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 1 1 
 
 NOVELS 
 
 OF 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT 
 
 VOL. VIII. 
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 NEW YORK:. 
 
 HARPER Si BROTHERS, PUBLl^fERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 
 1876. 
 
 blIVe 
 
 I
 
 GEORGE ELIOT'S NOVELS 
 
 HARPER'S LIBRARY EDITION. 
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. Two Volumes. i2mo, Cloth, ^3 00. 
 
 MIDDLEMARCH. Two Volumes. i2mo, Cloth, $t^ 00. 
 
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 Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, Franklin Square, N. Y. 
 
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 k 
 
 r
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE ELIOT. 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 VOL. I. 
 
 HARPER'S LIBRARY EDITION: 
 
 NEW YORK: 
 
 HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 
 
 FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
 1876.
 
 Let thy chief terror be of thine own soul : 
 There, 'mid the throng of hurrying desires 
 That trample o'er the dead to seize their spoil, 
 Lurks vengeance, footless, irresistible 
 As exhalations laden with slow death, 
 And o'er the fairest troop of captuied joys 
 Breathes pallid pestilence. 
 
 V 
 
 Copyright, 1876, by Harper & Brothers.
 
 as 
 
 
 
 p.^ 
 
 DANIEL DERONDA 
 
 BOOK I. 
 THE SPOILED CHILD. 
 
 992545
 
 BOOK I. 
 
 THE SPOILED CHILD. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 " Men can do nothing without the make-believe of a beginning. Even 
 Science, the strict measurer, is obUged 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 at Naught His less accurate grandmother 
 Poetry has always been understood to start in the middle ; but on reflection 
 it appears that her proceeding is not very different from his ; since Science, 
 too, reckons backward as well as forward, divides his unit into billions, and 
 with his clock-finger at Naught really sets off in medias res. Xo 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." 
 
 Was she beautiful or not beautiful ? and what was the secret 
 of form or expression which gave the dynamic quality to her 
 glance? Was the good or the enl genius dominant in those 
 beams ? Probably the evil ; else why was the effect that of un- 
 rest rather than of undisturbed charm ? Why was the wish to 
 look again felt as coercion, 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 south- 
 ern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags about her 
 limbs ; but in one of those splendid resorts which the enlight- 
 enment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at 
 a heavy cost of gilt moldings, dark-toned color, and chubby nu- 
 dities, all correspondingly heavy — forming a suitable condenser 
 for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fash- 
 ion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in 
 the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 It was near four o'clock on a September day, so that the at- 
 mosphere was well-brewed to a visible 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 au- 
 tomaton. Round two long tables were gathered two serried 
 crowds of human beings, all save one having their faces and at- 
 tention bent on the tables. The one exception was a melan- 
 choly little boy, with his knees and calves simply in their nat- 
 ural clothing of epidermis, but for the rest of his person in a 
 fancy dress. He alone had his face turned toward the door- 
 w^ay, and, fixing on it the blank gaze of a bedizened child sta- 
 tioned as a masquerading advertisement on the platform of an 
 itinerant show, stood close behind a lady deeply engaged at the 
 roulette-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, usu- 
 ally a woman, might now and then be observed putting down 
 a five-franc piece with a simpering air, just to see -what the pas- 
 sion of gambling really was. Those who Avere taking their 
 pleasure at a higher strength, and were absorbed in play, showed 
 very distant varieties of European type : Livonian and Spanish, 
 Grseco-Italian and miscellaneous German, English aristocratic 
 and English plebeian. Here, certainly, was a striking admission 
 of human equality. The white bejeweled fingers of an English 
 countess were very near touching a bony, yelloAv, crab-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 eye- 
 brows, and ill-combed scanty hair which seemed a slight meta- 
 morphosis 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 ar- 
 tificial 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, w^as 
 a respectable London tradesman, blonde and soft-lianded, his 
 sleek hair scrupulously parted behind and before, conscious of 
 circulars addressed to the nobility and gentry, whose distin-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 9 
 
 guislied patronage enabled him to take liis holidays fashiona- 
 bly, 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 better resource than winning 
 money in play and spending it yet more showily — reflecting 
 always that Providence had never manifested any disapproba- 
 tion 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 w4n. 
 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 o^vners of the oldest titles. 
 Standing close to his chair was a handsome Italian, calm, statu- 
 esque, reaching across him to place the first pile of napoleons 
 from a new bagful just brought him by an envoy with a scroll- 
 ed mustache. The pile was in half a minute pushed over to an 
 old bewigged woman with eyeglasses pinching her nose. There 
 was a slight gleam, a faint mumbling smile about the lips of 
 the old woman ; 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 sure- 
 ly be 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 absorption, was that the gambling of Spanish 
 shepherd-boys had seemed to him more enviable : so far Rous- 
 seau might be justified in maintaining that art and science had 
 done a poor sen^ice to mankind. But suddenly he felt the 
 
 1*
 
 10 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 moment become dramatic. His attention was arrested by a 
 young lady wlio, standing at an angle not far from him, was the 
 last to whom his eyes traveled. 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 further and 
 further away from the glow of mingled undefined sensibilities 
 forming admiration. At one moment they followed the move- 
 ments of the figure, of the arms and hands, as this problematic 
 sylph bent forward to deposit her stake with an air of firm 
 choice ; and the next they returned to the face which, at pres- 
 ent unaffected by beholders, was directed steadily toward the 
 game. The sylph was a winner ; and as her taper fingers, deli- 
 cately gloved in pale gray, were adjusting the coins which had 
 been pushed toward 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 himself in a region out- 
 side 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 bring 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 than this lip-paleness, turned to her play. But Deron- 
 da'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 con- 
 siderable reserve. She had begun to believe in her luck, others 
 had begun to believe in it : she had visions of being followed
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 11 
 
 by a cortege 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 administer- 
 ing the prudent advice to stop at the right moment and carry 
 money back to England — advice to which Gwendolen had re- 
 plied that she cared for the excitement of play, not the win- 
 nings. 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 indif- 
 ferent to loss or gain. Her friend touched her elbow, and pro- 
 posed that they should quit the table. For reply Gwendolen 
 put ten louis on the same spot : she was in that mood of de- 
 fiance in which the mind loses sight of any end beyond the 
 satisfaction of enraged resistance ; and, with the puerile stupid- 
 ity of a dominant impulse, includes luck among 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 toward 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 ann 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 toward Deronda, and looked at him. There was 
 a smile of irony in his eyes as their glances 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
 
 12 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 swarm wlio had no individual physiognomy. 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 incum- 
 bent 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 nega- 
 tive ; 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 dissi- 
 dent. In Gwendolen's habits of mind, it had been taken for 
 granted that she knew what was admirable, and that she her- 
 self was admired. This basis of her thinking had received a 
 disagreeable concussion, and reeled a little, but was not easily 
 to be overthrown. 
 
 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 otto- 
 mans. 
 
 The Nereid in sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a 
 pale sea-green feather fastened in silver 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 stand- 
 ing to chat with acquaintances ; and Gwendolen was much ob- 
 served 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?" 
 
 " Very. A man miglit risk hanging for her — I mean, a fool 
 might." 
 
 "You like a nez retrousse, then, and long, narrow eyes?"
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 13 
 
 " 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 
 color 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 looks thoroughly healthy. 
 And that delicate nose, w^ith its gradual little upward curve, is 
 distracting. And then her mouth — there never was a prettier 
 mouth, the lips curl backward so finely, eh, Mackworth V 
 
 " Think so ? I can not 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 ray part, I think her odious," said a dowager. " It is 
 wonderful what unpleasant girls get into vogue. Who are these 
 Langens ? !Does any body know them ?" 
 
 "They are quite comme il faut. I have dined with thorn 
 several times at the Russie. The baroness 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-table," said Mack- 
 worth. " 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 any body ?" said 
 Mr. Yandernoodt, 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 carry out the serpent idea more completely : it was that 
 she watched for any chance of seeing Deronda, so that she 
 might inquire about this stranger, under whose measuring gaze 
 she was still wincing. At last her opportunity came. 
 
 " Mr. Vandemoodt, you know every body," said Gwendolen,
 
 14 ■ DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 not too eagerly, rather with a certain languor of utterance 
 which she sometimes gave to her clear soprano. " AVho 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 colored 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. Deronda 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 smok- 
 ing either. He looked bored." 
 
 " Another reason why I should like to know him. I am al- 
 ways bored." 
 
 " I should think he would be charmed to have an introduc- 
 tion. Shall I bring it about ? Will you allow it, baroness ?" 
 
 " Why not ? — since he is related to Sir Hugo Mallinger. It 
 is a new role of yours, Gwendolen, to be always bored," contin- 
 ued Madame von Langen, when Mr. Vandernoodt had moved 
 away. " Until now you have always seemed eager about some- 
 thing from morning till night." 
 
 " 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 15 
 
 sometliing happen; unless you will go into Switzerland and 
 take me up tlie 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; Yandernoodt 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. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 *' 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 en- 
 treat 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 under- 
 stand 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 down their car- 
 riage 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 can not help thinking what a pity
 
 16 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 it was tliat you went away just when you did. But 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 per- 
 haps 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 can not 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 fail- 
 ure. Your poor sisters can only cry with me and give me no 
 help. If you were once here, there might 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, per- 
 haps you can put yourself under some one 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 on Gwendolen was half stupefy- 
 ing. 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 believe sud- 
 denly that her position had become one of poverty and humili- 
 ating 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, Gwen- 
 dolen might have looked lingeringly at herself for pleasure 
 (surely an allowable indulgence) ; but now she took no con- 
 scious note of her reflected beauty, and simply stared right be-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 17 
 
 fore her, as if she had been jarred by a hateful sound, and was 
 waiting for any sign of its cause. 
 
