drew down his
face, kissing it with childlike lavishiness. Her hat fell backward
on the ground and disclosed all her curls.
  "Ah, the dear head, the dear head]" said Mordecai, in a
low loving tone, laying his thin hand gently on the curls.
  "You are very ill Ezra," said Mirah, sadly looking at him
with more observation.
  "Yes, dear child, I shall not be long with you in the body,"
was the quiet answer.
  "Oh, I will love you and we will talk to each other," said
Mirah, with a sweet outpouring of her words, as spontaneous
as birdnotes. "I will tell you everything, and you will teach
me: - you will teach me to be a good Jewess -- what she
would have liked meto be. I shall always be with you when I
am not working. For I work now. I shall get money to keep
us. Oh, I have had such good friends."
  Mirah until now had quite forgotten that any one was by,
*X644
but here she turned with the prettiest attitude, keeping one
hand on her brother's arm while she looked at Mrs Meyrick
and Deronda. The little mother's happy emotion in witnessing
this meeting of brother and sister had already won her
to Mordecai, who seemed to her really to have more dignity
and refinement than she had felt obliged to believe in from
Deronda's account.
  "See this dear lady]" said Mirah. "I was a stranger, a poor
wanderer, and she believed in me, and treated me aas a
daughter. Please give my brother your hand," she added,
beseechingly, taking Mrs Meyrick's hand and putting it in
Mordecai's, then pressing them both with her own and lifting
them to her lips.
  "The Eternal Goodness has been with you," said Mordecai.
"You have helped to fulfil our mother's prayer."
  "I think we will go now, shall we? -- and return later," said
Deronda, laying a gentle pressure on Mrs Meyrick's arm,
and she immediately complied. He was afraid of any reference
to the facts about himself which he had kept back from
Mordecai, and he had felt no uneasiness now in the thought of
the brother and sister being alone together.

*C48

"Tis a hard and illpaid task to order all things beforehand by the
rule of our own security, as is well hinted by Machiavelli concerning
Caesar Borgia, who, saith he, had thought of all that might
occur on his father's death, and had provided against every evil
chance save only one: it had come into his mind that when
his father died, his own death would quickly follow.

Grandcourt's importance as a subject of this realm was of
the grandly passive kind which consists in the inheritance of
land. Political and social movements touched him only
through the wire of his rental, and his most careful biographer
need not have read up on ScheswigHolstein, the
policy of Bismarck, tradeunions, household suffrage, or even
*X645
the last commerial panic. He glanced over the best newspaper
column on this topics, and his views on them can
hardly be said to have wanted breadth, since he embraced all
Germans, all commercial men, and all voters liable to use the
wrong kind of soap, under the general epithet of "brutes";
but he took no action on this much agitated questions
beyond looking from under his eyelids at any man who
mentioned them, and retaining a silence which served to
shake the opinions of timid thinkers.
  But Grandcourt within his own sphere of interest showed
some of the qualities which have entered into triumphal
diplomacy of the widest continental sort.
  No movement of Gwendolen in relation to Deronda
escaped him. He would have denied that he was jealous;
because would have implied some doubt of his own
power to hinder what he had determined against. That is
wife should have more inclination to another' man's society
than to his own would not pain him: what he required was
that he should be as fully aware as she would have been of
a locked handcuff, that her inclination was
helpless to decide anything in contradiction with his resolve. However
much of vacillating whim there might have been in his
entrance on matrimony, there was no  vacillation in his
interpretation of the bond. He had not repented of his marriage;
it had really brought more of aim into his life, new objects
to exert his will upon; and he had not repented of his choice.
His taste was fastidious, and Gwendolen satisfied it: he
would not have liked a wife who had not received some
elevation of rank from him; nor one who did not command
admiration by her mien and beauty; nor one whose nails
were not of the right shape; nor one the lobe of whose ear
was at all too large and red; nor one who, even if her nails
and ears were right, was at the same time a ninny, unable to
make spirited answers. These requirements may not seem
too exciting to refined contemporaries whose own ability to
fall in love has been held in suspense for lack of indispensable
details; but fewer perhaps may follow him in his contentment
that his wife should be in a temper which would
dispose her to fly out if she deared, and that she should have
*X646
been urged into marrying him by other feelings than passionate
attachment. Still, for those who prefer command to
love, one does not see why the habit of mind should change
precisely at the point of matrimony.
  Grandcourt did not feel that he had chosen the wrong
wife; and having taken on himself the part of husband, he
was not going in any way to be fooled, or allow himself to be
seen in a light that could be regarded as pitiable. This was
his state of mind -- not jealousy; still, his behaviour in some
respects was as like jealousy as yellow is to yellow, which
colour we know may be the effect of very different causes.
  He had come up to town earlier than usual because he
wished to be on the spot for legal consultation as to the
arrangements of his will, the transference of mortgages, and
the transaction with his uncle about the succession to
Diplow, which the bait of ready money, adroitly dangled
without importunity, had finally won him to agree upon. But
another acceptance accompaniment of his being in town was
the presentatio n of himself with the beautiful bride whom
he had chosen to marry in spite of what other people might
have expected of him. It is true that Grandcourt went about
with the sense that he did not care a languid curse for
any one's admiration; but this state of notcaring, just as
much as desire, required its related object -- namely, a world
of admiring or envying spectators: for if you are fond of
looking stonily at smiling persons, the persons must be there
and they must smile -- a rudimentary truth which is surely
forgotten by those who complain of mankind as generally
contemptible, since any other aspect of the race must  disappoint
the voracity of their contempt. Grandcourt, in town for
the first time with his wife, had his noncaring abstinence
from curses enlarged and diversified by splendid receptions,
by conspicuous rides and drives, by presentation of himself
with her on all distinguished occasions. He wished her to be
sought after; he liked that "fellow" should be eager to talk
with her and escort her within his observation; there was
even a kind of lofty coquetry on her part that he would not
have objected to. But what he did not like were her ways in
relation to Deronda.
*X647
  After the musical party at Lady Mallinger's, when Grandcourt
had observed the dialogue on the settee as keenly as
Hans had done, it was characteristic of him that he named
Deronda for invitation along with the Mallingers, tenaciously
avoiding the possible suggestion to anybody concerned
that Deronda's presence or absence could be of the
least importance to him; and he made no direct observation
to Gwendolen on her behaviour that evening, lest the expression
of his disgust should be a little too strong to satisfy
his own pride. But a few days aferwards he remarked, without being careful
of the ˛a˛ propos˛ -
  "Nothing make a woman more of a gawky than looking
out after people and showing tempers in public. A woman
ought to have fine manners. Else it's intolerable to appear
with her."
  Gwendolen made the expected application, and was not
without alarm at the notion of being a gawky. For, she, too,
with her melancholy distaste for things, preferred that her
distaste should include admirers. But the sense of overhanging
rebuke only intensified the strain of expectation towards
any meeting with Deronda. The novelty and excitement of
her own life was like the hurry and constant change of
foreign travel: whatever might be the inward despondency,
there was a programme to be fulffilled, not without gratification
to manysided self. But, as always happens with a deep
interest, the comparatively rare occasions on which she could
exchange any word with Deronda had a diffusive effect in
her  consciousness, magnifying their communication with
each other, and therefore enlarging the place she imagined it
to have in his mind. How could Deronda help this? He
certainly did not avoid her; rather he wished to convince her
by every delicate indirect means that her confidence in him
had not been indiscreet, since it had not lowered his respect.
Moreover, he liked being near her -- how could it be otherwise?
She was something more than a problem: she was a
lovely woman, for the turn of those mind and fate he had a
care which, however futile it might be, kept soliciting him as
a responsability, perhaps all the more that, when he dared to
think of his own future, he saw it lying far away from this
*X648
splendid sadhearted creature, who, because he had once
been impelled to arrest her attention momentarily, as
he might have seized her arm with warning to hinder her from
stepping where there was danger, had turned to him with a
beseeching persistent need.
  One instance in which Grandcourt stimulated a feeling in
Gwendolen that he would have liked to suppress without
seeming to care about it, had relation to Mirah. Gwendolen's
inclination lingered over the project of the singing lessons as
a sort of obedience to Deronda's advice, but day followed
day with that want of perceived leisure which belongs to
lives where there is no work to mark off intervals; and the
continual liability to Grandcourt's presence and surveillance
seemed to flatten every effort to the level of the boredom
which his manner expressed: his negative mind was as diffusive
as fog, clinging to all objects, and spoiling all contact.
  But one morning when they were breakfasting, Gwendolen,
in a recurrent fit of determination to exercise her old
spirit, said, dallying prettily over her prawns without eating
them-
  "I think of making myself accomplished while we are in
town, and having singing lessons."
  "Why?" said Grandcourt, languidly.
  "Why?" echoed Gwendolen, playing at sauciness; "because I
can't eat ˛pate˛ ˛de˛ ˛foie˛ ˛gras˛ to make me sleepy, and I can't
smoke, and I can't go to the club to make me like to come
away again -- I want a variety of ˛ennui.˛. What could be the
most convenient time, when you are busy with your lawyers
and people, for me to have lessons from that little Jewess,
whose singing is getting all the rage?"
  "Whenever you like," said Grandcourt, pushing away his
plate, and leaning back in his chair while he looked at her
with his most lizardlike expression, and played with the ears
on the tiny spaniel on his lap (Gwendolen had taken a dislike
of the dogs because they fawned him).
  Then he said languidly, "I don't see why a lady should
sing. Amateurs make fools of themselves. A lady can't risk
herself in that way in company. And one doesn't want to
hear her squalling in private."
*X649
  "I like frankness: that seems to me a husband's great
charm," said Gwendolen, with her little upward movement of
her chin, as she turned her eyes away from his, and lifting a
prawn before her, looked at the boiled ingenuousness of its
eyes as preferable tho the lizard's. "But," she added, having
devoured her mortification, "I suppose you don't object to
Miss Lapidoth's singing at our party on the 4th? I thought
of engaging her. Lady Brackenshaw had her, you know; and
the Raymonds, who are very particular about their music.
And Mr Deronda, who is a musician himself, and a firstrate
judge, says that there is no singing in such good taste as hers
for a drawingroom. I think his opinion is an authority."
  She meant to sling a small stone at her husband in that way.
  "It's very indecent of Deronda to go about praising that
girl," said Grandcourt, in a tone of indifference.
  "Indecent]" exclaimed Gwendolen, reddening and looking
at him again, overcome by startled wonder, and unable to
reflect on the probable falsity of the phrase -- "to go about
praising."
  "Yes; and especially when she is patronised by Lady Mallinger.
He ought to hold his tongue about her. Men can see
what is his relation to her."
  "Men who judge of others by themselves," said Gwendolen,
turning white after her redness, and immediately smitten
with a dread of her own words.
  "Of course. And a woman should take their judgment --
else she is likely to run her head into the wrong place," said
Grandcourt, conscious of using pincers on that white
creature. "I suppose you take Deronda for a saint."
  "Oh dear no]" said Gwendolen, summoning desperately her
almost miraculous power of selfcontrol, and speaking in a
high hard tone. "Only a little less  of a monster."
  She rose, pushed her chair away without hurry, and
walked out of the room with something like the care of a
man who is afraid of showing that he has taken more wine
than usual. She turned her keys inside her dressingroom
doors, and sat down for some time looking as pale and quiet
as when she was leaving the breakfastroom. Even in the
moments after reading the poisonous letter she had hardly
*X650
had more cruel sensations than now; for emotion was at the
acute point, where it is not distinguishable from sensation
Deronda unlike what she had believed him to be, was an
image which affected her as an hideous apparition woulf have
done, quite apart from the way in which it was produced. It
had taken hold of her as pain before she could consider
whether it were fiction or truth; and further to hinder her
power of resistance came the sudden perception, how very
slight were the grounds of her faith in Deronda -- how little
she knew of his life -- how childish she had been in her
confidence. His rebuke and his severity to her began to
seem odious, along with all the poetry and lofty doctrine in
the world, whatever it might be; and the grave beauty of his
face seemed the most unpleasant mask that the common
habits of men could put on.
  All this went on in her with the rapidity of a sick dream;
and her start into resistance was very much like a waking.
Suddenly from out the grey sombre morning there came
stream of sunshine, wrapping her in warmth and light where
the she sat in stony stillness. She moved gently and looked round
her -- there was a world outside this bad dream, and the
dream proved nothing; she rose, stretching her arms upward
and clasping her hands with her habitual attitude when she
was seeking relief from oppressive feeling, and walked about
the room in this flood of sunbeams.
  "It is not rue] What does it matter whether ˛he˛ believes it
or not?" This was what she repeated to herself -- but this was
not her faith come back again; it was only the desperate cry of faith,
finding suffocation intolerable. And how could she
go on  through the day in this state? With one of her
impetuous alterations, her imagination flew to wild actions,
by which she would convince herself of what she wished:
she would go to Lady Mallinger and questio her about Mirah;
she would write to Deronda and upbraid him with
making the world all false and wicked and hopeless to her --
to him she dared pour out all the bitter indignation of her
heart. No; she would go to Mirah. This last form taken by her
need was more definetely practicable, and quickly became
imperious. No matter what came of it. She had the pretext
*X651
of asking Mirah to sing at her party on the 4th. What was she going to say
besides? How satisfy herself? She did not
foresee -- she could not wait to foresee. If that idea which
was maddening her had been a living thing, she would have
wanted to throttle it without waiting to foresee what would
come of the act. She rang her bell and asked if Mr Grandcourt
were gone out; finding that he was, she ordered the
carriage, and began to dress for the drive; then she went
down, and walked about the large drawingroom like an
imprisoned dumb creature, not recognising herself in the
glass panels, not noting any object around her in the painted
gilded prison. Her husband would probably find out where
she had been, and punish her in some way or other -- no
matter -- she could neither desire nor fear anything just now
but the assurance that she had not been deluding herself in
her trust.
  She was provided with Mirah's address. Soon she was on
the way with all the fine equipage necessary to carry about
her poor uneasy heart, depending in its palpitations on some
answer or other to questioning which she did not know how
she should put. She was as heedless of what happened before
she found that Miss Lapidoth was at home, as one is of
lobbies and passages on the way to a court of justice --
heedless of everything till she was in a room where there
were foldingdoors, and she heard Deronda's voice behind it.
Doubtless the identification was helped by forecast, bust she
was as certain of it as if she had seen him. She was frightened
at her own agitation, and began to unbutton her gloves
that she might button them again, and bite her lips over the
pretended difficukty, while the door opened, and Mirah presented
herself with perfect quietude and a sweet smile of
recognition. There was relief in the sight of her face, and
Gwendolen was able to smile in return, while she put out her
hand in silence; and as she seated herself, all the while
hearing the voice, she felt some reflux of energy in the
confused sense that the truth could not be anything that
she dreaded. Mirah drew her chair very near, asif she felt
that the sound of the conversation should be subdued,
and looked at her visitor with placid expectation, while
*X652
Gwendolen began in a low tune, with something which seemed
like bashfulness-
  "Perhaps you wonder to see me -- perhaps I ought to have written --
but I wished to make a particular request."
  "I am glad to see you instead of having a letter," said
Mirah, wondering at the changed expression and manner of
the "Vandyke duchess," as Hans had taught her to call
Gwendolen. The rich colour and the calmness of her own
face were in strong contrast with the pale agitated beauty
under the plumed hat.
  "I thought," Gwendolen went on -- "at least, I hoped you
would not object to sing at our house on the 4th -- in the
evening -- at a party like Lady Brackenshaw's. I should be so much obliged."
  "I shall be very happy to sing for you. At halfpast nine or
ten? said Mirah, while Gwendolen seemed to get more instead
of less embarassed.
  "At halfpast nine, please," she answered; then paused, and felt
that she had nothing more to say. She could not go. It
was impossible to rise and say goodbye. Deronda's voice was
in her ears. She must say it -- she could contrive no other
sentence--
  "Mr Deronda is in the next room."
  "Yes," said Mirah, in her former tone. "He is reading
Hebrew with my brother."
  "You have a brother?" said Gwendolen, who had heard this
from Lady Mallinger, but had not minded it then.
  "Yes, a dear brother who is ill --- consumptive, and Mr
Deronda is the best of friends to him, as he has been to me,"
said Mirah, with the impulse that will not let us pass the
mention of a precious person indeffently.
  "Tell me," said Gwendolen, putting her hand on Mirah's,
and speaking  hardly above a whisper -- "tell me -- tell me the
truth. You are sure he is quite good. You know  no evil of
him. Any evil that people say of him is false."
  Could the proudspirited woman have behaved more like a
child? But the strange words penetrated Mirah with nothing
but a sense of selemnity and indignation. With a sudden
light in her eyes and a tremor in her voice, she said --
  "Who are the people who say evil of him? I would not
believe any evil of him, if an angel came to tell it me. He
found me when I was so miserable -- I was going to drown
myself -- I looked so poor and forsaken -- you would have
thought I was a beggar by the wayside. And he trated me
as if I had been a king's daughter. He took me to the best of
women. He found my brother for me. And he honours my
brother -- though he too was poor -- oh, almost as poor as he
could be. And my brother honours him. That is no light
thing to say" -- here Mirah's tone changed to one of proud
emphasis, and she shook her head backward --"for my
brother is very learned and greatminded. And Mr Deronda
says there few men equal to him." Some Jewish defiance
had flamed into her indignant gratitude, and her anger
could not help including Gwendolen, since she seemed to
have doubted Deronda's goodness.
  But Gwendolen was like one parched with thirst, drinking
the fresh water that spreads through the frame as a sufficient
bliss. She did not notice that Mirah was angry with her; she
was not distinctly conscious of anything but of the penetrating
sense that Deronda and his life were no more like her
husband's conception than the morning in the horizon was
like the morning mixed with street gas: even Mirah's words
seemed to melt into the indefiniteness of her relief. She could
hardly have repeated them, or said how her whole state of
feeling was changed. She pressed Mirah's hand, and said,
"Thank you, thank you," in a hurried whisper -- then rose,
and added, with only a hazy consciousness, "I must go, I
shall see you -- on the 4th -- I am so much obliged" -- bowing
herself out automatically; while Mirah, opening the door for
her, wondered at what seemed a sudden retreat into chill
loftiness.
  Gwendolen, indeed, had no feeling to spare in any effusiveness
towards the creature who had brought her relief.
The passionate nedd of contradiction to Grandcourt's estimate
of Deronda, a need which had blunted her sensibility
to everything else, was no sooner satisfied than she wanted to
be gone: she began to be aware that she was out of place,
and to dread Deronda's seeing her. At once in the carriage
*X654
again, she had the vision of what awaited her at home.
When she drew up before the door of Gosvenor Square, her
husband was arriving with a cigar between his fingers. He
threw it away and handed her out, accompanying her upstairs.
She turned into the drawingroom, lest he should
follow her father and give her no place to retreat to; then
sat down with a weary air, taking off her gloves, rubbing her
had over her forehead, and making his presence as much of
a cipher as possible. But he sat too, and not far from her --
just in front, where to avoid looking at him must have the
emphasis of effort.
  "May I ask where you have been at this extraordinary
hour?" said Grandcourt.
  "Oh yes; I have been to Miss Lapidoth's to ask her to come
and sing for us," said Gwendolen, laying her gloves on the
little table beside her, and looking down at them.
  "And to ask her about her relations to Deronda?" said
Grandcourt, with the coldest possible sneer in his low voice,
which in poor Gwendolen's ears was diabolical.
  For the first time since their marriage she flashed out upon
him without inward check. Turning her eyes full on his she
said, in a biting tone--
  "Yes; and what you said is false -- a low, wicked falsehood]"
  "She told you so -- did she?" returned Grandcourt, with a
more thoroughly distilled sneer.
  Gwendolen was mute. The daring anger within her was
turned into the rageo of dumbness. What reasons for her
belief could she give? All the reasons that seemed so strong
and living within her -- she saw them suffocated and shrivilled up
under her husband's breath. There was no proof to
give, but her own impression, which would seem to him her
own folly. She turned her head quickly away from him and
looked angrily towards the end of the room: she would have
risen, but he was in her way.
  Grandcourt saw his advantage. "It's of no consequence so
far as her singing goes," he said, in his superficial drawl. "You
can have her to sing, if you like." Then, after a pause, he
added in his lowest imperious tone, "But you please to
observe that you are not to go near that house gain. As my
*X655
wife you must take my word about what is proper for you.
When you undertook to be Mrs Grandcourt, you undertook
not to make a fool of yourself. You have been making a fool
of yourself this morning; and if you were to go on as you
have begun, you might soon get yourself talked of at the
clubs in a way you would not like. What do ˛you˛ know about
the world? You have married ˛me,˛ and must be guided by
my opinion."
  Every slow sentence of that speech had a terrific mastery
in it for Gwendolen's nature. If the low tones had come from
a physician telling her that her symptoms were those of a
fatal disease, and prognosticating its course, she could not
have been more helpless against the argument that lay in it.
But she was permitted to move now, and her husband never
again made any reference to what had occured this morning.
He knew the force of his own words. If this whitehanded man
with the perpendicular profile had been sent to
govern a difficult colony, he might have won reputation
among his contemporaries. He had certainly ability, would
have understood that it was safer to exterminate than to
cajole superseded proprietors, and would  not have flinched
from making things safe in that way.
  Gwendolen did not, for all this, part with her recovered
faith; -- rather, she kept it with  a more anxious tenacity, a
as a Protestant of old kept his Bible hidden or a Catholic his
crucifix, according to the side favoured by the civil arm; and
it was characteristic of her that apart from the impression
gained concerning Deronda in that visit, her imagination
was little occupied with Mirah or the eulogised brother. The
one rresult established for her was, that Deronda had acted
simply as generous benefactor, and the phrase "reading
Hebrew" had fleeted unimpressively across her sense of hearing
as a stray stork might have made its peculiar flight
across her landscape without rousing my suprised reflection
on its natural history.
  But the issue of that visit, as it regarded her husband, took
a strongly active part in the process which made an habitual
conflict within her, and was the cause of some external
change perhaps not observed by any one except Deronda. As
*X
the weeks went on bringing occasional transient interviews
with her, he thought that he perceived in her an intensifying
of her superficial hardness and resolute display, which made
her abrupt betrayals of agitation the more marked and disturbing
to him.
  In fact, she was undergoing a sort of discipline for the
refractory which, as little as possible like conversion, bends
half the self with a terrible strain, and exasperate the unwillingness
of the other half. Grandcourt had an active divination
rather than discernment of refractoriness in her, and
what had happened about Mirah quickened his suspicion
that there was an increase of it dependent on the occasions
when she happened to see Deronda: there was some "confounded
nonsense" between them: he did not imagine it
exactly as flirtation, and his imagination in other branches
was rather restricted; but it was nonsense that evidently kept
up a kind of simmering in her mind -- an inward action
which might become disagreeably outward. Husbands in the
old time are known to have suffered from a threatening
devoutness in their wives, presenting itself first indistinctly as
oddity, and ending in that mild form of lunatic asylum, a
nunnery: Grandcourt had a vague perception of threatening
moods in Gwendolen which the unity between them in his
views of marriage required his peremptorily to check.
Among the means he chose, one was peculiar, and was less
ably calculated than the speeches we have just heard.
  He determinated that she should know the main purport
of the will he was making, but he could not communicate this
himself, because it involved the fact of his relation to Mrs
Glasher and her children; and that there should be any overt
recognition of this between Gwendolen and himself was
supremely repugnant to him. Like all proud, closelywrapped
natures, he shrank from explicitness and detail, even on
trivialities, if they were personal: a valet must maintain a
strict reserve with him on the subject of shoes and stockings.
And clashing was intolerable to him: his habitual want was
to put collision out of the question by the quiet massive
pressure of his rule. But he wished Gwendolen to know that
before he made her an offer it was no secret to him that she
*X657
was aware of his relation with Lydia, her previous knowledge
being the apology for bringing the subject before her
now. Some men in his place might have thought of writing
what he wanted her to know, in the form of a letter. But
Grandcourt hated writing: even writing a note was a bore to
him, and he had long been accused to have all his
writing done by Lush. We know that there  are persons who
will forego their own obvious interest rather than do anything
so disagreeable as to write letters; and it is not
probable that these imperfect utilitarians would rush into
manuscript and syntax on a difficult subject in order to save
another's feelings. To Grandcourt it did not even occur that
he should, would, or could write to Gwendolen the information
in question; and the only medium of communication he
could use was Lush, who, to his mind, was as much of an
implement as pen and paper. But here too Grandcourt had
his reverses, and would not have uttered a word likely to
encourage Lush in an impudent sympathy with any supposed
greviance in a marriage which had been discommanded by him.
Who that has a confidant escapes believing
too little in his penetration, and too much in his discretion?
Grandcourt had always allowed Lush to know his external
affairs indiscriminately, irregularities, debts, want of ready
money; he had only used discrimination about what he
would allow his confidant to say to him; and he had been so
accustomed to this human tool, that the having him at call
in London was a recovery of lost ease. It followed that Lush
knew all the provisions of the will more exactly than they
were known to the testator himself.
  Grandcourt did not doubt that Gwendolen, since she was a
woman who could put two and two together, knew knew or
suspected Lush to be the contriver of her interview with Lydia,
and that this was the reason why her first request was for his
banishment. But the bent of a woman's inferences on mixed
subjects which excite mixed passions is not determined by
her capacity for simple addition; and here Grandcourt lacked
the only organ of thinking that could have saved him from
mistake -- namely, some experience of the mixed passions concerned.
He had correctly divined one half of Gwendolen's
*X658
dread -- all that related to her personal pride, and her
perception that  his will must conquer hers; but the remorseful
half, even if he had known of her broken promise, was as
much out of his imagination as the other side of the moon.
What he believed her to feel about Lydia was solely a
tonguetied jealousy, and what he believed Lydia to have