 By-and-by she threw herself in the comer of the red velvet 
 sofa, took up the letter again and read it twice deliberately, let- 
 ting it at last fall on the ground, while she rested her clasped 
 hands on her lap and sat 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 en- 
 joyment out of life ; and if Gwendolen had been at this mo- 
 ment disposed to feel pity, she would have bestowed it on her- 
 self — for was she not naturally and rightfully the chief object 
 of her mamma's anxiety too ? But it was anger, it was resist- 
 ance, 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 pawn : 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 received her mamma's 
 letter, she would probably have decided to raise money on an 
 Etruscan necklace which she happened not to have been wear- 
 ing since her arrival ; nay, she might have done so with an 
 agreeable sense that she was living with some intensity and es- 
 caping 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 ? K her friends at 
 home disapproved of the way in which she got the money, as 
 they certainly would, still the money would be there. Gwen- 
 dolen's imagination dwelt on this course, and created agreeable 
 consequences, but not with unbroken confidence and rising cer- 
 tainty, as it would have done if she had been touched with the 
 gambler's mania. She had gone to the roulette-table not be- 
 cause of passion, but in search of it. Her mind was still sanely 
 capable of picturing balanced probabilities ; and while the chance 
 of winning allured her, the chance of losing thrust itself on her 
 with alternate strength, and made a vision from which her pride
 
 18 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 shrunk sensitively. For slie was resolved not to tell the Lang- 
 ens that any misfortune had befallen her family, or to make 
 herself in any way indebted to their compassion ; and if she 
 were to pawn her jewelry to any observable extent, they would 
 interfere by inquiries 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 re- 
 turning 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 toward a changed home, now by the alterna- 
 tive of staying just another day and standing again at the rou- 
 lette-table. But always in this latter scene there was the pres- 
 ence of that Deronda, watching her with exasperating irony, 
 and — the two keen experiences were inevitably revived togeth- 
 er — beholding her again forsaken by luck. This importunate 
 image certainly helped to sway her resolve on the side of im- 
 mediate departure, and to urge her packing to the point which 
 would make a change of mind inconvenient. It had struck 
 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 dull- 
 ing 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 gray 
 traveling-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 that might have been chosen for her portrait. 
 It is possible to have a strong self-love without any self-satis-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 19 
 
 faction, 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 7iaive delight in her fortunate self, w^hich any but the 
 harshest saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who 
 had every day seen a pleasant reflection 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 any thing 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 de- 
 cided 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 felt the force to 
 crush it, to defy it, or run away from it, as she had done al- 
 ready. Any thing 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 be either on their walks in 
 the region of the springs, or w^ould be still in their bedrooms ; 
 but certainly there w^as 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 false- 
 hood 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, every line in her figure and drapery falling in gen- 
 tle 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 neither 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 
 except her proud grace of manner, and the superior size and 
 quality of the three central turquoises in the necklace she of- 
 fered him. They had belonged to a chain once her father's ;
 
 20 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 but she had never known her father; and the necklace was in 
 all respects the ornament she could most conveniently part 
 with. 
 
 AVho supposes that it is an impossible contradiction to be 
 superstitious and rationalizing at the same time ? Roulette en- 
 courages a romantic superstition as to the chances of the game, 
 and the most prosaic rationalism as to human sentiments which 
 stand in the way of raising needful money. Gwendolen's dom- 
 inant regret was that, after all, she had only nine louis to add 
 to the four in her purse : these Jew pawnbrokers were so un- 
 scrupulous 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 homeward — 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 some one enter as she was leaning back rath- 
 er tired and hungry, with her eyes shut, she rose, expecting to 
 see one or other of the Langens — the words which might de- 
 termine 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 1-etter. Something — she never 
 quite knew what — revealed to her, before she opened the packet, 
 that it contained the necklace she had just parted with. Un- 
 derneath the paper it w^as wrapped in a cambric handkerchief, 
 and within this was a scrap of torn-off note-paper, on which 
 was written Avith a pencil, in clear but rapid handwriting, 
 "A stranger Avho has found Miss Ilarleth's necklace returns 
 it to her, with the hope that she will not again risk the loss 
 of it."
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 21 
 
 Gwendolen reddened with tlie vexation of wounded pride. 
 A large corner of the handkerchief seemed to have been reck- 
 lessly 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 redeemed 
 the necklace. He had taken an unpardonable liberty, and had 
 dared to place her in a thoroughly hateful position. WTiat 
 could she do? Not, assuredly, act on her conviction that it 
 w^as 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 w^ould be something too gross for her to let him know 
 that she had divined this, and to meet him again with that rec- 
 ognition in their minds. He knew very well that he was en- 
 tangling 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 ris- 
 ing and rolling down her cheeks. Ko 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 re-appear in the public salon, 
 still less stand at the gaming-table w^ith the risk of seeing De- 
 ronda. Now came an importunate knock at the door : break- 
 fast was ready. Gwendolen with a passionate movement thrust 
 necklace, cambric, scrap of paper, and all into her necessaire, 
 pressed her handkerchief against her face, and, after pausing a 
 minufe 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, 
 against her traveling 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 exceed- 
 ingly well in the train, and was afraid of nothing. 
 
 In this w^ay it happened that Gwendolen never re-appeared
 
 22 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 at the rotilette - 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. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 " Let no flower of the spring pass by us : let us crown ourselves with 
 rose-buds before they be withered." — Book of Wisdom. 
 
 Pity that Offendene was not the home of Miss Harleth's 
 childhood, or endeared to hcr 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 labors 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 neighbors, 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 citi- 
 zens of the world, to be stimulated by abstract nouns, to soar 
 above preference into impartiality ; and that prejudice in fa- 
 vor 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 heav- 
 ens 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 to Penni- 
 cote Rectory, and it was only the year before that Mrs. Davi- 
 low, 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 23 
 
 line, not excepting tlie double row of narrow windows and the 
 large square portico. The stone encouraged a greenish lichen, 
 the brick a powdery gray ; 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 do- 
 main 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 
 AVessex. But though standing thus behind a screen amidst 
 flat pastures, it had on one side a glimpse of the wider world 
 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 diflBcult 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 trades-people : a cer- 
 tainty 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 where annexation is a burning 
 topic ; and to take up her abode in a house which had once 
 suflBced 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 pos- 
 sible on the death of her step-father. Captain Davilow, who had 
 for the last nine years joined his family only in a brief and fit- 
 ful 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
 
 24 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 put foremost, had only deepened her sense that so exceptional 
 a person as herself could hardly remain in ordinary circum- 
 stances 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 grandfa- 
 ther got the fortune inherited by li^s 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 con- 
 nection. 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 hus- 
 band, and while showing his miniature to Gwendolen recalled 
 with a fervor which seemed to count on a peculiar filial sympa- 
 thy 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 colored deeply, a slight convulsive movement 
 passed over her face, and straightway, shutting up the memori- 
 als, she said, with a violence quite unusual in her, 
 
 " You have no feeling, child !" 
 
 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 ar- 
 ranged, 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 lit-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 25 
 
 tie couch, objected to step out into the cold, and, lying perfect- 
 ly still, grumbled a refusal. Mrs. Da\'ilow went without the 
 medicine, and never reproached her daughter ; but the next day 
 Gwendolen was keenly conscious of what must be in her mam- 
 ma's mind, and tried to make amends by caresses which cost 
 her no effoit. Having always been the pet and pride of the 
 household, waited on by mother, sisters, governess, and maids, 
 as if she had been a princess in exile, she naturally found it dif- 
 ficult to think her own pleasure less important than others made 
 it, and, when it was positively thwarted, felt an astonished re- 
 sentment, apt, in her cruder days, to vent itself in one of those 
 passionate acts which look like a contradiction of habitual tend- 
 encies. Though never, even as a child, thoughtlessly cruel, nav, 
 delighting to rescue drowning insects and watch their recovery, 
 there was a disagreeable, silent remembrance of her having stran- 
 gled her sister's canary-bird in a final fit of exasperation at its 
 shrill singing which had again and again jarringly inteiTupted 
 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 remorse- 
 less, but she liked to make her penances easy, and now that she 
 was twenty and more, some of her native force had turned into 
 a self-control by which she guarded herself from penitential hu- 
 miliation. 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 brother-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, no 
 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 AHce in her sixteenth year to 
 Isabel in her tenth, hardly any thing could be said on a first 
 view, but that thev were girlish, and that their black dresses 
 
 Vol. L— 2
 
 26 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 were getting shabby. Miss Meny 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 glancing round at the house, the land- 
 scape, 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 ?" said Mrs. Dav- 
 ilow, at last, in a gentle, deprecatory tone. 
 
 "I think it is charming," said Gwendolen, quickly. "A ro- 
 mantic place ; any thing delightful may happen in it ; it would 
 be a good background for any thing. 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 pov- 
 erty. "We ought properly to have been living in splendor, and 
 have come down to this. It would have been as romantic as 
 could be. But I thought my uncle and aunt Ga^-coigne 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 ?" 
 
 " Yes, madam : they were here yesterday to give particular 
 orders about the fires and the dinner. But as to fires, I've had 
 'cm in all the rooms for the last week, and every thing 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 you 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 dining-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-piece ; the library with a general aspect
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 2*1 
 
 and smell of old brown leather ; and, lastly, the drawing-room, 
 which was entered through a small antechamber crowded with 
 venerable knickknacks. 
 
 " Mamma, mamma, pray come here I" said Gwendolen, Mrs. 
 Davilow having followed slowly in talk with the housekeeper. 
 " Here is an organ ! I will be Saint Cecilia ; some one shall 
 paint me as Saint Cecilia, Jocosa (this was her name for Miss 
 Merry), let down my hair. See, mamma !" 
 
 She had thro-wn off her hat and gloves, and seated herself be- 
 fore 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 enterino; 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 any 
 thing. 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 aston- 
 ishment, while she held open a hinged panel of the wainscot 
 at the other end of the room. 
 
 Every one, Gwendolen first, went to look. The opened panel 
 had disclosed the picture of 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 dis- 
 gust ; but Gwendolen shuddered silently, and Isabel, a plain and 
 altogether inconvenient child with an alarming memory, said, 
 
 "You will never stay in this room bv yourself, Gwendo- 
 len." 
 
 " How dare you open things which were meant to be shut 
 up, you pen'erse little creature !" said Gwendolen, in her anorri- 
 est 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.
 
 2S DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and let nobody open it again ; or, rather, let the key be brought 
 to me." 
 
 At this command to every body in general, Gwendolen turned 
 with a face which was flushed in reaction from her chill shud- 
 der, 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 busy upstairs 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 propitia- 
 tion. " She'll know what key it is." 
 
 " If you have laid out w^hat we want, go and see to the oth- 
 ers. 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." 
 
 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 color that sets you off ?" said Mrs. Davilow, as Gwen- 
 dolen stood obliquely with her three-quarter face turned toward 
 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 nose ; it would 
 liave done for any sort of character — a nose of all woik. 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 every thing
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD, 29 
 
 may be so happy now. "What have you to be gloomy about 
 now /" 
 
 "Nothing, dear," said Mrs. Davilow, seeming to rouse her- 
 self, and beginning to take oflE her dress. " It is always enough 
 for me to see you happy." 
 
 " But you should be happy yourself," said Gwendolen, 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 every thing make -shift about us, and 
 you looking so dull — what was the use of my being any thing ? 
 But now you might be happy." 
 
 " So I shall, dear," said Mrs. Davilow, patting the cheek that 
 was bending near her. 
 
 "Yes, but really. Xot with a sort of make-believe," said 
 Gwendolen, with resolute perseverance. " See what a hand and 
 arm I — much more beautiful than mine. Any one can see you 
 were altogether more beautiful." 
 
 " Xo, no, dear. I was always heavier. Xever half so charm- 
 ing 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 any thing i Is that 
 what marriage always comes to ?" 
 
 " Xo, 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 remarka- 
 ble. I have made up my mind not to let other people inter- 
 fere with me as they have done. Here is some 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 her mamma. 
 
 There was silence for a minute or two, till 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?" . .
 
 30 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 "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 any thing 
 else. It would be much better for her to be ignorant, mamma : 
 it is her role ; 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 why 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." 
 
 " 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 pos- 
 sible 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 
 w\as 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 dis- 
 position, 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 by a wifely 
 receptiveness. And there was much to encourage trust in her
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 31 
 
 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 than it had been earlier in 
 life. There were no distinctively clerical lines in the face, no 
 official reser\^e 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-gray 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, hav- 
 ing taken orders and a diphthong but shortly before his en-_ 
 gagement to Miss Armyn. If any one had objected that his 
 preparation for the clerical function was inadequate, his friends 
 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 felt 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 was much 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 Xesselrode'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 fluct- 
 uations, had become ecclesiastical rather than theological ; not 
 the modern Anglican, but what he would have called sound En- 
 glish, free from nonsense ; such as became a man who looked 
 at a national religion by daylight, and saw it in its relations to 
 other things. Xo clerical magistrate had greater weight at ses- 
 sions, 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 likely to be useful to
 
 32 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 tlie father of six sons and two daugliters ; and bitter observers 
 — for in Wessex, say ten years ago, there were persons whose 
 bitterness may now seem incredible — remarked that the color 
 of his opinions had changed in consistency with 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 matter of extreme interest to her that 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 cer- 
 tainly looked at her with admiration as he said, 
 
 " You have outgrown Anna, my dear," putting his arm ten- 
 derly 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 appear- 
 ance 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, say- 
 ino-, "A companion is just what I want. I am so glad we are 
 come to live here. And mamma will be much happier now 
 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 unimpor- 
 tant, and yet from her earliest days an obtrusive influential fact
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 33 
 
 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 shoul- 
 ders and lifted her eyebrows till she had no forehead left, how 
 Bertha and Fanny whispered and tittered together about every 
 thing, or how Isabel was always listening and staring and for- 
 getting where she was, and treading on the toes of her suffer- 
 ing elders ? 
 
 " You have brothers, Anna," said Gwendolen, while the sis- 
 ters were being noticed. " I think you are envdable 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 blackberry ing with Edwy and Lotta 
 as well as ever. I am not very fond of going out ; but I dare 
 say 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 every body knows, and I can think of noth- 
 ing else, except what papa says." 
 
 " I shall like going out with you very much," said Gwen- 
 dolen, well disposed toward this naive cousin. " Are you fond 
 of riding ?" 
 
 "Yes, but we have only one Shetland pony among 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 a horse, and ride a great deal now," said 
 Gwendolen, in a tone of decision. " Is the society pleasant in 
 this neighborhood ?" 
 
 " Papa says it is, very. There are the clergymen all about, 
 yovL know ; and the Quallons and the Arrowpoints, and Lord 
 Brackenshaw, and Sir Hugo Mallinger's place, where there is
 
 34 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 nobody — that's very nice, because we make picnics there — and 
 two or three famiUes at Wancester ; oh, and old Mrs. Vulcany 
 at Nutting wood, 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 a place like 
 Offendene. Except the rent, it involved no more expense than 
 an ordinary house at Wancester would have done. 
 
 "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 hun- 
 dred a year for my house, I could not keep 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 every thing; he allows 
 himself no extras, and gets his curates for nothing. It is rath- 
 er 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 ultimate- 
 ly 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 Brack- 
 enshaw will call upon you. And I have spoken for Gwendolen 
 to be a member of our Archery Club — the Brackenshaw Arch-^ 
 ery Club — the most select thing anywhere. That is, if she
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 35 
 
 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 end- 
 ed, 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 practice 
 with me. I must make you an accomplished archer before our 
 great meeting in July. In fact, as to neighborhood, 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. Mrs. 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 
 any thing she had known. Even the cheap curates, she inci- 
 dentally learned, were almost always young men of family, and 
 Mr. Middleton, the actual curate, was said to be quite an acqui- 
 sition : 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 toward securing it. Her mamma, she knew, in- 
 tended 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 un- 
 der 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
 
 36 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 Gwen- 
 dolen had played on the piano, which had been provided from 
 Wancester, had sung to her hearers' admiration, and had in- 
 duced her uncle to join her in a duet — what more softening in- 
 fluence than this on any uncle who would have sung finely if 
 his time had not been too much taken up by graver matters ? — 
 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," said Mrs. Davilow, looking at 
 Mr. Gascoigne. " Do you think we can manage it ?" 
 
 Mr. Gascoigne projected his lower lip and lifted his hand- 
 some eyebrows sarcastically at Gwendolen, who had seated her- 
 self with much grace on the elbow of her mamma's chair. 
 
 "We could lend her the pony sometimes," said Mrs. Gas- 
 coigne, 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 can not 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 favor- 
 ite one specified ?) 
 
 " She rides so well. She has had lessons, and the riding- 
 master 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 the 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 favored the demand. "There are the carriage-horses — 
 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 Avill save me so much
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 37 
 
 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 some 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 
 owned, was a deep young lady, suddenly moved away to the 
 other end of the long drawing-room, and busied herself with 
 arranging pieces of music. 
 
 " The dear child has had no indulgences, no pleasures," said 
 Mrs. Davilow, in a pleading under-tone. " I feel the expense is 
 rather imprudent in this first year of our settling. But she real- 
 ly 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. Gas- 
 coigne. " 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 backgammon-board, and had 
 begged to sit up an extra hour.) 
 
 " Certainly, a fine woman never looks better than on horse- 
 back," 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, if necessary," said Mrs. Davilow. 
 
 " Well, I will consult Lord Brackenshaw's head-groom. He 
 is raj 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 w^ere 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 first-rate marriage,
 
 38 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and I should not be doing my duty if I spared my trouble in 
 helping her forward. You know yourself she has been under 
 a disadvantage with such a father-in-law, 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 any thing 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 
 Gwendolen." 
 
 " Don't presuppose any thing of the kind, ray dear, and there 
 -will be no danger. Rex will never be at home for long to- 
 gether, 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, 
 w^hich 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 
 only be a little crying, and you can't save boys and girls from 
 that." 
 
 Mrs. Gascoigne's mind was satisfied : if any thing did happen, 
 there was the comfort of feeling that her husband would know 
 what was to be done, and would have the energy to do it.
 
 BOCK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 " Gorgihis Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte et saeree, 
 
 et que e'est faire en honnetes gens, que de debuter par \h. 
 
 '•'' Madelon. Mon Dieu ! que si tout le monde tous ressemblait, un roraan 
 serait bientot fini ! La belle chose que ce serait, si d'abord Cyrus epousait 
 Mandane, et qu'Aronce de plain-pied fut marie h. CleUe!. . . .Laissez-nous 
 faire ^ loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n'en pressez pas tant la conclusion." 
 — MOLIERE : Les Predeuses Ridicules. 
 
 It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote 
 that in the course of looking at things from every point of 
 view, he looked at Gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant 
 marriage. Why should he be expected to differ from his con- 
 temporaries in this matter, and wish his niece a worse end of 
 her charming maidenhood than they would approve as the best 
 possible ? It is rather to be set down to his credit that his feel- 
 ings on the subject were entirely good-natured. And in con- 
 sidering the relation of means to ends, it would have been mere 
 folly to have been guided by the exceptional and idyllic — to 
 have recommended 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. Gas- 
 coigne'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 res- 
 cued 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 
 neighborhood. 
 