written twith the jewels was the fact that she had once been
used to wearing them, with other amenities such as he
imputed to the intercourse of jalous women. He had the
triumphant certainty that he could aggravate the jalousy
and yet smite it with a more absolute dumbness. His object
was to engage all his wife 's egoism on the same side as his
own, and in his employment of Lush he did not intend an
insult to her: she ought to understand that he was the only
possible envoy. Grandcourt's view of things was considerably
fenced in by his general sense, that what suited him, others
must put up with. There is no escaping the fact that want of
sympathy condems us to a corresponding stupidity. Mephistopheles
thrown upon real life, and obliged to manage his
own plots, would inevitably make blunders.
  One morning he went to Gwendolen in the boudoir beyond
the back drawingroom, hat and gloves in hand, and
said with his besttempered, most persuasive drawl, standing
before her and looking down on her as she sat with a book
on her lap --
  "A -- Gwendolen, there's some business about property to
be explained. I have told Lush co come and explain it to you.
He knows all about these things. I am going out. He can
come up now. He's the only person who can explain. I
suppose you'll not mind."
  "You know that do mind," said Gwendolen, angrily,
starting up. "I shall not see him." She showed the intention to dart
away to the door. Grandcourt was before her, with his back
towards it. He was prepared for her anger, and showed none
in return, saying, with the same sort of remonstrant tone
that he might have used about an objection to dining out --
  "It's no use of making a fuss. There are plenty of brutes in
the world that one has to talk to. People with any ˛savoir˛
˛vivre˛ don't make a fuss about such things. Some business
*X659
must be done. You don't expect agreeable people to do it. If
I emply Lush, the proper thing for you is to take it as a
matter of course. Not to make a fuss about it. Not to toss
your head and bite your lips about people of that sort."
  The drawling and the pauses with which this speech was
uttered gave time for crowding reflections in Gwendolen,
quelling her restistance. What was there to be told her about
property? This word had certain dominant associations for
her, first with her mother, then with Mrs Glasher and her
children. What would be the use if she refused to see Lush?
Couls she ask Grandcourt to tell her himself? That might
be intolerable, even if he consented, which it was certain he
would not, if he had made up his mind to the contrary. The
humiliation of standing an obvious prisoner, with her husband
barring the door, was not  to be borne any longer, and
she turned away to lean against a cabinet, while Grandcourt
again moved towards her.
  "I have arranged with Lush to come up now, while I am
out," he said, after a long organ stop, during which Gwendolen
made no sign. "Shall I tell him he may come?"
  Yet another pause before she could say "Yes" -- her face
turned obliquely and her eyes cast down.
  "I shall come back in time to ride, if you like to get ready,"
said Grandcourt. No answer. "She is in a desperate rage,"
thought he. But the rage was silent and therefore not disagreeable
to him. It followed that he turned her chin and
kissed her, while she still kept her eyelids down, and she did
not move them until he was on the other side of the door.
  What was she todo? Search where she would in her
consciousness, she found no plea to justify a plaint. Any
romantic illusions she had had marrying this man had
turned on her power of using him as she liked. He was using
her as he liked.
  She sat awaiting the announcement of Lush as a sort of
searing operation that she had to go through. The facts that
galled her gathered a burning power when she thought of
their lying in his mind. It was all a part of that new gambling
in which the losing was not simply a ˛minus,˛ but a
terrible ˛plus˛ that had never entered into her reckoning.
*X660
  Lush was neither quite pleased nor quite dispeased with his
task. Grandcourt had said to him by way of conclusion, "Don't
make yourself more disagreeable than nature obliges you."
  "That depends," thought Lush. But he said, "I will write a
brief abstract for Mrs Grandcourt to read." He did not suggest
that he should make the whole communication in writing,
which was a proof that the interview did not wholly
dispease him.
  Some provision was being made for himself in the will
and he had no reason to be in a bad humour, even if a bad
humour had been common with him. He was perfectly convinced
that he had penetrated all the secrets of the situation;
but he had no diabolic delight in it. He had only the small
movements of gratified selfloving resentment in discerning
that this marriage fulfilled his own foresight in not being as
satisfactory as the supercilious young lady had expected it to
be, and as Grandcourt wished to feign that it was. He had no
persistent spite much stronger than what gives the seasoning
of ordinary scandal to those who repeat it and exaggerate it
by their conjectures. With no active compassion or goodwill,
he had just as little active malevolence, being chiefly occupied
in liking his particular pleasures, and not disliking
anything but what hindered those pleasures -- everything
else ranking with the last murder and the last ˛opera˛ ˛buffa,˛
under the head of things to talk about. Nevertheless, he was
not indifferent to the psospect of being treated uncivilly by a
beutiful woman, or to the counterbalancing fact that his
present commission put into his hands an official power of
humiliating her. He did not mean to use it needlessly; but
there are some persons so gifted in relation to us that their
"How do you do?" seems charged with offence.
  By the time that Lush was announced, Gwendolen had
braced herself to a bitter resolve that he should not witness
the slightest betrayal of her feeling, whatever he might have
to tell. She invited him to sit down with stately quietude.
After all, what was this man to her? He was not in the least
like her husband. Her power of hatiting a coarse, familiar-
mannered man, with clumsy hands, was now relaxed by the
intensity with which she hated his contrast.
*X661
He held a small paper folded in his hand while he spoke.
  "I need hardly to say that I should not have presented myself
if Mr Grandcourt had not expressed a strong wish to that
effect -- as no doubt he has mentioned to you."
  From some voices that speech might have sounded entirely
reverential, and even timidly apologetic. Lush had no
intention to the contrary, but to Gwendolen's ear his words
had as much insolence in them as his prominent eyes, and
the pronoun "you" was too familiar. He ought to have address
addressed the foldingscreen, and spoken of her as Mrs Grandcourt.
She gave the smallest sign of a bow, and Lush went
on, with a little awkwardness, getting entangled in what is
elegantly called tautology.
  "My having been in Mr Grandcourt's confidence for fifteen
years or more -- since he was a youth, in fact -- of course
gives me a peculiar position. He can speak to me of affairs
that he could not mention to any one else; and, in fact, he
could not have employed any one else in this affair. I have
accepted the task out of friendship for him. Which is my
apology for accepting the task -- if you would have preferred
some one else."
  He paused, but she made no sign, and Lush, to give
himself a countenance in an apology which met no acceptance,
opened the folded paper, and looked at it vaguely
before he began to speak again.
  "This paper contains some information about Mr Grandcourt's
will, an abstract of a part he wished you to know -- if
you'll be good enough to cast your eyes over it. But there is
something I had to say by way of indroduction -- which I hope
you'll pardon me for, if it's not quite agreeable." Lush
found that he was behaving better than he had expected,
and had no idea how insulting he made himself with his "not
quite agreeable".
  "Say what you have to say without apologising, please,"
said Gwendolen, with the air she might have bestowed on a
dogstealer come to claim a reward for finding the dog he
had stolen.
  "I have only to remind you of something that occured
before your engagement to Mr Grandcourt,' said Lush, not
*X662
without the rise of some willing insolence in exchange for
her scorn. "You met a lady in Cardell Chase, if you remember,
who spoke to you of her position with regard to Mr
Grandcourt. She had children with her -- one a very fine boy."
  Gwendolen's lips were almost as pale as her cheeks: her
passion had no weapons -- words were no better than chips.
This man's speech was like a sharp knifeedge drawn across
her skin; but even her indignation at the employment of
Lush was getting merged in a crowd of other feelings, dim
and alarming as a crowd of ghosts.
  "Mr Grandcourt was aware that you were acquainted with
this unfortunate affair before hand, and he thinks it only
right that his position and intentions should be made quite
clear to you. It is an affair of property and prospects; and if
there were any objection you had to make, if you would
mention it to me -- it is a subject which of course he would
rather not speak about himself -- if you will be good enough
just to read this." With the last words Lush rose and presented the paper
to her.
esolved that she shouls betray no feeling
in the presence of this man, she had not prepared herself
to hear that her husband knew the silent consciousness, the
silently accepted terms on ewhich she had married him. She
dared not raise her hand to take the paper, lest it should
visibly tremble. For a moment Lush stood holding it otwards
her, and she felt his gaze on her as ignominy, before she
could say even with lowtoned haughtiness --
  "Lay it on the table, And go into the next room, please."
  Lush obeyed, thinking as he took an easychair in the
back drawingroom, "My lady winces considerably. She didn't
know what would be the charge for that superfine article,
Henleogh Grandcourt." But it seemed to him that a penniless
girl had done better than she had any right to expect, and
that she had been uncommonly knowing for her years and
opportunities: her words to Lydia meant nothing, and her
running away had probably been part of her adroitness. It
had turned out a masterstroke.
  Meanwhile Gwendolen was rallying her nerves to the reading
of the paper. She must read it. Her whole being -- pride,
*X663
longing for rebellion, dreams of freedom, remorseful conscience,
dread of fresh visitation -- all made one need to
know what the paper contained. But at first it was not easy
to take in the meaning of the words. When she had succeeded,
she found that in the case of there being no son as
issue in her marriage. Grandcourt had made the small Henleigh
his heir; -- that was all she cared to extract from the
paper with any distinctness. The other statements as to what
provision wwould be made for her in the same case, she
hurried over, getting only a confused perception of
thousands and Gadsmere. It was enough. She could dismiss
the man in the next room with the defiant energy which had
revived her at the idea that this question of property and
inheritance was meant as a finish to her humiliations and
her thraldom.
  She trhust the paper between the leaves of her book,
which she took in her hand, and walked with her stateliest
air into the next room, where Lush immediately rose, awaiting her approach.
When she was four yeards from him, it was
hardly an instant that she paused to say in a high tone,
while she swept him with her eyelashes --
  "Tell Mr Grandcourt that his arrangments are just what I
desired" -- passing on without haste, and leaving Lush time to
mingle some admiration of her graceful back with that half-amused
sense of her spirit and impertinence, which he expressed
by raising his eyebrows and just thrusting his tongue
between his teeth. He really did not want her to be worse
punished, and he was glad to think that it was time to go
and lunch at the club, where he meant to have a lobster salad.
  What did Gwendolen look forwad to? When her husband
returned he found her equipped in her ridingdress, ready to
ride out with him. She was not again going to be hysterical,
or take to her bed and say she was ill. That was the implicit
resolve adjusting her muscles before she could have framed
it in words, as she walked out of the room, leaving Lush
behind her. She was going to act in the spirit of her message,
and not to give herself time to reflect. She rang the bell for
her maid, and went with the usual care through her change
of toilet. Doubtless her husband had meant to produce a
*X664
great effect on her: byandby perhaps she would let him see
an effect the very opposite of what he intended; but at
present all that she could show was a defiant satisfaction in
what had  been presumed to be disagreeable. It came as an
instinct rather than a thought, that to show any sign which
could be interpreted as jalousy, when she had just been
insultingly reminded that the conditions were what she had
accepted with her eyes open, would be the worst self-
humiliation. She said to herself that she had not itme today
to be clear about her future actions; all she could be clear
about was that she would match her husband in ignoring
any ground for excitement. She not only rode, but went out
with him to dine, contributing nothing to alter their mutual
manner, which was never that of rapid interchange in discourse;
and curiously enough she rejected a handkerchief on
which her maid had by mistake put the wrong scent -- a
scent that Grandcourt had once objected to. Gwendolen
would not have liked to be an object of disgust to this
husband whom she hated: she liked all the disgust to be on her
side.
  But to defer thought in this way was something like trying
to talk down the singing in her own ears. The thought that
is bound up with our passion is as penetrative as air --
everything is porous to it; bows, smiles, conversation, repartee,
are mere honeycombs where such thought rushes freely,
not always with a taste of honey. And without shutting
herself up in any solitude, Gwendolen seemed at the end of
nine or ten hours to have gone through a labyrinth of
reflection, in which already the same succession of prospects
had been repeated, the same fallacious outlets rejected, the
same shrinking from the necessities of every course. Already
she was undergoing some hardening effect from feeling that
she was under eyes which saw her past actions solely in the
light of the lowest motives. She lived back in the scenes of
her courtship, with the new bitter consciousness of what had
been in Grandcourt's mind -- certain now, with her present
experience of him, that he had had a peculiar triumph in
conquering her dumb repugnance, and that ever since their
marriage he had had a cold exultation in knowing her
*X665
fancied secret. Her imagination exaggerated every tyrannical
impulse he was capable of. "I will insist on being separated
from him" -- was her first darting determination: then, "I will
leave him, whether he consents or not. If this boy becomes
his heir, I have made an atonement." But neither in darkness
nor in daylight could she imagine the scenes which must
carry out those determinations with the courage to feel  them
endurable. How could she run away to her own family --
carry distress among them, and render herself an abject of
scandal in the society she had left behind her? What future
lay before her as Mrs Grandcourt gone back to her mother,
who would be made destitute again by rupture of the
marriage for which one chief excuse had been that it had
brought that mother a maintenance? She had lately been
seeing her uncle and Anna in London, and though she had
been save from any difficulty about inviting them to stay in
Gosvenor Square by their wish to be with Rex, who would
not risk a meeting with her, the transient visits she had had
from them helped now in giving stronger colour to the
picture of what it would be for her to take refuge in her own
family. What could she say to justify her flight? Her uncle
would tell her to go back. Her mother would cry. Her aunt
and Anna would look at her with wondering alarm. Her
husband would have power to compel her. She had absolutely
nothing that she could allege against him in judicious
or judicial ears. And to "insist on separation]" That was an
easy combination of words; but considered as an action to be
executed against Grandcourt, it would be about as practicable
as to give him a pliant disposition and a dread of other
people's unwillingness. How was she to begin? What was she
to say that would not be a condemnation of herself? "If I am
to have misery anyhow," was the bitter refrain of her rebellious
dreams, "I had better have the misery that I can keep to
myself." Moreover, her capability of rectitude told her again
and again that she had no right to complain of her contract,
or to withdraw from it.
  And always among the images that drove her back to
submission was Deronda. The idea of herself separated from
her husband, gave Deronda a changed, perturbing, painful
*X666
place in her consciousness: instinctively she felt that the
separation would be from him too, and in the prospective
vision of herself as a solitary, dubiously regarded woman,
she felt some tingling bashfulness at the remembrance of
her behaviour towards him. The association of Deronda with
a dubious position for herself was intolerable. And what
would he say if he knew everything? Probably that she
ought to bear what she had brought on herself, unless she
were sure that she could make herself a better woman by
taking any other course. And what sort of woman was she to
be -- solitary, sickened of life, looked at with a suspicious
kind of pity? -- even if she could dream of success in getting
that dreary freedom. Mrs Grandcourt "run away" would be a
more pitiable creature than Gwendolen Harleth condemned
to teach the bishop's daughters, and to be inspected by Mrs
Mompert.
  One characteristic trait in her conduct is worth mentioning.
She would not look a second time at the paper Lush had
given her; and before ringing for her maid she locked it up
in a travellingdesk which was at hand, proudly resolved
against curiosity about what was allotted to herself in connection with Gadsmere -- feeling herself
]]] branded in the
minds of her husband and his confidant with the meanness
that would accept marriage and wealth on any conditions,
however dishonourable and humiliating.
  Day after day the same pattern of thinking was repeated.
There came nothing to change the situation -- no new elements
in the sketch -- only a recurrence which engraved it.
The May weeks went on into June, and still Mrs Grandcourt
was outwardly in the same place, presenting herself as she
was expected to in the accustomed scenes, with the accustomed
grace, beauty and costume; from church at one end
of the week, through the scale of desirable receptions, to
opera at the other. Church was not markedly distinguished
in her mind from the other forms of selfpresentation, for
marriage had included no instruction that enabled her to
connect liturgy and sermon with any larger order of the
world than that of unexplained and perhaps inexplicable
social fashions. While a laudable zeal was labouring to carry
*X667
the light of spiritual law up the alleys where the law is chiefly
known as the policeman, the brilliant Mrs Grandcourt, condescending
a little to a fashionable Rector and conscious of a
feminine advantage over a learned Dean, was, so far as
pastoral care and religious fellowship were concerned, in as
complete a solitude as a man in a lighthouse.
  Can we wonder at the practical submission which hid her
constructive rebellion? The combination is common enough,
as we know from the number of persons who make us aware
of it in their own case by a clamorous unwearied statement
of the reasons against their submitting to a situation which,
on inquiry we discover to be the least disagreeable within
their reach. Poor Gwendolen had both too much and too
little mental power and dignity to make herself exceptional.
No wonder that Deronda now marked some hardening in a
look and manner which were schooled daily to the suppression
of feeling.
  For example, one morning, riding in Rotten Row with
Grandcourt by her side, she saw standing against her railing
at the turn, just facing them, a darkeyed lady with a little
girl and a blond boy, whom she at once recognised as the
beings in all the world the most painful for her to behold.
She and Grandcourt had just slackened their pace to a walk;
he being on the outer side was the nearer to the unwelcome
vision, and Gwendolen had not presence of mind to do
anything but glance away from the dark eyes that met hers
piercingly towards Grandcourt, who wheeled past the group
with an unmoved face, giving no sign of recognition.
  Immediately she felt a rising rage against him mingling
with her shame for herself, and the words, "You might at
least have raised your hat to her," flew impetuously to her
lips -- but did not pass them. If as her husband, in her
company, he chose to ignore these creatures whom she herself
had excluded from the place she was filling, how could
she be a person to reproach him? She was dumb.
  It was not chance, but her own design, that had brought
Mrs Glasher there with her boy. She had come to town
under the pretext of making purchases -- really wanting educational
apparatus for the children, and had had interviews
*X668
with Lush in which he had not refused to soothe her ineasy
mind by representing the probabilities as all on the
side of her ultimate triumph. Let her keep quiet, and she
might live to see the marriage dissolve itself in one way or
other -- Lush hinted at several ways -- leaving the succession
assured to her boy. She had had an interview with Grandcourt
too, who had as usual told her to behave like a
reasonable woman, and threatened  punishment if she were
troublesome; but had, also as usual, vindicated himself from
any wish to be stingy, the money he was receiving from Sir
Hugo on account of Diplow encouraging his disposition to
be lavish. Lydia feeding on the probabilities in her favour,
devoured her helpless wrath along with that pleasanter
nourishment; but she could not let her discretion go entirely
without the reward of making a Medusaapparition before
Gwendolen, vindictiveness and jalousy finding relief in an
outlet of venom, though it were as futile as that of a viper
already flung to the other side of the hedge. Hence each day,
after finding out from Lush the likely time for Gwendolen to
be riding, she had watched at that post, daring Grandcourt
so far. Why should she not take little Henleigh into the
Park?
  The Medusaapp'phtkoo#was made effective beyond Lydia's
conception by the shock he gave Gwendolen actually to see
Grandcourt ignoring this woman who had once been the
nearest in the world to him, along with the children she had
borne him. And all the while the dark shadow thus cast on
the lot of a woman destitute of acknowledged social
dignity, spread itself over her visions of a future that might be her
own, and made part of her dread on her own behalf. She
shrank all the more from any lonely action. What possible
release could there be for her from this hated vantage-
ground, which yet she dared not quit, any more than if fire
had been raining outside it? What release, but death? Not
her own death. Gwendolen was not a woman who could
easily think of her own death as a near reality, or front for
herself the dark entrance on the untried and invisible. It
seemed more possible that Grandcourt should die: -- and
yet not likely. The power of tyranny in him seemed a power
*X669
of living in the presence of any wish that he should die. The
thought that his death was the only possible deliverance for
her was one with the thought that deliverance would never
come -- the double deliverance from the injury with which
other beings might approach her  and from the  yoke she had
brought on her own neck. NO] she foresaw him always
living, and her own life dominated by him; the "always" of
her young experience not stretching beyond the few immediate
years that seemed immeasurably long with her
passionate weariness. The thought of his dying would not
subsist: it turned as with a dreamchange into the terror that
she should die with his throttling fingers on her neck avenging
that thought. Fantasies moved within her like ghosts,
making no break in her more acknowledged consciousness
and finding no obstruction in it: dark rays doing their work
invisibly in the broad light.
  Only an evening or two after that encounter in the Park,
there was a grand concert at Klesmer's who was living
rather magnificently now in one of the large houses in Gosvenor
Place, a patron and prince among musical professors.
Gwendolen had looked forward to this occasion as one
on which she was sure to meet Deronda, and she had
been meditating how to put a qwuestion to him which without
containing a word that she would feel a dislike to utter,
would yet be explicit enough for him to understand it. The
struggle of opposite feelings would not let her abide by her
instinct that the very idea of Deronda's relation to her was a
discouragement to any desperate step towards freedom. The
next wave of emotion was a longing for some word of his to
enforce a resolve. The fact that her opportunities of conversation
with him had always to be snatched in the doubtful
privacy of large parties, caused her to live thrhough them
many times beforehand, imagining how they would take
place and what she would say. The irritation was proportionate
when no opportunity came; and this evening at Klesmer's
she included Deronda in her anger, because he looked
as calm as possible at a distance from her, while she was
in danger of betraying her impatience to every one who spoke
to her. She found her only safety in a chill haughtiness
*X670
which made Mr Vandernoodt remark that Mrs Grandcourt
was becoming a perfect match for her husband.
When at last the chances of the evening brought Deronda
near her, Sir Hugo and mrs Raymond were close by and
could hear every word she said. No matter: her husband
was not near, and herirritation passed without check into a
fir of daring which restored the security of her selfpossession.
Deronda was there at last, and she would compel him
to do what she pleased. Already and without effort rather
queenly in her air as she stood in her white lace and green
leaves, she trew a royal permissiveness into her way of
saying, "Iwish you would come and see me tomorrow between
five and six, Mr Deronda."
  There could be but one answer at that moment: "Certainly,"
with a tone of obedience.
  Afterwards it occured to Deronda that he would write a
note to excuse himself. He had always avoided making a call
at Grandcourt's. But he could not persuade himself to any
step that might hurt her, and whether his excuse were taken
for indifference or for the affectation of indifference it would
be equally wounding. He kept his promise. Gwendolen had
declined to ride out on the plea of not feeling well enough,
having left her refusal to the last moment when the horses
were soon to be at the door -- not without alarm lest her
husband should say that he too would stay at home. Become
almost supestitious about his power of suspicious divination,
she had a glancing forethought of what she would do in that
case -- namely, have herself denied as not well. But Grandcourt
accepted her excuse without remark, and rode off.
  Nevertheless when Gwendolen found herself alone, and
had sent down the order that only Mr Deronda was to be
admitted, she began to be alarmed at what she had done,
and to feel a growing agitation in the thought that he would
soon appear, and she should soon be obliged to speak: not of
trivialities, as if she had had no serious motive in asking him
to come; and yet what she had been for hours determining
to say began to seem impossible. For the first time the
impulse of appeal to him was being checked by timidity; and
now that it was too late she was shaken by the possibility
*X671
that he might think her invitation unbecoming. If so, she
would have sunk in his esteem. But immediately she resisted
the intolerable fear as an infection from her husband's way
of thinking. That ˛he˛ would say that she was making a fool of
herself was rather a reason why such a judgement would be
remote from Deronda's mind. But that she could not rid
herself from this sudden invation of womanly reticence was
manifest in a kind of action which had never occured to her
before. In her struggle between agitation and the effort to
suppress it, she was walking up and down the length of two
drawingrooms, where at one end a long mirror reflected her
in her black dress, chosen in the early morning with a half-
admitted reference to this hour. But above this black dress
her head on its white illar of a neck showed to advantage.

Some consciousness of this made her turn hastily and hurry
to the boudoir, where again there was glass, but also, tossed
over a chair, a large piece of black lace which she snatched
and tied over her crown of hair as so completely to conceal
her neck, and leave only her face looking out from the black
frame. In this manifest contempt of appearance, she thought
it possible to be freer from nervousness, but the black lace
did not take away the uneasiness from her eyes and lips.
  She wa standing in the middle of the room when
Deronda was announced, and as he approached her she
perceived that he too for some reason was not his usual self.
She could not have defined the change except by saying that
he looked less happy than usual, and appeared to be under
some effort in speaking to her. And yet the speaking was the
slightest possible. They both said, "How do you do?" quite
curtly; and Gwendolen, of sitting down, moved to a
little distance, resting her arms slightly on the tall back of a
chair, while Deronda sttod where he was, holding his hat in
one hand and his coatcollar with the other -- both feeling it
diffiuclt to say anything more, though the preoccupation in
his mind could hardly have been more remote than it was
from Gwendolen's conception. She naturally saw in his embarassment
some reflection of her own. Forced to speak, she
found all her training in conceament and selfcommand of
no use to her, and began with timid awkwardness --
*X672
  "You will wonder why I begged you to come. I wanted to
ask you something. You said I was ignorant. That is true
And what can I do but ask you?"
  And at this moment she was feeling it utterly impossible
to put the questions she had intended. Something new in her
nervous manner roused Deronda's anxiety lest there might
be a new crisis. He said with the sadness of affection inhis
voice --
  "My only regret is, that I can be of so little use to you."
The words and the tone touched a new spring in her, and
she went on with more sense of freedom, yet still not saying
anything she had designed to say, and beginning to hurry,
that she might somehow arrive at the right words.
  "I wanted to tell you that I have always been thinking of
your advice, but is it any use? -- I can't make myself
different, because things about me raise bad feelings -- and I
must go on -- I can alter nothing -- it is no use."
  She paused an instant, with the consciousness that she was
not finding the right words, but began again as hurriedly,
"But if I go on, I shall get worse. There are people who are good
and enjoy great things -- I know there are. I am a comtemptible
creature. I feel as if I should get wicked with hating people. I
have tried to think that I would go away from everybody. But
I can't. There are so many things to hinder me. You think,
perhaps, that I don't mind. But I do mind. I am afraid of every-
thing. I am afraid of getting wicked. Tell me what I can do."
  She had forgotten everything but that image of her helpless
misery which she was trying to make present to Deronda
in broken allusive speech -- wishing to convey but not express
all her need. Her eyes were tearless, and had a look of
smarting in their dilated brilliancy; there was a subdued sob
in her voice which was more and more veiled, till it was
hardly above a whisper. She was hurting herself with the
jewels that glittered on her tightlyclasped fingers pressed
against her heart.
  The feeling Deronda endured in these moments he afterwards
called horrible. Words seemed to have no more rescue
in them than if he had been beholding a vessel in peril of
*X673
wreck -- the poor ship with its manylived anguish beaten by
the inescapable storm. How could he grasp the longgrowing
process of this young creature's wretchedness? -- how arrest
and change it with a sentence? He was afraid of his own
voice. The words that rushed into his mind seemed in their
feebleness nothing better than despair made audible, or than
that insensibility to another's hardship which applies precept
to soothe pain. He felt himself holding a crowd of words
imprisoned within his lips, as if the letting them escape
would be a violation of awe before the mysteries of our
human lot. The thought that urged itself foremost was --
"Confess everything to your husband; leave nothing concealed:"
= the words carried in his mind a vision of reasons
which would have needed much fuller expression for Gwendolen
to apprehend them, but before he had begun to utter
those brief sentences, the door opened and the husband
entered.
  Grandcourt had deliberately gone out and turned back to
satisfy a suspicion. What he saw was Gwnedolen 's face of
anguish framed black like a nun's, and Deronda standing
three yards from her with a look of sorrow such as he might have
bent on the last struggle of life in a beloved object.
Without any show of surprise, Grandcourt nodded to
Deronda, gave a second look at Gwendolen, passed on, and
seated himself easily at a little distance, crossing his legs,
taking out his handkerchief and trifling with it elegantly.
  Gwendolen had shrunk and changed her attitude on seeing him,
but she did not turn or move from her place. It was
not a moment in which she could feign anything, or manifest
any strong revulsion of feeling: the passionate movement
of her last speech was still too strong within her. What
she felt besides was a dull despairing sense that her interview
with Deronda was at an end: a curtain had fallen. But he,
naturally, was urged into selfpossession and effort by susceptibility
to what might follow for her from being seen by
her husband in this betrayal of agitation; and feeling that
any pretence of ease in prolonging his visit would only
exaggerate Grandcourt's possible conjectures of duplicity, he
merely said --
674
*X674
  "I will not stay longer. Goodbye."
  He put out his hand, and she let him press her poor little
chill fingers; but she said no goodbye.
  When he had left the room, Gwendolen threw herself into
a seat, with an expectation as dull as her despair -- the
expectation that she was going to be punished. But Grandcourt
took no notice; he was satisfied to have let her known
that she had not deceived him, and to keep a silence which
was formidable with omniscience. He went out that evening
and her plea of feeling ill was accepted without even a sneer.
  The next morning at breakfast he said, "Iam going yachting
to the Mediterranean."
  "When?" said Gwendolen, with a leap of heart which had
hope in it.
  "The day after tomorrow. The yacht is at Marseilles. Lush
is gone to get everything ready."
  "Shall I have mamma to stay with me, then?" said Gwendolen,
the new sudden possibility of peace and affection
filling her mind like a burst of morning light.
  "No; you will go with me."
*C49