 Her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen's own 
 wishes. But let no one suppose that she also contemplated a 
 brilliant marriao-e as the direct end of her witchinor the world 
 with her grace on horseback, or with any other accomplish- 
 ment. That she was to be married some time or other, she 
 would have felt obliged to admit ; and that her marriage would
 
 40 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 not be of a middling kind, such as most girls were content- 
 ed with, she felt quietly, unargumentatively sure. But her 
 thoughts never dwelt on marriage as the fulfillment of her am- 
 bition; the dramas in which she imagined herself a heroine 
 were not wrought up to that close. To be very much sued or 
 hopelessly sighed for as a bride was indeed an indispensable 
 and agreeable guarantee of womanly power ; but to become a 
 wife, and wear all the domestic fetters of that condition, was, 
 on the whole, a vexatious necessity. Her observation of mat- 
 rimony had inclined her to think it rather a dreary state, in 
 which a woman could not do what she liked, had more children 
 than were desirable, was consequently dull, and became irrevo- 
 cably 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 leadersliip to the man who 
 meant to lead ; and this delicate-limbed sylph of twenty meant 
 to lead. For such passions dwell in feminine breasts also. In 
 Gwendolen's, however, they dwelt among strictly feminine fur- 
 niture, and had no disturbing reference to the advancement of 
 learning or the balance of the constitution; her knowledge 
 being such as, with no sort of standing-room or length of lever, 
 could have been expected to move the world. She meant to 
 do what was pleasant to herself in a striking manner ; or, rath- 
 er, whatever she could do so as to strike others with admira- 
 tion, and get in that reflected way a more ardent sense of liv- 
 ing, 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 half-dozen items of flattering 
 regard generally known in a genteel suburb ? And words could 
 hardly be too wide or vague to indicate the prospect that made 
 a hazy largeness about poor Gwendolen on the heights of her 
 young self-exultation. 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
 
 • BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 41 
 
 worth less than herself, but would make the very best of the 
 chances that life offered her, and conquer circumstance by her 
 exceptional cleverness. Certainly, to be settled at Offendene, 
 with the notice of Lady Brackenshaw, the archery club, and in- 
 vitations to dine with the Arrowpoints, as the highest lights in 
 her scenery, was not a position that seemed to offer remarka- 
 ble chances ; but Gwendolen's confidence lay chiefly in herself. 
 She felt well equipped for the mastery of life. With regard 
 to much in her lot hitherto, she held herself rather hardly dealt 
 with ; but as to her " education," she would have admitted that 
 it had left her under no disadvantages. In the school-room 
 her quick mind had taken readily that strong starch of unex- 
 plained 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 suflSciently ac- 
 quainted with through novels, plays, and poems. About her 
 French and music, the two justifying accomplishments of a 
 young lady, she felt no ground for uneasiness ; and when to all 
 these qualifications, negative and positive, we add the sponta- 
 neous sense of capability some happy persons are bom with, so 
 that any subject they turn attention to impresses 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 world — perhaps the major- 
 ity — 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 help- 
 less in relation to them if they had turned up in conversation. 
 It must be remembered that no one had disputed her power or 
 her general superiority. As on the arrival at Offendene, so al- 
 ways 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 fire-place, Mrs. Davilow, whose own 
 weak eyes suffered much from this inconvenience, spoke apolo- 
 getically of it to Gwendolen. If, when they were under the 
 stress of traveling, she did not appear at the breakfast-table till 
 every one else had finished, the only question was, how Gwen-
 
 42 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 dolen's coffee and toast should still be of the hottest and crisp- 
 est; and when she appeared with her freshly brushed light- 
 brown hair streaming backward and awaiting her mamma's 
 hand to coil it up, her long brown eyes glancing bright as a 
 wav^e-washed onyx from under their long lashes, it was always 
 she herself who had to be tolerant — to beg that Alice, who sat 
 waiting on her, would not stick up her shoulders in that fright- 
 ful manner, and that Isabel, instead of pushing up to her and 
 asking questions, would go away to Miss Merry. 
 
 Always she was the princess in exile, who in time of famine 
 was to have her breakfast-roll made of the finest-bolted flour 
 from the seven thin ears of wheat, and in a general decamp- 
 ment was to have her silver fork kept out of the baggage. 
 How was this to be accounted for ? The answer may seem to 
 lie quite on the surface : in her beauty, a certain unusualness 
 about her, a decision of will which made itself felt in her grace- 
 ful movements and clear, unhesitating tones, so that if she came 
 into the room on a rainy day when every body 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, toward whom her mam- 
 ma had always been in an apologetic state of mind for the evils 
 brought on her by a step-father, 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 comparisons. I re- 
 member having seen the same assiduous, apologetic attention 
 awarded to persons who w^ere 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 inconven- 
 iences. Some of them were a very common sort of men. And 
 the only point of resemblance among them all was a strong de- 
 termination 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 43 
 
 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 Gwendo- 
 len 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 iridescence of her character — the 
 play of various, nay, contrary tendencies. For Macbeth's rhet- 
 oric about the impossibity 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 can not 
 speak a loyal word and be meanly silent, we can not 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 mur- 
 derous thought and the sharp backward stroke of repentance. 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 " Her wit 
 Values itself so highly, that to her 
 All matter else seems weak." 
 
 Much Ado about Nothing. 
 
 Gwendolen's reception in the neighborhood fulfilled her 
 uncle's expectations. From Brackenshaw Castle to the Firs at 
 AVancester, 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 hav- 
 ing 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 or- 
 der to have Gwendolen as 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.
 
 44 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Among the houses where Gwendolen was not quite liked, and 
 yet invited, was Quetcham Hall. One of her first invitations 
 was to a large dinner-party there, which made a sort of general 
 introduction for her to the society of the neighborhood ; for in 
 a select party of thirty, and of well-composed proportions as to 
 age, few visitable families could be entirely left out. No youth- 
 ful figure there was comparable to Gwendolen's as she passed 
 through the long suite of rooms adorned with light and flow- 
 ers, and, visible at first as a slim figure floating along in white 
 drapery, approached through one wide door-way after another 
 into fuller illumination and definiteness. 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 things, felt almost as much em- 
 barrassed as a rabbit suddenly deposited in that well -lighted 
 space. 
 
 " Who is that with Gascoigne ?" said the archdeacon, neg- 
 lecting a discussion of military manoeuvres on which, as a cler- 
 gyman, he was naturally appealed to. And his son, on the oth- 
 er 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 well-set head and jolly fig- 
 ure ?" 
 
 But to a mind of general benevolence, wishing every body 
 to look well, it w^as 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, unfortunate- 
 ly also dressed in white, immediately resembled a carte-de-visite 
 in which one would fancy the skirt alone to have been charged 
 for. Since Miss Arrowpoint was generally liked for the ami- 
 able, 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. "45 
 
 features," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, later in the evening, confiden- 
 tially to Mrs. Yulcany. "It is a certain style she has, which 
 produces a great effect at first, but afterward she is less agree- 
 able." 
 
 In fact, Gwendolen, not intending it, but intending the con- 
 trary, had offended her hostess, who, though not a splenetic or 
 vindictive woman, had her susceptibilities. Several conditions 
 had met in the Lady of Quetcham which to the reasoners in 
 that neighborhood 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, parrot-like voice, and a systematically high head-dress ; 
 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 well-grown and well-featured, pretty 
 women having sometimes harsh or husky voices, and the pro- 
 duction of feeble literature being found compatible with the 
 most diverse forms of physique, masculine as well as femi- 
 nine. 
 
 Gwendolen, who had a keen sense of absurdity in others, but 
 was kindly disposed toward any one who could make life agree- 
 able to her, meant to win Mrs. Arrowpoint by giving her an in- 
 terest and attention beyond what others were probably inclined 
 to show. But self-confidence is apt to address itself to an im- 
 aginary dullness 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 con- 
 ceiving 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 without suspicion that the various shades of her behav- 
 ior 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 tete-a-
 
 46 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 tete in the drawing-room after dinner. " Catherine will be very 
 glad to have so sympathetic a neighbor. 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 thorough musician." 
 
 " Catherine has certainly had every advantage. We have a 
 first-rate musician in the house now — Herr Klesmer; perhaps 
 you know all his compositions. You must allow me to intro- 
 duce 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 ad- 
 vanced now. I suppose you have read every thing." 
 
 " 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 at 
 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 ! Home- 
 made 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 any thing to write a book !" 
 
 " And why should you not ?" said Mrs. Arrowpoint, encour- 
 agingly. " You have but to begin, as I did. Pen, ink, and pa- 
 per are at every body'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 became aware of danger, and
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 4Y 
 
 added, quickly, " In Sliakspeare, you know, and other great writ- 
 ers 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 rpy 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 are things, 
 I dare say, I shall publish eventually : several 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 charac- 
 ter of Leonora, who, in my opinion, was a cold-hearted woman, 
 else she would have married him in spite of her brother — they 
 are all wrong. I differ from every body." 
 
 " How very interesting I" said Gwendolen. " I like to differ 
 from every body. 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 ' Gerusalemme Liberata,' 
 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, de- 
 cisively, though she could no more have explained these glib 
 words than if they had been Coptic or Etruscan. " I shall be 
 so glad to learn all 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,
 
 48 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " ' 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 pri- 
 vate. Mad people are often very cunning." 
 
 Again a shade flitted over Mrs. Arrowpoint's face ; but the 
 entrance of the gentlemen prevented any immediate mischief 
 between her and this too quick young lady, who had overacted 
 her naivete. 
 