                                        Ever in his soul
                That larger justice which makes gratitude
Triumphed above resentment. "Tis the mark
                Triumphed above resentment. "Tis the mark
                Of regal natures, with the wider life,
                And fuller capability of joy: --
                Not wits exultant in the strongest lens
                To show you goodness vanished into pulp
                Never worth "thank you" -- they're the devil's friars,
                Vowed to be poor as he in love and trust,
                Yet must go begging oof a world that keeps
                Some human property.

Deronda, in parting from Gwendolen, had abstained from
saying, "I shall not see you again for a long while: I am

*X675
going away," lest Grandcourt should understand him to
imply that the fact was of importance to her.
  He was actually going away under circumstances so
momentous to himself that when he set out to fulfil his
promise of calling  on her, her was already under the shadow
of a solemn emotion which revived the deepest experience of
his life.
  Sir Hugo had sent for him to his chambers with the note --
"Come immediately. Something has happened:" a preparation
that caused him some relief when, on entering the
baronet's study, he was received with grave affection instead
of the distress which  he had apprehended.
  "It is nothing to grieve you, sir?" said Deronda, in a tone
rather of restored confidence than question, as he took the
hand held out to him. There was an unsual meaning in
Sir Hugo's look, and a subdued emotion in his voice, as he
said --
  "No, Dan, no. Sit down. I have something to say."
  Deronda obeyed, not without presentiment. It was extremely
rare for Sir Hugo to show so much serious feeling.
  "Not to grieve me, my boy, no. At least, if there is nothing
in it that will grieve you too much. But I hardly expected
that this -- just this -- would ever happen. There have been
reasons why I have never prepared you for it. There have
been reasons why I have never told you anything about your
perentage. But I have striven in every way not to make that
an injury to you."
  Sir Hugo paused, but Deronda could not speak. He could
not say, "I have never felt it an injury." Even if that had been
true, he could not have trusted his voice to say anything. Far
more than any one but himself could know of was hanging
on this moment when the secrecy was to be broken. Sir
Hugo had never seen the grand face he delighted in so pale
-- the lips pressed together with such a look of pain. He went
on with  a more anxious tenderness, as if he had a new fear
of wounding.
  "I have acted in obedience to your mother's wishes. The
secrecy was her wish. But now she desires to remove it. She
desires to see you. I will put this letter into your hands,
*X676
which you can look at byandby. It will merely tell you
what she wishes you to do, and where you will find her."
  Sir Hugo held out a letter on foreign paper, which
Deronda thrust into his breastpocket, with a sense of relief
that he was not called on to read anything immediately. The
emotion of Daniel's face had gained on the baronet, and was
visibly shaking his composure. Sir Hugo found it difficult to
say more. And Deronda's whole soul was possessed by a
question which was the hardest in the world to utter. Yet he
could not bear to delay it. This was a sacramental moment.
If he let it pass, he could not recover the influences under
which it was possible to utter the words and meet the
answer. For some moments his eyes were cast down, and it
seemed to both as if thoughts were in the air between them.
But at last Deronda looked at Sir Hugo, and said, with a
tremulous reverence in his voice -- dreading to convey indirectly
the reproach that affection had for years been
stifling --
  "Is my father also living?"
  The answer came immediately in a low emphatic tone --
  "No."
  In the mingled emotions which followed that anser it
was impossible to distinguish joy from pain.
  Some new light had fallen on the past for Sir Hugo too in
this interview. After a silence in which Deronda felt like one
whose creed is gone before he has religiously embraced another,
the baronet said, in a tone of confession --
  "Perhaps I was wrong, Dan, to undertake what I did. And
perhaps I liked a little too well -- having you all to myself.
But if you  have had any pain which I might have helped, I
ask you to forgive me."
  "The forgiveness has long been there," said Deronda. "The
chief pain has always been on account of some one else --
whom I never knew -- whom I am now to know. It has not
hindered me from feeling an affection for you which has
made a large part of all the life I remember."
  It seemed one impulse that made the two men clasp each
other's hand for a moment.

*X677
*B7
                        THE MOTHER AND THE SON

*X678

*X679
*C50

                    "If some mortal, born too soon,
              Were laid away in some great trance -- the ages
              Coming and going all the while -- till dawned
              His true time's advent; and could then record
              The words they spoke who kept watch by his bed, --
              Then I might tell more of the breath so light
              Upon my eyelids, and the fingers warm
              Among my hair. Youth is confused; yet never
              So dull was I but, when that spirit passed,
              I turned to him, scarce consciously, as turns
              A watersnake when fairies cross his sleep."

                                   -- Browning: ˛Paracelsus.˛

This was the letter which Sir Hugo put into Deronda's
hands: --

                      TO MY SON DANIEL DERONDA.

  My good friend and yours, Sir Hugo Mallinger, will have told
you that I wish to see you. My health is shaken, Iand I desire there
should be no time lost before I deliver you what I have long
withheld. Let nothing hinder you from being at the ˛Albergo˛ ˛dell'˛
˛Italia˛ in Genoa by the fourteenth of this month. Wait for me
there. I am certain when I shall be able to make a journey
from Spezia, where I shall be staying. That will depend on several
things. Wait for me -- the Princess Halm-Eberstein. Bring with
you the diamond ring that Sir Hugo gave you. I shall like to see
it again. -- Your unknown mother,

                             Leonora Halm-Eberstein.

  This letter with its colourless wording gave Deronda no
clue to what was in reserve for him; but he could not do
otherwise than accept Sir Hugo's reticence, which seemed to
imply some pledge not to anticipate the mother's disclosures;
and the discovery that his lifelong conjectures had been
mistaken checked further surmise. Deronda could not hinder
his imagination from taking a quick flight over what seemed
possibilities, but he refused to contemplate any one of them
as more likely than another, lest he should be nursing it
into a dominant desire or repugnance, instead of simply
*X680
preparing himself with resolve to meet the fact bravely,
whatever it might turn out to be.
  In this state of mind he could not have communicate to
any one the reason for the absence which in some quarters he
was obliged to mention beforehand, least of all to Mordecai,
whom it would affect as powerfully as it did himself, only in
a rather different way. If he were to say, "I am going to learn
the truth about my birth," Mordecai's hope would gather
what might prove a painful, dangerous excitement. To exclude
suppositions, he spoke of his journey as being undertaken
by Sir Hugo's wish, and threw as much indifference as
he could into his manner of announcing it, saying he was
uncertain of its duration, but it would perhaps be very short.
  "I will ask to have the child Jacob to stay with me," said
Mordecai, comforting himself in this way, after the first
mounful glances.
  "I will drive round and ask Mrs Cohen to let him come,"
said Mirah.
  "The grandmother will deny you nothing," said Deronda.
"'m glad you were a little wrong as well as I," he added,
smiling at Mordecai. "You thought that old Mrs Cohen
would not bear to see Mirah."
  "I undervalued her heart," said Mordecai. "She is capable of
rejoicing that another's plant blooms though her own be
withered."
  "Oh, they are dear good people; I feel as if we all belonged
to each other," said Mirah, with a tinge of merriment in her
smile.
  "What should you have felt if that Ezra had been your
brother?" said Deronda, mischievously -- a little provoked
that she had taken kindly at once to people who had caused
him so much prospective annoyance on her account.
  Mirah looked at him with a slight surprise for a moment,
and then said, "He is not a bad man -- I think he would never
forsake any one." But when she had uttered the words she
blushed deeply, and glancing timidly at Mordecai, turned
away to some occupation. Her father was in her mind, and
this was a subject on which she and her brother had a
painful mutual consciousness. "If he should come and find
*X681
us]" was a thought which to Mirah sometimes made the
street daylight as shadowy as a hunted forest where each
turn screened for her an imaginary apparition.
  Deronda felt what was her involuntary allusion, and
understood the blush. How could he be slow to understand
feelings which now seemed nearer than ever to his own? for
the words of his mother's letter implied that his filial relation
was not to be freed from painful conditions; indeed, singularly
enough that letter which had brought his mother
nearer as a living reality had thrown her into more remoteness
for his affections. The tender yarning after a being
whose life might have been the worse for not having his care
and love, the image of a mother who had not had all her
dues whether of reverence or compassion, had long been
secretly present with him in his observation of all the women
he had come near. But it seemed now that this picturing of
his mother might fit the facts no better than his former
conceptions about Sir Hugo. He wonderred to find that when
this mother's very handwriting had come to him with words
holding her actual feeling, his affections and suddenly
shrunk into a state of comparative neutrality towards her. A
veiled figure with enigmatic speech had thrust away that
image which, in spite of uncertainty, his clinging thought
had gradually modelled and made the possessor of his
tenderness and duteous longing. When he set off to enoa, the
interest really uppermost in his mind had hardly so much
relation to his mother as to Mordecai and Mirah.
  "God bless you, Dan]" Sir Hugo had said, when they shook
hands. "Whatever else changes for you, it can't change my
being the oldest friend you have known, and the one who
has all along felt the most for you. I couldn't have loved ypu
better if you'd been my own -- only I should have  been better
pleased with thinking of you always as the future master of
the Abbey instead of my fine nephew; and then you would
have seen it necessary for you to take a polical line. However --
things must be as they may." It was a defensive
measure of the baronet's to mingle purposeless remarks with
the expression of serious feeling.
  When Deronda arrived at the ˛italia˛ in Genoa, no Princess
*X682
Halm-Eberstein was there; but on the second day there was
a letter for him, saying that her arrival might happen within
a week, or might be deferred a fortnight and more: she was
under circumstances which made it impossible for her to fix
her journey more precisely, and she entreated him to wait as
patiently as he could.
  With this indefinite  prospect of suspense in matters of
supreme moment to him. Deronda set about the difficult
task of seeking amusement on philosophic grounds, as a
means of quieting excited feeling and giving patience a lift
over a weary road. His former visit to the superb city had
been only cursory, and left him much to learn beyond the
prescribed round of sightseeing, by spending the coller
hours in observant wandering about the strets, the quay,
and the environs; and he often took a boat that he might
enjoy the magnificient view of the city and harbour from the
sea. All sights, all subjects, even the expected meeting with
his mother, found a central union in Mordecai and Mirah,
and the ideas immediately associated with them; and among
the thoughts that most filled his mind while his boat was
pushing about within view of the grand harbour was that of
the moltutudinous Spanish Jews centuries ago driven destitute
from their Spanish homes, suffered to land from the
crowded ships only for brief rest on this  grand quay of
Genoa, overspreading it with a pall of famine and plague --
dying mothers with dying children at their breasts -- fathers
and sons agaza at each other's haggardness, like groups from
a hundred Hungertowers turned out beneath the midday
sun. Inevitably, dreamy constructions of possible ancestry
for himself would weave themselves with historic memories
which had begun to have a new interest for him on his
discovery of Mirah, and now, under the influence of Mordecai,
had become irresistibly dominant. He would have
sealed his mind against such constructions if it had been
possible, and he had never yet fully admitted to himself that
he wished the facts to verify Mordecai's convinction: he inwardly
repeated that he had no choice in the matter, and
that wishing was folly -- nay, on the question of parentage,
wishing seemed part of that meanness which disowns kinship:
*X683
it was a disowning by anticipation. What he had to do
was simply to accept the fact+ and he had really no strong
presumption to go upon, now that he was assured of his
mistake about Sir Hugo. There had been a resolved concealment
which made all inference untrustworthy, and the very
name he bore might be a false one. If Mordecai were wrong
-- if he, the so-called Daniel Deronda, were held by ties
entirely aloof from any such course as his friend's pathetic
hope had marked out? -- he would not say "I wish"; but he
could not help feeling on which side the sacrifice lay.
  Across these two importunate thoughts, which he resisted
as much as one can resist anything in that unstrung condition
which belongs to suspense, there came continually an
anxiety he made no effort to banish -- dwelling on it
rather with a mournfulness, which often seems to us the best
atonement we can make to one whose need we have been
unable to meet. The anxiety was for Gwendolen. In the
wonderful mixtures of our nature there is a feeling distinct
from that exclusive passionate love of which some men and
women (by no means all) are capable, which yet is not the
same with friendship, nor with a merely benevolent regard,
whether admiring or compassionate: a man, say -- for it is a
man who is here concerned -- hardly represents to himself
this dhade of feeling towards a woman more nearly than in
the words, "I should have loved her, if -- :" the "if" covering
some prior growth in the inclinations, or else some circumstances
which have made an inward prohibitory law as a stay
against the emotions ready to quiver out of balance. The "if"
in Deonda's case carried reasons of both kinds; yet he had
never throughout his relations with Gwendolen been free
from the nervous consciousness that there was something to
guard against not only on her account but on his own --
some precipitancy in the manifestation of impulsive feeling --
some ruinous inroad of what is but momentary on the permanent
chosen treasure of the heart -- some spoiling of her
trust, which wrought upon hin now as if it had been the
retreating cry of a creature snatched and carried out of his
reach by swift horsemen or swifter waves, while his own
strength was only a stronger sense of weakness. How could

*X684
his feeling for Gwendolen ever be exactly like his feeling for
other women, even when there was one by whose side he
desired to stand apart from them? Strangely her figure
entered into the pictures of his resent and future; strangely
(and now it seemed sadly) their two lots had come in contact,
hers narrowly personal, his charged with far-reaching sensibilities,
perhaps with durable purposes, which were hardly
more present to her than the reasons why men migrate are
present to the birds that come as usual for the crumbs and
find them no more. Not that Deronda was too ready to
imagine himself of supreme importance to a woman; but her
words of insistence that he "must remain near her -- must not
forsake her" -- continually recurred to him with the clearness
and importunity of imagined sounds, such as Dante has said
pierce us like arrows whose points carry the sharpness of
pity:-

  ˛Lamenti saettaron me diversi˛
  ˛Che di pieta> ferrati avean gli strali.˛

  Day after day passed, and the very air of Italy seemed to
carry the consciouness that was had been declared against
Austria, and every day was a hurrying march of crowded
Time toward the world-changing battle of Sadowa. Meanwhile,
in Genoa, the noons were getting hotter, the converging
outer roads getting deeper with white dust, the oleanders in
the tubs along the wayside gardens looking more and more
like fatigued holiday-makers, the the sweet evening changing
her office -- scattering abroad those whom the mid-day
had sent under shelter, and sowing all paths with happy
social sounds, little tinklings of mule-bells and whirrings of
thrumbed strings, light footsteps and voices, if not leisurely,
then with the hurry of pleasure in them; while the encircling
heights, crowned with forts, skirted with fine dwellings and
gardens, seemed also to come forth and gaze in fulness of
beauty after their long siesta, till all strong colour melted in
the stream of moonlight which made the streets a @cnew spectacle
with shadows, both still and moving, on cathedral steps
amd against the fac˛ades of massive palaces; and then slowly
with the descending moon all sank in deep night and silence,

*X685
and nothing shone but the port lights of the great Lanterna
in the blackness below, and the glimmering stars in the
blackness above. Deronda, in his suspense, watched this
revovling of the days as he might have watched a wonderful
clock where the striking of the hours was made solemn with
antique figures advancing and retreating in monitory procession,
while he still kept his ear open for another kind of
signal which would have its solemnity too. He was beginning
to sicken of occupation, and found himself contemplating all
activity with the aloofness of a prisoner awaiting ransom. In
his letters to Mordecai and Hans, he had avoided writing
about himself, but he was really getting into that state of
mind to which all subjects become personal; and the few
books he had brought to make him a refuge in study were
becoming unreadable, because the point of view that life
would make for him was in that agitating moment of uncertainty
which is close upon decision.
  Many nights were watched through by him in gazing
from the open window of his room on the double, faintly
pierced darkness of the sea and the heavens; often in struggling
under the oppressive scepticism which represented his
particular lot, with all the importance he was allowing
Mordecai to give it, as of no more lasting effect than a
dream -- a set of changes which made passion to him, but
beyond his consciousness were no more than an imperceptible
difference of mass or shadow; sometimes with a reaction
of emotive force which gave even to sustained disappointment,
even to the fulfilled demand of sacrifice, the nature of
a satisfied energy, and spread over his young future, whatever
it might be, the attraction of devoted service; sometimes
with a sweet irresistible hopefulness that the very best of
human possibilities might befall him -- the blending of a
complete personal love in one current with a larger duty;
and sometimes again in a mood of rebellion (what human
creature escapes it?) against things in general because
are thus and not otherwise, a mood in which Gwendolen and
her equivocal fate moved as busy images of what was amiss
in the world along with the concealments which he had felt
as a hardship in his own life, and which were acting in him

*X686
now under the form of an afflicting doubtfulness about the
mother who had announced herself coldly and still kept
away.
  But at last she was some. One morning in his third week
of waiting there was a new kind of knock at the door. A
servant in chasseur's livery entered and delivered in French
the verbal message that the Princess Halm-Eberstein had
arrived, that she was going to rest during the day, but would
be obliged if Monsieur would dine early, so as to be at
liberty at seven, when she would be able to receive him.