 "Ah, here comes Herr Klesmer," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, ris- 
 ing ; and presently bringing him to Gwendolen, she left them 
 to a dialogue which was agreeable on both sides, Herr Klesmer 
 being a felicitous combination of the German, the Sclave, and 
 the Semite, with grand features, brown hair floating in artistic 
 fashion, and brown eyes in spectacles. His English had little 
 f oreignness except its fluency ; and his alarming cleverness was 
 made less formidable just then by a certain softening air of sil- 
 liness which will sometimes befall even genius in the desire of 
 being agreeable to beaut}'-. 
 
 Music was soon begun. Miss Arrowpoint and Herr Klesmer 
 played a four-handed piece on two pianos which convinced the 
 company in general that it was long, and Gwendolen in partic- 
 ular that the neutral, placid-faced Miss Arrowpoint had a mas- 
 tery of the instrument which put her own execution out of the 
 question — though she was not discouraged as to her often- 
 praised touch and style. After this every one became anxious 
 to hear Gwendolen sing; especially Mr. Arrowpoint; as was 
 natural in a host and a perfect gentleman, of whom no one had 
 any thing to say but that he had married Miss Guttler, and im- 
 ported 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 sung. 
 
 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 (some one 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 ordi-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 49 
 
 nary hearers, and she had been used to unmingled applause. 
 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 favorite aria of Bellini's, in which she 
 felt quite sure of herself. 
 
 " Charming !" said Mr. Arrowpoint, who had remained near, 
 and the word was echoed around without more insincerity than 
 we recognize 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 toward Herr Klesmer, saying, with a look of smiling ap- 
 peal, " It would be too cruel to a great musician. You can not 
 like to hear poor amateur singing." 
 
 " No, truly ; but that makes nothing," said Herr Klesmer, 
 suddenly speaking in an odious Gennan fashion with staccato 
 endings, quite unobservable in him before, and apparently de- 
 pending on a change of mood, as Irishmen resume their strong- 
 est brogue when they are fervid or 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 color- 
 ed 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 Gwen- 
 dolen was more conspicuously admiring than was quite consist- 
 ent 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 any thing 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 every one else is admir- 
 ing." 
 
 " I should be very much obliged to him for telling me the 
 worst," said Gwendolen, recovering herself. " I dare say I have 
 
 Vol. L— 3
 
 50 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 been extremely ill tauglit, in addition to Iiaving no talent — 
 only liking for music." This was very well expressed, consid- 
 erino; 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 whicli expresses a puerile state of cult- 
 ure — a dandling, canting, seesaw kind of stuff — the passion and 
 thought of people without any breadth of horizon. There is a 
 sort of self-satisfied 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. By-and-by," said Gwendolen, with a sink- 
 ing 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 help- 
 ed her by saying, 
 
 " Yes, by-and-by. 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 compo- 
 sition of his own, a fantasia called " Freudvoll, Leidvoll, Gedan- 
 kenvoll " — 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 re- 
 sponsive instrument lends itself to, having an imperious magic 
 in his fingers that seemed to send a nerve-thrill 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 fullness 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 laugh-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 51 
 
 ing at them as if they belonged to somebody else. Her eyes 
 had become brighter, her cheeks slightly flushed, and her tongue 
 ready for any mischievous remarks. 
 
 "I wish you would sing to us again, Miss 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 HeiT Klesmer's performance was ended. 
 "That is the style of music for me. I never can make any 
 thing 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 ; an- 
 other song from you would be a relaxation," said Mrs. Aitow- 
 point, w^ho 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 rudeness, but 
 merely said, " Well, we will not press any thing disagreeably ;" 
 and as there was a perceptible outrush of imprisoned conver- 
 sation 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 neighborhood," said young Clin- 
 tock, well pleased with his station in front of Gwendolen. 
 
 "Exceedingly. There seems to be a little of every thing, 
 and not much of any thing." 
 
 " That is rather equivocal praise." 
 
 " Not with me. I like a little of every thing. A little ab- 
 surdity, for example, is very amusing. I am thankful for a 
 few queer 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,
 
 52 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 I should go in for a croquet club. You are one of the arch- 
 ers, I think. But, depend upon it, croquet is the game of the 
 future. It wants writing 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 any thing better." 
 
 " I shall study croquet to-morrow. 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 is 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 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 at- 
 tentions from the family at Quetcham, not merely because in- 
 vitations have larger grounds than those of personal liking, but 
 because the trying little scene at the piano had awakened a 
 kindly solicitude to her in the gentle mind of Miss Arrowpoint, 
 who managed all the invitations and visits, her mother being 
 otherwise occupied. 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 " Croyez-vous m'avoir humiliee pour m'avoir appris que la terre tourne 
 autour du soleil ? Je vous jure que je ne m'en estime pas moins." — Fonte- 
 NELLE : Pluralite des Mondes. 
 
 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 mu- 
 sical advantages, so as to be able to question Herr Klesmer's 
 taste with the confidence of thorough knowledge ; still less, to 
 admit even to herself that Miss Arrowpoint, each time they 
 met, raised an unwonted feeling of jealousy in her ; not in the
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 53 
 
 least because she was an heiress, but because it was really pro- 
 voking that a girl whose appearance you could not character- 
 ize except by saying that her figure was slight and of middle 
 stature, her features small, her eyes tolerable, and her complex- 
 ion 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 admira- 
 tion and keep you in awe of her standard. This insignificant- 
 looking young lady of four-and-twenty, 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 agi'eeable to think of bv bein^' 
 always veiled under a perfect kindness of manner. 
 
 But Gwendolen did not like to dwell on facts which threw 
 an unfavorable light on herself. The musical Magus who had 
 so suddenly widened her horizon was not always on the scene ; 
 and his being constantly backward and forward between Lon- 
 don 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 neighbors. Perhaps it would have been rash to say then 
 that she was at all exceptional inwardly, or that the unusual in 
 her was more than her rare gTace of movement and bearino-, 
 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 makes 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 remark- 
 able has an ideal limit in consistency with the highest breeding 
 and perfect freedom from the sordid need of income. Gwen-
 
 54 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 dolen was as inwardly rebellious against tlie restraints of fami- 
 ly 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 once have marked herself off 
 from any sort of theoretical or practically reforming women by 
 satirizing them. She rejoiced to feel herself exceptional ; but 
 her horizon was that of the genteel romance where the hero- 
 ine's soul poured out in her journal is full of vague power, orig- 
 inality, and general rebellion, while her life moves strictly in the 
 sphere of fashion ; and if she wanders into a swamp, the pa- 
 thos lies partly, so to speak, in her having on her satin shoes. 
 Here is a 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 ex- 
 istence as fuel, is nevertheless held captive by the ordinary 
 wire-work of social forms, and does nothing particular. 
 
 This commonplace result was what Gwendolen found herself 
 threatened with even in the novelty of the first winter at Offen- 
 dene. 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 any thing would happen there; but, on 
 the whole, the neighborhood 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 invita- 
 tions, and she came home after little sallies of satire and know- 
 ingness, such as had offended Mrs. Arrowpoint, to fill the inter- 
 vening days with the most girlish devices. The strongest asser- 
 tion she was able to make of her individual claims was to leave 
 out Alice's lessons (on the principle that Alice was more likely 
 to excel in ignorance), and to employ her with Miss Merry, and 
 the maid who was understood to wait on all the ladies, in help- 
 ing to arrange various dramatic costumes which Gwendolen 
 pleased herself with having in readiness for some future occa- 
 sions of acting in charades or theatrical pieces, occasions which 
 she meant to bring about by force of will or contrivance. She
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 55 
 
 had never acted — only made a figure in tableaux vivans at 
 school ; but she felt assured that she could act well, and havingr 
 been once or twice to the Theatre Fran^ais, 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 i»ore beautiful than that thin Jewess. Mean- 
 while the wet days before Christmas were passed pleasantly in 
 the preparation of costumes, Greek, Oriental, and Composite, in 
 which Gwendolen attitudinized and speechified before a domes- 
 tic 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 bag- 
 gy thing with her arras all bare, she was not in\'ited a second 
 time. 
 
 " Do I look as well as Rachel, mamma V 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 in- 
 tention. 
 
 " You have better arms than Rachel," said Mrs. Davilow ; 
 " your arms would do for any thing, 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, provision- 
 ally ; then she added, with decision, " I think 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 ac- 
 tions." 
 
 " There may be something in that," said Mrs. Davilow, lan- 
 guidly. " But I don't know what good there is in making one's 
 blood creep. And if there is any thing horrible to be done, I 
 should like it to be left 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, cautious 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, thank 
 God." 
 
 " I am not talking about reality, mamma," said Gwendolen,
 
 56 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 cha- 
 rades 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 w^ill act Napoleon looking over the sea. He 
 looks just like Napoleon. Rex can do any thing." 
 
 " I don't in the least believe in your Rex, Anna," said Gwen- 
 dolen, lauo-hino* at her. " He will turn out to be like those 
 wretched blue and yellow water-colors of his which you hang 
 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 every body but 
 you calls Mr. Middleton clever." 
 
 " So he may be, in a dark-lantern sort of way. But he is a 
 stick. If he had to say, 'Perdition catch my soul, but I do 
 love her !' he would say it in just the same tone as, ' Here end- 
 eth 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 admires 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 contemptuous- 
 ly. " Perdition catch my soul if I love him /" 
 
 " No, of course ; papa, I think, w^ould 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 Gwen- 
 dolen, wickedly. 
 
 " Now, Gwendolen dear, you will not V 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.
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 57 
 
 For no one ever thought of laughing at Mr. Middleton before 
 you. Every one said he was nice-looking, and his manners 
 perfect. I am sure I have always been frightened at him be- 
 cause of his learning and his square-cut coat, and his being a 
 nephew of the bishop's, and all that. But you will not ridicule 
 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 fore-finger. " I don't ever 
 want to do any thing that will vex you. Especially if Rex is 
 to make every thing come off — charades and every thing," 
 
 And when at last Rex was there, the animation he brought 
 into the life at Offendene and the rectory, and his ready part- 
 nership 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 open-hearted youth, with a 
 handsome face strongly resembling his father's and Anna's, but 
 softer in expression than the one, and larger in scale than the 
 other : a bright, healthy, loving nature, enjoying ordinary, in- 
 nocent things so much that vice had no temptation for him, and 
 what he knew of it lay too entirely in the outer courts and lit- 
 tle-visited chambers of his mind for him to think of it with 
 great repulsion. Vicious habits were with him " what some 
 fellows did" — "stupid stuff " which he liked to keep aloof 
 from. He returned Anna's affection as fully as could be ex- 
 pected 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 Gwen- 
 dolen ; and whatever she wished became a ruling purpose for 
 Rex. The charades came off according 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 tableaux were rehearsed and presented, Mrs. Dav- 
 ilow 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 
 
 3*
 
 58 DANIEL DEROXDA. 
 
 India with a Wancester " coach," having no time to spare, and 
 being generally dismal under a cram of every thing except the 
 answers needed at the forthcoming examination, which might 
 disclose the welfare of our Indian Empire to be somehow con- 
 nected 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 jealous 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 favor as to war- 
 rant 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 young clergyman with 
 pale whiskers and square-cut collar, felt nothing more on the 
 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 interpretation. 
 
 Some persons might have thought beforehand that a young- 
 man of Anglican leanings, 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 clergy- 
 man's wife ; or that a young man informed by theological read- 
 ing 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 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 59 
 
 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 Gwen- 
 dolen's. He could see no obstacles, poor boy ! his own love 
 seemed a guarantee of hers, since it was one with the unper- 
 turbed delight in her image, so that he could no more dream 
 of her giving him pain than an Egyptian could dream of snow. 
 She sung 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. Xo mark of sympathy 
 seemed absent. That because Gwendolen was the most perfect 
 creature in the world she was to make a grand match, had not 
 occurred to him. He had no conceit — at least, not more than 
 goes to make up the necessary gum and consistence of a sub- 
 stantial personality : it was only that in the young bliss of lov- 
 ing he took Gwendolen's perfection as part of that good which 
 had seemed one with life to him, being the outcome of a hap- 
 py, well-embodied 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 pre- 
 conceived by any one who, like him, had only seen her habit- 
 ual fearlessness in active exercises and her high spirits in so- 
 ciety. 
 
 After a good deal of rehearsing, it was resolved that a select 
 party should be invited to Offendene to witness the perform- 
 ances 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 dream- 
 ing, that suited her purpose of getting a statuesque pose in this 
 favorite costume. To choose a motive from Racine was of no
 
 60 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 use, since Rex and tlie others could not declaim French verse, 
 and improvised speeches would turn the scene into burlesque. 
 Besides, Mr. Gascoigne prohibited the acting of scenes from 
 plays ; he usually protested against the notion that an amuse- 
 ment 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 that part of Wessex, which did not ex- 
 clude his sanction of the young people's acting charades in his 
 sister-in-law's house — a very different affair from private theat- 
 ricals in the full sense of the word. 
 
 " Every body, 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 any one's speech. This pleased her thoroughly, and 
 the only question was the choice of the tableau. 
 
 " Something pleasant, children, I beseech you," said Mrs. 
 Davilow ; " I can't have any Greek wickedness." 
 
 " It is no worse 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 would be look- 
 ing round 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 afterward she said with decision, 
 " No. It will not do. There must be three men in proper 
 costume, else it will be ridiculous." 
 
 " I have 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, laughingly ; " it will be more Shakspearian and 
 romantic if Leontes looks 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 in- 
 troduce the striking-up of the music as a signal for her to step 
 down and advance ; when Leontes, instead of embracing her,
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 61 
 
 was to kneel and kiss the hem of her garment, and so the cur- 
 tain was to fall. The antechamber with folding-doors lent it- 
 self admirably to the purposes of a stage, and the whole of the 
 establishment, with the addition of Jan-ett the village carpen- 
 ter, was absorbed in the preparations for an entertainment 
 which, considering that it was an imitation of acting, was like- 
 ly 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 pros- 
 pect of this occasion, for she knew that Herr Klesmer was again 
 at Quetcham, and she had taken care to include him among the 
 invited. 
 
 Klesmer came. He was in one of his placid, silent moods, 
 and sat in serene contemplation, replying to all appeals in be- 
 nignant-sounding syllables more or less articulate — as taking 
 np his cross meekly in a world overgrown with amateurs, or as 
 careful how he moved his lion paws lest he should crush a ram- 
 pant and vociferous mouse. 
 
 Every thing, indeed, went off smoothly and according to ex- 
 pectation — all that was improvised and accidental being of a 
 probable sort — until the incident occurred which showed Gwen- 
 dolen in an unforeseen phase of emotion. How it came about 
 was at first a mystery. 
 
 The tableau of Hermione was doubly striking from its dis- 
 similarity with what had gone before : it was answering per- 
 fectly, and a murmur of applause had been gradually suppress- 
 ed while Leontes gave his permission that Paulina should ex- 
 ercise her utmost 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 ad- 
 vance and descend. 
 
 "Music, awake her — strike I'' said Paulina (Mrs. Davilow, 
 who, by special entreaty, had consented to take the part in a 
 white burnous and hood). 
 
 Herr Klesmer, who had been good-natured enough to seat 
 himself at the piano, struck 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
 
 62 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 on the right, opposite the stage, and disclosed the picture of the 
 dead face and the fleeing figure, brought out in pale definite- 
 ness by the position of the wax-lights. Every one was startled, 
 but all eyes in the act of turning toward 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 had entered : her pallid lips were parted ; her eyes, 
 usually narrowed under their long lashes, were dilated and fixed. 
 Her mother, less surprised than alarmed, rushed toward her, 
 and Rex, too, could not help going to her side. But the touch 
 of her mother's arm had the effect of an electric charge : Gwen- 
 dolen fell on her knees and put her hands before her face. She 
 was still trembling, but mute ; and it seemed that she had self- 
 consciousness 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 w^ere relieving their 
 minds by explanation. 
 
 "A magnificent bit oi plastik that!" said Klesmer to Miss 
 Arrowpoint. And a quick fire of under-toned question and an- 
 swer 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 be- 
 hind 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 door 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 
 Merry, if possible, to get the key. But this readiness to ex- 
 plain the mystery was thought by Mrs. Vulcany unbecoming in
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 63 
 
 a clergyman, and she observed in an under-tone that Mr. Gas- 
 coigne was always a little too worldly for her taste. However, 
 the key was produced, and the rector turned it in the lock with 
 an emphasis rather offensively rationalizing — as who should 
 say, "It will not start open again" — putting the key in his 
 pocket as a security. 
 
 However, Gwendolen soon re - appeared, showing 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 thank you for 
 devising a perfect climax : you could not have chosen a finer 
 bit of plastik,^^ there was a flush of pleasure in her face. She 
 liked to accept as a belief what was really no more than deli- 
 cate feigning. He divined that the betrayal 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 com- 
 placency. 
 
 But too many were in the secret of what had been included 
 in the rehearsals and what had not, and no one besides Kles- 
 mer took the trouble to soothe Gwendolen's imagined mortifi- 
 cation. The general sentiment was that the incident should be 
 let drop. 
 
 There had really been a medium concerned in the starting- 
 open of the panel ; one who had quit 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 glimpse 
 she had had of the strange picture on the day of arrival at Of- 
 fendene, had kept her on the watch for an opportunity of find- 
 ing 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. AVhile she was in- 
 dulging her thirst for knowledge in this way, a noise which 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 the key to its former place, stilling
 
 64 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 any anxiety by tlie thought that if the door were discovered to 
 be unlocked nobody could know how the 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 break- 
 fast-table, " I know the door was locked before the housekeeper 
 gave me the key, for I tried it myself afterward. Some one 
 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 any time for 
 resolve she said, Avith a trembling lip, " Please forgive me, Gwen- 
 dolen !" 
 
 The forgiveness was sooner 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 remembered 
 madness, an unexplained exception from her normal life ; and in 
 this instance she felt a peculiar vexation that her helpless fear 
 had shown itself, not, as usual, in solitude, but in well-lighted 
 company. Her ideal was to be daring in speech and reckless 
 in braving dangers, 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 can not conceive her- 
 self as any thing else than a lady, or as in any position which 
 would lack the tribute of respect. She had no permanent con- 
 sciousness of other fetters, or of more spiritual restraints, hav- 
 ing always disliked 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 alarm, no longing ; so that the question, whether she believed 
 it, had not occurred to her, any more than it had occurred to 
 her to inquire into the conditions of colonial property and 
 banking, on which, as she had had many opportunities of know- 
 ing, the family fortune Avas dependent. All these facts about 
 herself she w^ould have been ready to admit, and even, more or 
 less indirectly, to state. What she unwillingly recognized and 
 would have been glad for others to be unaware of, was that li-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 65 
 
 ability 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, or with any human relations. She was 
 ashamed and frightened, as at what might happen again, in re- 
 membering her tremor on suddenly feeling herself alone, when, 
 for example, she was walking without companionship and there 
 came some rapid change in the light. Solitude in any wide 
 scene impressed her with an undefined feeling of immeasurable 
 existence aloof from her, in the midst of which she was help- 
 lessly incapable of asserting herself. The little astronomy 
 taught her at school used sometimes to set her imao-ination at 
 work in a way that made her tremble ; but always when some 
 one joined her she recovered her indifference 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 nomen- 
 clature belonging to this world was no more identified for her 
 with those uneasy impressions of awe than her uncle's surplices 
 seen out of use at the rectory. AYith human ears and eyes 
 about her, she had always hitherto recovered Ber confidence, 
 and felt the possibility of winning empire. 
 