*C51

  She held the spindle as she sat,
  Erinna with the thick-coiled mat
  Of raven hair and deepest agate eyes,
  Gazing with a sad surprise
  At surging visions of her destiny --
  To spin the byssus drearily
  In insect-labour, while the throng
 Of gods and men wrought deeds that poets wrought in song.

WHEN Deronda presented himself at the door of his
mother's apartment in the ˛Italia˛, he felt some revival of his
boyhood with its premature agitations. The two servants in
the antechamber looked at him markedly, a little surprised
that the doctor their hady had come to consult was this
striking young gentleman whose appearance gave even the
severe lines of an evening dress the credit of adornment. But
Deronda could notice nothing until, the second door being
opened, he found himself in the presence of a figure which
at the other end of the large room stood awaiting his
approach.
  She was covered, except as to her face and part of her
arms, with black lace hanging loosely from the summit of
her whitening hair to the long train stretching from her tall
figure. Her arms, naked from the elbow, except for some rich

*X687
bracelets, were folded before her, and the fine poise of her
head made it look handsomer than it really was. But Deronda
felt no interval of observation before he was close in
front of her, holding the had she had put out and then
raising it to his lips. She still kept her hand in his and looked
at him examiningly; while his chief consciouness was that
her eyes were piercing and her face so mobile that the next
moment she might look like a different person. For even
wjile she was examining him there was a play of the brow
and nostril which made a tacit language. Derona dared no
movement, not able to conceive what sort of manifestation
her feeling demanded; but he felt himself changing colour
like a girl, and yet wondering at his own lack of emotion: he
had lived through so many ideal meetings with his mother,
and they had seemed more real than this] He could not
even conjecture in what language she would speak to him.
He imagined it would not be English. Suddenly, she let fall
his hand, and placed both hers on his shoulders, while her
face gave out a flasj of admiration in which every worn line
disappeared and seemed to leave a restored youth.
  "You are a beautiful creature]" she said, in a low melodious
voice, with syllables which had what might be balled a
foreign but agreeable outline. "I knew you would be." Then
she kissed him on each cheek, and he returned her kisses.
But it was somthing like a greeting between royalties.
  She paused a moment, while the lines were coming back
into her face, and then said in a colder tone, "I am you
mother. But you can have no love for me."
  "I have thought of you more than of any other being in
the world," said Deronda, his voice trembling nervously.
  "I am not like what you thought I was," said the mother,
decisively, withdrawing her hands from his shoulders and
folding her arms as before, looking at him as if she invited
him to observe her. He had often pictured her face in his
imagination as one which had a likeness to his own: he saw
some of the likeness now, but amidst more striking differencess.
She was a remarkable-looking being. What was it that
gave her som a painful sense of aloofness? -- Her worn beauty
had a strangeness in it as if she were not quite human

*X688
mother, but a Melusina, who had ties with some world
which is independent of ours.
  "I used to think that you might be suffering," said Deronda,
anxious above all not to wound her. "I used to wish that I
could be a comfort to you."
  "I ˛am˛ suffering. But with a suffering that you can't comfort,"
said the Princess, in a harder voice than before, moving
to a sofa where cushions had been carefully arranged for
her. "Sit down." She pointed to a seat near her; and then
discerning some distress in Deronda's face, she added, more
gently, "I am not sufferingat this moment. I am at ease now.
I am able to talk."
  Deronda seated himself and waited for her to speak again.
It seemed as if he were in the presence of a mysterious Fate
rather than of the longed-for mother. He was beginning to
watch her with wonder, from the spiritual distance to which
she had thrown him.
  "No," she began; "I did not send for you to comfort me. I
could not know beforehand -- I don't know now -- what you
will feel towards me. I have not the foolish notion that
you can love me merely because I an your mother, when
you have never seen or heard of me all your life. But I
thought I chose womething better for you than being with
me. I did not think that I deprived you of anything worth
having."
  "You cannot wish me to believe that your affection would
not have been worth having," said Deronda, finding that she
paused as if she expected him to make some answer.
  "I don't mean to speak ill of myself," said the Princess, with
proud impetuousity, "but I had not much affection to give
you. I did not want affection. I had been stifled with it. I
wanted to live out the life that was in me, and not to be
hampered with other lives. You wonder what I was. I was no
princess then." She rose with a sudden movement, and stood
as she had dome before. Deronda immediately rose too; he
felt breathless.
  "No princess in this tame life that I live now. I was a
great singer, and I acted as well as I sang. All the rest were
poor beside me. Men followed me from one country to

*X689
anothe. I was living a myriad lives in one. I did not want a
chi;d."
  There was a pssionate self-defence in her tone. She had
cast all precedent out of her mind. Precedent had no excuse
for her, and she could only seek a justification in the intensest
words she could find for her experience. She seemed to
fling out the last words against some possible reproach in the
mind of her son, who had to stand and hear them -- clutching
his coat-collar as if he were keeping himself above water
by it, and feeling his blood in the sort of commotion that
might have been excited if he had seen her going through
some strange rite of a religion which gave a sacredness to
crime. What else had she to tell him? She went on with the
same intensity and a sort of pale illumination in her face.
  "I did not want to marry. I was forced into marrying your
father -- forced, I mean, by my father's wishes and commands;
and besides, it was my best way of getting some
freedom. I could rule my husband, butnot my father. I had
a right to be free. I had a right to seek my freedom from a
bondage that I hated."
  She seated herself again, while there was that subtle movement
in her eyes and closed lips which is like the suppressed
continuation of speech. Deronda continued standing, and
after a moment or two she looked up at him with a less
defiant pleading as she said --
  "And the bondage I hated for myself I wanted to keep you
from. What better could the most loving mother have done?
I relieved you from the bondage of having been born a Jew."
  "Then I ˛am˛ a Jew?" Deronda burst out with a deep-voiced
energy that made his mother shrink a little backward
against her cushions. "My father was a Jew, and you are a
Jewess?"
  "Yes, your father was my cousin," said the mother, watching
him with a change in her look, as if she saw something
that she might have to be afraid of.
  "I am glad of it," said Deronda, impetuously, in the veiled
voice of passion. He could not have imagined beforehand
how he would come to say that which he had never hitherto
admitted. He could not have dreamed that it would be in

*X690
impulsive opposition to his mother. He was shaken by a
mixed anger which no reflection could come soon enough to
check, against this mother who it seemed had borne him
unwillingly, had willingly made herself a stranger to him,
and -- perhaps -- was now making herself known unwillingly.
This last suspicion seemed to flash some explanation over
her speech.
  But the mother was equally shaken by an anger differently
mixed, and her frame was less equal to any repression. The
shaking with her was visibly physical, and her eyes looked
the larger for her pallid excitement as she said violently --
  "Why do you say you are glad? You are an English gentleman.
I secured you that."
  "You did not know ˛what˛ you secured me. How could you
choose my birthright for me?" said Deronda, throwing himself
sideways into his chair again, almost unconsciously, and
leaning his arm over the back while he looked away from his
mother.
  He was fired with an intolerance that seemed foreign to
him. But he was now trying to master himself and keep
silence. A horror had swept in upon his anger lest he should
say something too hard in this moment which hade an
epoch never to be recalled. There was apause before his
mother spoke again, and when she spoke her voice had
become more firmly resistant in its finely varied tone*
  "I chose for you what I would have chosen for myself. How
could I know that you would have the spirit of my father in
you? How could I know that you would love what I hated? --
of you really love to be Jew." The last words had such
bitterness in them that any one overhearing might have supposed
some hatred had arisen between the mother and son.
  But Deronda had recovered his fuller self. He was recalling
his sensibilities to what life had been and actually was
for her whose best years were gone, and who with the signs
of suffering in her frame was now exerting herself to tell him
of a past which was not his alone but also hers. His habitual
shame at the acceptance of events as if they were his only,
helped him even here. As he looked at his mother silently
after her last words, his face regained some of its penetrative

*X691
calm; yet it seemed to have a strangely agitating influence
over her: her eyes were fixed on him with a sort of fascination,
but not with any repose of maternal delight.
  "Forgive me if I speak hastily," he said, with diffident
gravity. "Why have you resolved now on disclosing to me
what you took care to have me brought up in ignorance of?
Why -- since you seem angry that I should be glad?"
  "Oh -- the reasons of our actions]" said the Princess, with a
ring of something like sarcastic scorn. "When you are as old
as I am, it will not seem so simple a question -- "Why did
you do this?" People talk of their motives in a cut and dried
way. Every woman is supposed to have the same set of
motives, or else to be a monster. I am not a monster, but I
have not felt exactly what other women feel @c-- or say they
feel, for fear of being thought unlike others. When you
reproach me in your heart for sending you away from me,
you mean that I ought to say I felt about you as other
women say they feel about their children. I did ˛not˛ feel that.
I was glad to be fred from you. But I did well for you, and I
gave you your father's fortune. Do I seem now to be revoking
everything? -- Well, there are reasons. I feel many things
that I can't understand. A fatal illness had been growing in
me for a year.  I shall very likely not live anothr year. I will
not deny anything I have done. I will not pretend to love
where I have no love. But shadows are rising round me.
Sickness makes them. If I have wronged the dead -- I have
but little time to do what I left undone."
  The varied transitions of tome with which this speech was
delivered were as perfect as the most accomplished actress
could have made them. The speech was in fact a piece of
what may be called sincere acting: this woman's nature was
one in which all feeling -- and all the more when it was
tragic as well as real -- immediately became matter of conscious
representation: experience immediately passed into
drama, and she acted her own emotions. In a minor degree
this is nothing uncommon, but in the Princess the acting
had a rare perfection of physiognomy, voice, and gesture. It
would not be true to say that she felt less because of this
double consciousness: she felt -- that ism her mind went

*X692
through -- all the more, but with a difference; each nucleus
of pain or pleasure had a deep atmosphere of the excitement
or spiritual intoxication which at once exalts and deadens.
But Deronda made no reflection of this kind. All his
thoughts hung on the purport of what his mother was saying;
her tomes and her wonderful face entered into his agitation
without being noted. What he longed for with an s2awed
desire was to know as much as she would tell himof the
strange mental conflict under which it seemed that he had
been brought into the world: what his compassionate nature
made the controlling idea within him were the suffering and
the confession that breathed through her later words, and
these forbade any further question, when she paused and
remained silent, with her brow knit, her head turned a little
away from him, and her large eyes fixed as if on something
imcorporeal. He must wait for her to speak again. She did so
eith strange abruptness, turning her eyes upon him suddenly,
and saying more quickly --
  "Sir Hugo has written much about you. He tells me you
have a wonderful mind -- you comprehend everything -- you
are wiser than he is with all his sixty years. You say you are
glad to know that you were born a Jew. I am not going to
tell you that I have changed my mind about that. Your
feelings are gainst mine. You don't thank me for what I
did. Shall you comprehend your mother -- or only blame
her?"
  "There is not a fibre within me but makes me wish tp
comprehend her," said Deronda, meeting her sharp gaze
solemnly. "It is a bitter reversal of my longing to think of
blaming her. What I have been most trying to do for fifteen
years is to have some understanding of those who differ from
myself."
  "Then you have become unlike your grandfather in that,"
said the mother, "though you are a young copy of him in
your face. He never comprehended me, or if he did, he only
thought of fettering me into obedience. I was to be what he
called "the Jewish woman" under pain of his curse. I was to
feel everything I did not feel, and believe everything I did
not believe. I was to feel awe for the bit of parchment in the

*X693
˛mezuza˛ over the door; to dread lest a bit of butter should
touch a bit of meat; to think it beautiful that men should
bind the ˛tephillin˛ on them, and women not, -- to adore the
wisdom of such laws, however silly they might seem to me. I
was to love the long prayers in the ugly synagogue, and the
howling, and the gabbling, and the dreadful fasts, and the
tiresome feasts, and my father's endless discoursing about
Our People, which was a thunder without meaning in my
ears. I was to care for ever about what Israel had been; and I
did not care at all. I cared for the wide world, and all that I
could represent in it. I hated living under the shadow of my
father's strictness. Teaching, teaching for everlasting -- "this
you must be," "that you must not be" -- pressed on me like a
frame that got tighter and tighter as I grew. I wanted to live
a large life, with freedom to do what every one else did, and
be carried along in a great current, not obliged to care, Ah]"
-- here her tone changed to one of a more bitter incisiveness
-- "you are glad to have been born a Jew. You say so. That is
because you have not been brought up as a Jew. That
separateness seems sweet to you because I saved you from it."
  "When you resolved on that, you meant that I should never
know my origin?" said Deronda, impulsively. "You have at
least changed in your feeling on that point."
  "Yes, that was what I meant. That is what I persevered in.
And it is not true to say that I have changed. Things have
changed in spite of me. I am still the same Leonara" -- she
pointed with her forefinger to her breast -- "here within me is
the same desire, the same will, the same choise, ˛but˛" -- she
spread out her hands, palm upwards, on each side of her, as
she paused with a bitter compression of her lip, then let her
voice fall into muffled, rapid utterance -- "events come upon
us like evil enchantments: and thoughts, feelings, apparitions
in the darkness are events -- are they not? I don't
consent. We only consent to what we love. I obey something
tyrannic" -- she spread out her hands again -- "I am forced to
be withered, to feel pain, to be dying slowly. Do I love that?
Well, I have been forced to obey my dead father. I have
been forced to tell you that you are a Jew, and deliver to you
what he commanded me to deliver."