 To her mamma and others her fits of timidity or terror were 
 sufiiciently accounted for by her " sensitiveness " or the " ex- 
 citability of her nature ;" but these explanatory phrases re- 
 quired conciliation with much that seemed to be blank indif- 
 ference or rare self-mastery. Heat is a great agent and a use- 
 ful 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, lo^^ng a creature like Gwendolen, 
 would not be inclined to regard every peculiarity in her as a 
 mark of pre-eminence? That was what Rex did. After the 
 Hermione scene he was more persuaded than ever that she 
 must be instinct with all feeling, and not only readier to re- 
 spond to a worshipful love, but able to love better than other 
 girls. Rex felt the summer on his young wings, and soared 
 happily.
 
 66 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 CHAPTER yil. 
 
 ^'■Perigot. As the bonny lasse passed bye, 
 Willie. Hey, ho, bonnilasse ! 
 Perigot. She roode at me with glauncing eye, 
 Willie. As clear as the erystall glasse. 
 Pe^ngot. All as the sunny beame so bright, 
 Willie. Hey, ho, the sunnebeame ! 
 Perigot. Glaunceth from Phoebus' face forthright, 
 Willie. So love into thy heart did streame." 
 
 Spenser: Sliephearcfs Calendar. 
 
 "The kindliest symptom, yet the most alarming crisis in the ticklish 
 state of youth ; the nourisher and destroyer of hopeful wits ; . . . the servi- 
 tude above freedom ; the gentle mind's religion ; the liberal superstition." 
 — Charles Lamb. 
 
 The first sign of the unimagined snow-storm was like the 
 transparent white cloud 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 
 which 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 neutralized 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 contemplation as of some wondrous 
 and beautiful animal whose nature was a mystery, and who, for 
 any thing 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 conviction 
 which she dared not utter, that Gwendolen would never care 
 for Rex. AVhat she herself held in tenderness and reverence
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 67 
 
 had constantly seemed indifferent to Gwendolen, and it was 
 easier to imagine her scorning Rex than returning any tender- 
 ness of his. Besides, she was always thinking of being some- 
 thing 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 any thing 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 I 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 that he 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 reserved not only about his feelings, 
 but — which was more remarkable to Anna — about certain ac- 
 tions. She, on her side, was nervous each time her father or 
 mother began to speak to her in private, lest they should say 
 any thing 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 pantomime 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. 
 
 " AYhere are you going. Rex ?" said Anna, one gray 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, timidlv. 
 
 " She told you, did she ?" 
 
 " No, but I thought — Does papa know you are going ?" 
 
 " Xot that I am aware of. I don't suppose he would trouble 
 himself about the matter."
 
 68 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " You are going to use liis horse ?" 
 
 " He knows I do that whenever I can." 
 
 "Don't let Gwendolen ride after the hounds, Rex," said 
 Anna, whose fears gifted her with second-sight. 
 
 " 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 of a little anger. 
 
 " Then she would not mind me," said Rex, perversely mak- 
 ing a joke of poor Anna's anxiety. 
 
 " Oh, Rex, I can not bear it. You will make yourself very 
 unhappy." Here Anna burst into tears. 
 
 " 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 con- 
 trol of herself. 
 
 Rex reddened, and hurried away from her out of the hall 
 door, leaving her to the miserable consciousness of having made 
 herself disagreeable in vain. 
 
 He did think of her words as he rode along : they had the 
 unwelcomeness which all unfavorable fortune - telling 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 resist- 
 ant belief to the contrary of hers, accompanied with a new de- 
 termination 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 she would not 
 have waited beyond a reasonable time. But now the groom
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 69 
 
 was dismissed, and the two rode away in delightful freedom. 
 Gwendolen was in her highest spirits, and Rex thought that 
 she had never looked so lovely before: her figure, her loner 
 white throat, and the curves of her cheek and chin, were al- 
 ways set off to perfection by the compact simplicity of her 
 riding-dress. He could not conceive a more perfect girl ; and 
 to a youthful lover like Rex it seems that the fundamental 
 identity of the good, the true, and the beautiful is already ex- 
 tant and manifest in the object of his love. Most obsen^ers 
 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 indefinable stino-- 
 ing quality — as it were a trace of demon ancestry — which 
 made some beholders hesitate in their admiration of Gwen- 
 dolen. 
 
 It was an exquisite January morning in which there was no 
 threat of rain, but a gray sky making the calmest background 
 for the charms of a mild winter scene — the grassy borders of 
 the lanes, the hedge-rows sprinkled with red berries and haunt- 
 ed 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 min- 
 gled with the freshness of their youth ; and every sound that 
 came from their clear throats, every glance they gave each oth- 
 er, 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 beau- 
 tiful 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 be- 
 lieved in was there. Goodness is a large, often a prospective 
 word ; like harvest, which at one stage when we talk of it lies 
 all under -ground, with an indeterminate future : is the germ 
 prospering in the darkness ? at another, it has put forth deli- 
 cate green blades, and by-and-by the trembling blossoms are
 
 VO DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ready to be dashed off by an hour of rough wind or rain. 
 Each stage has its peculiar blight, and may have the healthy 
 life choked out of it by a particular action of the foul land 
 which rears or neighbors it, or by damage brought from foul- 
 ness afar. 
 
 "Anna has got it into her head that you would want to ride 
 after the hounds this morning," said Rex, whose secret associa- 
 tions with Anna's words made this speech seem quite perilous- 
 ly 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 intend- 
 ing 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 alw^ays dull. I do what is 
 unlikely." 
 
 "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 to 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 verte- 
 brae a trifle more curved in their position, ten to one Gwendo- 
 len's words would have had a jar in them for the sweet-natured 
 Rex. But every thing odd in her speech was humor and pretty 
 banter, which he was only anxious to turn toward one point.) 
 . " Can you manage to feel only what pleases you ?" said he. 
 
 "Of course not; that comes from what other people do. 
 But if the world were pleasanter, one would only feel what was
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 71 
 
 pleasant. Girls' 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 dear- 
 ly, we want to do as she likes ; so, after all, you have your own 
 way." 
 
 " I don't believe it. 1 never saw a married woman who had 
 her ow*n way." 
 
 " What should you like to do ?" said Rex, quite guilelessly, 
 and in real anxiety. 
 
 " Oh, I don't know ! — go to the North Pole, or ride steeple- 
 chases, or go to be a queen in the East like Lady Hester Stan- 
 hope," said Gwendolen, flightily. Her words were bom on her 
 lips, but she would have been at a loss to give an answer of 
 deeper origin. 
 
 " You don't mean you w^ould never be married ?" 
 
 " No ; I didn't say that. Only when I married, I should not 
 do as other women do." 
 
 " You might do just as you liked, if you mamed a man who 
 loved you more dearly than any thing else in the w^orld," said 
 Rex, who, poor youth, was moving in themes outside the curric- 
 ulum in which he had promised to win distinction. " I know 
 one who does." 
 
 " Don't talk of Mr. Middleton, for Heaven's sake !" said Gwen- 
 dolen, 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 he felt encouraged. Gwendolen was 
 perfectly aware that her cousin was in love with her ; but she 
 had no idea that the matter w^as 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 adored, there was a certain 
 fierceness of maidenhood in her. 
 
 But all other thoughts were soon lost for her in the excite-
 
 72 
 
 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ment of the scene at the Three Barns. Several gentlemen of 
 the hunt knew her, and she exchanged pleasant greetings. Rex 
 could not get another word with her. The color, 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 
 kind of violent exercise unseemly in a woman, and that, what- 
 ever 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 kitchen- 
 maid, and still spoke like one. This last argument had some 
 effect on Gwendolen, and had kept her halting between her de- 
 sire to assert her freedom, and her horror of being classed with 
 Mrs. Gadsby. 
 
 Some of the most unexceptionable women in the neighbor- 
 hood occasionally went to see the hounds throw off; but it 
 happened that none of them were present this morning to ab- 
 stain from following, while Mrs. Gadsby, with her doubtful an- 
 tecedents, grammatical and otherwise, was not visible to make 
 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 color on the 
 background of green and gray stillness — that utmost excite- 
 ment 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 centaur-power which be- 
 long 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 oc- 
 cupied with acquaintances, or looked at by would-be acquaint- 
 ances, all on lively horses which veered about and swept the 
 surrounding space as effectually as a revolving lever. 
 
 " Glad to see you here this fine morning. Miss Harleth," said 
 Lord Brackenshaw, a middle-aged peer of aristocratic seediness, 
 in stained pink, with easy-going manners which would have 
 made the threatened Deluge seem of no consequence. "We
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 73 
 
 shall have a first-rate 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 true ; she was never fearful in action and companionship. 
 " I have often taken him at some rails and a ditch too, near — " 
 
 " Ah, by Jove 1" said his lordship, quietly, in notation that 
 something was happening which must break off the dialogue ; 
 and as he reined off his horse, Rex was bringing his sober hack- 
 ney 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 every thing 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 impetus 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 gray 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, ha\ing, if she had 
 thought of risk, a core of confidence that no ill luck would hap- 
 pen 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 wiz- 
 ard's spell, on a stiff clerical hackney, would have made her 
 laugh 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 ; and 
 Rex was soon so far behind that if she had looked she would 
 not have seen him. For I grieve to say that in 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, namelv, on foot (a loose wav of hunting 
 
 Vol. I.— 4
 
 74 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 re- 
 covery 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 occa- 
 sion : he not only knew perfectly well what was the matter 
 with the horse, how far they were both from the nearest pub- 
 lic-house 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 in again for you. I's see Nash 
 the bone-setter 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, who 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 eye pushed out once — that was a rum go as ever I see : you 
 can't have a bit o' fun wi'out such a sort o' things — but it went 
 in again. I's swallowed three teeth mysen, as sure as I'm alive. 
 Now, sirrey " (this was addressed 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 lie helped 
 Rex to get home with as little delay as possible. There was 
 no alternative but to get home, though all the while he was in 
 anxiety about Gwendolen, and more miserable in the thought 
 that she too might have had an accident than in the pain of 
 ■^lis own bruises and the annoyance he Avas about to cause his fa- 
 ther. He comforted himself about her by reflecting that every 
 one would be anxious to take care of her, and that some ac- 
 quaintance would be sure to conduct her home. 
 