*X694
  "I beseech you to tell me what moved you -- when you were
young, I mean -- to take the course you did," said Deronda,
trying by this reference to the past to escape from what to
him was the heart-rending piteousness of this mingled suffering
and defiance. "I gathered that my grandfather opposed
your bent to be an artist. Though my own experiece has
been quite different, I enter into the painfulness of your
struggle. I can imagine the hardship of an enforced renunciation."
  "No," said the Princess, shaking her head, and folding her
arms with an air of decision. "You are not a woman. You
may try -- but you can never imagine what it is to have
a man's force of genius in you, and yet to suffer the slavery of
being a girl. To have a pattern cut out -- "this is the Jewish
woman; this is what you must be; this is what you are
wanted for; a woman's heart must be of such a size and no
larger, else it must be pressed small, like Chinese feet; her
happiness is to be made as cakes are, by a fixed receipt."
That was what my father wanted. He wished I had been a
son; he cared for me as a makeshift link. His heart was set
on his Judaism. He hated that Jewish women should be
thought of by the Christian world as a sort of ware to make
public singers andactresses of. As if we were not the more
enviable for that] That is a chance of escaping from
bondage."
  "Was my grandfather a learned man?" said Deronda, eager
to know particulars that he feared his mother might not
think of.
  She answered impatiently, putting up her hand, "Oh yes, --
and a clever physican -- and good: I don't deny that he was
good. A man to be admired in a play -- grand, with an iron
will. Like the old Foscari before he pardons. But such men
turn their wives and daughters into slaves. They would rule
the world if they could; but not ruling the world, they throw
all the weight of their will on the necks and souls of women.
But nature sometimes thwarts them. My father had no other
child than his daughter, and she was like himself."
  She had folded her arms again, and looked as if she were
ready to face some impending attempt at mastery.
  *X695
  "Your father was different. Unlike me -- all lovingness and
affection. I knew I could rule him; and I made him secretly
promise me, before I married him, that he would put no
hindrance in the way of my being an artist. My father was
on his deathbed when we were married: from the first he
had fixed his mind on my marrying my cousin Ephraim.
And when a woman's will is as strong as the man's who
wants to govern her, half her strength must be concealment.
I meant to have my will in the end, but I could only have it
by seeming to obey. I had an awe of my father -- always I
had had an awe of him: it was impossible to help it. I hated
to feel awed -- I wished I could have defied him openly; but I
never could. It was what I could not imagine: I could not
act it to myself that I should begin to defy my father openly
and succeed. And I never would risk failure."
  That last sentence was uttered with an abrupt emphasis,
and she paused after it as if the words has raised a crowd of
remembrances which obstructed speech. Her son was listening
to her with feelings more and more highly mixed: the
first sense of being repelled by the frank coldness which had
replaced all his preconceptions of a mother's tender joy in
the sight of him; the first impulses of indignation at what
shocked his most cherished emotions and principles -- all
these busy elements of collision between them were subsiding
for a time, and making more and more room for that
effort at just allowance and that admiration of a forcible
nature whose errors lay along high pathways, which he
would have felt if, instead of being his mother, she had been
a stranger who had appealed to his sympathy. Still it was
impossible to be dispassionate: he trembled lest the next
thing she had to say would be more repugnant to him than
what had gone before: he was afraid of the strange coercion
she seemed to be under to lay her mind bare; he almost
wished he could say, "Tell me only what id necessary," and
then again he felt the fascination that made him watch her
and listen to her eagerly. He tried to recall her to particulars
by asking --
  "Where was my grandfather's home?"
  "Here in Genoa, when I was married; and his family had

*X696
lived here generations ago. But my father had been in
various countries."
  "You must surely have lived in England?"
  "My mother was English -- a Jewess of Portuguese descent.
My father married her in England. Certain circumstances of
that marriage made all the difference in my life: through
that marriage my father thwarted his own plans. My
mother's sister was a singer, and afterwards she married the
English partner of a merchant's house here in Genoa, and
they came and loved here eleven years. My mother died
when I was eight years old, and then my father allowed me
to be continually with my aunt Leonora and be taught
under her eyes, as if he had not minded the danger of her
encouraging my wish to be a singer, as she had been. But
this was it -- I saw it again and again in my father: -- he did
not guard against consequences, because he felt sure he
could hinder them if he liked. Before my aunt left Genoa, I
had had enough teaching to bring out the born singer and
actress within me: my father did not know everything that
was done; but he knew that I was taught music and singing
-- he knew my inclination. That was nothing to him: he
meant that I should obey his will. And he was resolved that
I should marry my cousin Ephraim, the only one left of my
father's family that he knew. I wanted not to marry. I
thought of all plans to resist it, but at last I found that I
could rule my cousin, and I consented. My father died three
weeks after we were married, and then I had my way]" She
uttered these words almost exultantly; but after a little
pause her face changed, and she said in a biting tone, "It has
not lasted, though. My father is getting his way now."
  She began to look more contemplatively again at her son,
and presently said --
   "You are like him -- but milder -- there is something of
your own father in you; and he made it the labour of his life
to devote himself to me: wound up his money-changing and
banking, and loved to wait upon me -- he went against his
conscience for me. As I loved the life of my art, so he loved
me. Let me look at your hand again: the hand with the ring
on. It was your father's ring."

*X697
  He drew his chair mearer to her and gave her his hand.
We know what kind of hand it was: her own, very much
smaller, was of the same type. As he felt the smaller hand
holding his, as he saw nearer to him the face that held the
likeness of his own, aged not by time but by intensity, the
strong bent of his nature towards a reverential tenderness
asserted itself above every other impression, and in his most
fervent tone he said --
  "Mother] take us all into your heart -- the living and the
dead. Forgive everything that hurts you in the past. Take
my affection."
   She looked at him admiringly rather than lovingly, then
kissed him on the brow, and saying sadly, "I reject nothing,
but I have nothing to give," she released his hand and sank
back on her cushions. Deronda turned pale with what seems
always more of a sensation than an emotion -- the pain of
repulsed tenderness. She noticed the expression of pain, and
said, still with melancholy in her tones --
  "It is better so. We must part again soon, and you owe me
no duties. I did not wish you to be born. I parted with you
willingly. When your father died, I resolved that I would
have no more ties, but such as I could free myself from. I
was the Alcharisi you have heard of: the name had magic
wherever it was carried. Men courted me. Sir Hugo Mallinger
was one who wished to marry me. He was madly in love
with me. One day I asked him, "Is there a man capable of
doing something for love of me, and expecting nothing in
return?" He said, "What is it you want dones?" I said, "Take
my boy and bring him up as an Englishman, and let him
never know anything about his parents." You were little
more than two years old, and were sitting on his foot. He
declared that he would pay money to have such a boy. I had
not meditated much on the plan beforehand, but as soon as
I had spoken about it, it took possession of me as something
I could not rest without doing. At first he thought I was not
serious, but Iconvinced him, and he never surprised at
anything. He agreed that it would be for your good, and the
finest thing for you. A great singer and actress is a queen.
but she gives no royalty to her son. -- All that happened at

*X698
Naples. And afterwards I made Sir Hugo the trustee of your
fortune. That is what I did; and I had a joy in doing it. My
father had tyrannised over me -- he cared more avout a
grandson to come than he did about me: I counted as
nothing. You were to be such a Jew as he; you were to be
what he wanted. But you were my son, and it was my turn to
say what you should be. I said you should not know you
were a Jew."
  "And for months events have been preparing me to be glad
that I am a Jew," said Deronda, his opposition roused again.
The point touched the quick of his experience. "It would
always have been better that I should have known the truth.
I have always been rebelling against the secrecy that looked
like shame. It is no sham e to have Jewish parents -- the
shame is to disown it."
  "You sau it was a shame to me, then, that I used that
secrecy," said his mother, with a flash of new anger. "There is
no shame attaching to me. I have no reason to be ashamed. I
rid myself of the Jewish tatters and gibberish that make
people nudge each other at sight of us, as if we were tattooed
under our clothes, though our faces are as whole as theirs. I
delivered you from the pelting contempt that pursues Jewish
separateness. I am not ashamed that I did it. It was the
better for you."
  "Then why have you now undone the secrecy? -- no, not
undone it -- the effects will never be undone. But why have
you now sent for me to tell me that I an a Jew?" said
Deronda, with an intensity of opposition in feeling that was
almost bitter. It seemed as if her words had called out a
latent obstinacy of race in him.
  "Why? -- ah, why?" said the Princess, rising quickly and
walking to the other side of the room, where she turned
round and slowly approached him, as he, too, stood up. Then
she began to speak again in a more veiled voice. "I can't
explain; I can only say what is. I don't love my father's
religion now any more than I did then. Before I married the
second time I was baptised; I made myself like the people L
lived among. I had a right to do it; I was not like a brute,
obliged to go with my own herd. I have not repented; I will

*X699
not say that I have repented. But yet," -- here she had come
near to her son, and paused; then again retreated a little and
stood still, as if resolute not to give wayutterly to an imperious
influence; but, as she went on speaking, she became
more and more unconscious of anything but the awe that
subdued her voice. "It is illness, I don't doubt that it has
been gathering illness, -- my mind has gone back; more than
a year ago it began. You see my grey hair, my worn look: it
has all come fast. Sometimes I am in an agony of pain -- I
daresay I shall be to-night. Then it is as if all the life I have
chosen to live, all thoughts, all will, forsook me and left me
alone in spots of memory, and I can't get away: my pain
seems to keep me there. My childhood -- my girlhood -- the
day of my marriage -- the day of my father's death -- there
seems to be noting since. Then a great horror comes over
me: what do I know of life or death? and what my father
called "right" may be a power that is laying hold of me --
that is clutching me now. Well, I will satisfy him. I cannot
go into the darkness without satisfying him. I have hidden
what was his. I thought once I would burn it. I have not
burnt it. I thank God I have not burnt it]"
  She threw herself on her cushions again, visibly fatigued.
Deronda, moved too strongly by her suffering for other
impulses to act within him, drew near her, and said, entreatingly --
  "Will you not spare yourself this evening? Let us leave the
rest till to-morrow."
  "No," she said, decisively. "I will confess it all, now that I
have come up to it. Often when I an at ease it all fades
away; my whole self comes quite back; but I know it will
sink away again, and the other will come -- the poor, solitary,
forsaken remains of self, that can resist nothing. It was my
nature to resist, and say, "I have a right to resist." Well, I say
so still when I have any strength in me. You have heard me
say it, and I don't withdraw it. But when my strength goes,
some other right forces itself upon me like iron in an inexorable
hand; and even when I am at ease, it is beginning to
make ghosts upon the daylight. And now you have madeit
worse for me," she said, with a sudden return of impetuousity;