 Mr. Gascoigne was already at home, and was wanting letters
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 75 
 
 in his stady, when he was interrapted by seeing poor Rex come 
 in with a face which was not the less handsome and ingratia- 
 ting for being pale and a little distressed. He was secretly the 
 favorite son, and a young portrait of the father ; who, however, 
 never treated him with any partiality — rather, with an extra 
 rigor. Mr. Gascoigne having inquired of Anna, knew that Rex 
 had gone with Gwendolen to the meet at the Three Bams. 
 
 " What's the matter ?" he said, hastily, not laying down his 
 pen. 
 
 " I'm 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 Bams to see the hounds throw off." 
 
 "And you were fool enough to follow ?" 
 
 " Yes, sir. I didn't go at 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, that'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." 
 
 " I suppose it was she who led you on, eh ?" said Mr. Gas- 
 coigne, laying down his pen, leaning back in his chair, and look- 
 ing 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,
 
 76 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 to-morrow 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 wdll not insist on my going immediately, sir." 
 
 "Do you feel too ill?" 
 
 " No, not that, but — " here Rex bit his lips and felt the tears 
 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 Gwen- 
 dolen, if that is what you want." 
 
 Rex broke down. He thought he discerned an intention 
 fatal to his happiness, nay, his life. He w^as accustomed to be- 
 lieve in his father's penetration, and to expect firmness. " Fa- 
 ther, I can't go away without telling her that I love her, and 
 knowing that she loves me." 
 
 Mr. Gascoigne was inwardly going through some self-rebuke 
 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 every reason 
 against it. An engagement at your age would be totally rash 
 and unjustifiable ; and, moreover, alliances between first cousins 
 are undesirable. Make up your mind to a brief disappoint- 
 ment. Life is full of them. We 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 noth- 
 ing. I shouldn't mind any thing, if it were settled between us. 
 I could do any thing then," said Rex, impetuously. " But it's
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. '77 
 
 of no use to pretend tliat 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 to-morrow 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 delighted 
 with her spirited riding. All this was told at once to her un- 
 cle, that he might see how w^ell 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 re- 
 garded by the Brackenshaws, and their opinion as to her fol- 
 lowing the hounds really touched the essence of his objection. 
 However, he was not obliged to say any thing 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 w^hich Mrs. Davilow had 
 meant to account for, " children don't take after their parents 
 in broken legs." 
 
 Xot 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 be- 
 hind, and gone home in despair ;" and it could not be denied 
 that this was fortunate so far as it made way for Lord Brack- 
 enshaw's bringing her home. But now Mr. Gascoigne said, 
 with some emphasis, looking at Gwendolen,
 
 78 ■ DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " Well, the exploit has ended better for you than for Rex." 
 
 "Yes, I dare say 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 arm-chair, resting his elbows and fitting his 
 palms and fingers together, while he closed his lips, and looked 
 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 w^ent on : "He put his shoulder out, and got 
 some bruises, 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 
 knees 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, 
 since Rex's arm had been reset; and now, at the descriptive 
 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 disap- 
 probation than if he had not had counteracting reasons to be 
 glad that Gwendolen showed no deep feeling 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 79 
 
 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 opin- 
 ion 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 laugh at broken bones, child ?" said Mrs. Dav- 
 ilow, still under her dominant 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 least I was, to encourao;e her in askins^ for it." 
 
 " Yes, seriously, Gwendolen," said Mr. Gascoigne, in a judi- 
 cious tone of rational advice to a person understood to be alto- 
 gether rational, "I strongly recommend you — I shall ask you 
 to oblige me so far — not to repeat your adventure of to-day. 
 Lord Brackenshaw 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. De- 
 pend upon it, his lordship would not choose that Lady Beatrice 
 or Lady Maria should hunt in this part of the country, if she 
 were old enough to do so. When you are married, it will be 
 different : you may do 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 any thing so horrible as to 
 marry without that prospect, at least," said Gwendolen, pettish- 
 ly. Her uncle's speech had given her annoyance, which she 
 could not show more directly ; but she felt that she was com- 
 mitting herself, and, after moving carelessly to another part of 
 the room, went out. 
 
 " She always speaks in that way about marriage," said Mrs. 
 Davilow ; " but it will be different when she has seen the riorht 
 person." 
 
 "Her heart has never been in the least touched, that you 
 know of ?" said Mr. Gascoigne.
 
 80 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Mrs. Davilow sliook lier head silently. " It was only last 
 niglit slie 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 laughed a little, and made no further remark 
 on the subject. The next morning at breakfast he said, 
 
 "How are your bruises. Rex?" 
 
 " Oh, not very mellow yet, sir ; only beginning to turn a 
 little." 
 
 " You don't feel quite ready for a journey to Southampton ?" 
 
 " Not quite," answered Rex, with his heart metaphorically in 
 his mouth. 
 
 " Well, you can wait till to-morrow, and go to say good-bye 
 to them at Offendene." 
 
 Mrs. Gascoigne, who now knew the whole affair, looked stead- 
 ily at her coffee lest she also should begin to cry, as Anna was 
 doing already. 
 
 Mr. 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 tlian 
 one. 
 
 " I can only be thankful that she doesn't care about him," 
 said Mrs. Gascoigne, when she joined her husband in his study. 
 " There are things in Gwendolen I can not 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 com- 
 pletely 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 that 
 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 posi- 
 tion." 
 
 Presently Rex, with his arm in a sling, was on his two miles'
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 81 
 
 walk fo Offendene. He was rather puzzled by the uncondi- 
 tional 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 cold-blooded, and then 
 have disbelieved in his father's conclusions. 
 
 AMien he got to the house, every body was there but Gwen- 
 dolen. The four girls, hearing him speak in the hall, rushed 
 out of the library, which was their school-room, and hung round 
 him with compassionate inquiries about his arm. Mrs. Davi- 
 low wanted to know exactly what had happened, and where the 
 blacksmith lived, that she might make him a present ; while 
 Miss Merry, who took a subdued and melancholy part in all 
 family affairs, doubted whether it would not be giving too 
 much encouragement to that kind of character. Rex had nev- 
 er found the family troublesome before, but just now he wished 
 them all away and Gwendolen there, and he was too uneasy for 
 good-natured feigning. When at last he had said, " "VMiere is 
 Gwendolen ?" and Mrs. Davilow had told Alice to go and see if 
 her sister were come down, adding, " I sent up her breakfast 
 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." 
 
 "Very well, dear; go into the drawing-room. I Avill 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 hang- 
 ing on this interview. He had to walk up and down the draw- 
 ing-room in expectation for nearly ten minutes — ample space 
 for all imaginative fluctuations ; yet, strange to say, he was un- 
 varyingly 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. 
 
 4*
 
 82 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 But when the door opened, and she whose presence he was 
 longing for entered, there came over him suddenly and myste- 
 riously 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 backward in 
 smooth silky abundance, seemed more queenly than usual. Per- 
 haps it was that there was none of the latent fun and tricksi- 
 ness which had always pierced in her greeting of Rex. How 
 much of 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 per- 
 sons 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 mis- 
 takenly 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 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 or 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 hope you are not much hurt, 
 Rex : I deserve that you should reproach me for your acci- 
 dent." 
 
 " Not at all," said Rex, feeling the soul within him spreading 
 itself like an attack of illness. " There is hardly any thing the 
 matter with me. I am so glad you had the pleasure : I would 
 willingly pay for it by a tumble, only I was sorry to break 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.
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 83 
 
 " My father wants me to go to Southampton for the rest of 
 the vacation," said Rex, his barytone trembhng a little. 
 
 " Southampton ! That'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 
 sea-anemone at the touch of a finger. 
 
 "Are you angry with me, Gwendolen? Why do you treat 
 me in this way all at once ?" said Rex, flushing, and with more 
 spirit in his voice, as if he too were capable of being angr}'. 
 
 Gwendolen looked round at him, and smiled. " Treat you ? 
 Nonsense! I am only rather cross. AMiy did you come so 
 very early ? You must expect to find tempers in deshabille." 
 
 " 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." 
 
 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 ex- 
 perience 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 any one had asked her 
 why she objected to love-making 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 ab- 
 solutely than it can do to a man at forty. But before they had 
 ceased to look at each other, he did speak again.
 
 84 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 lit- 
 tle regret for the old Rex who had not offended her. Decisive- 
 ly, but yet with some return of kindliness, she said, 
 
 "About making love? Yes. But I don't dislike you for 
 any thing else." 
 
 There was just a perceptible pause before he said a low 
 " good-bye," and passed out of the room. Almost immediately 
 after, she heard the heavy hall-door bang behind him. 
 
 Mrs. Davilow too had heard Rex's hasty departure, and pres- 
 ently came into the drawing-room, where she found Grwendolen 
 seated on the low couch, her face buried, and her hair falling 
 over her figure like a garment. She w^as 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 some- 
 thing 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 cheek against 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 be- 
 come 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 despair. 
 
 " I shall never love any body. 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.
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 " "What name doth Joy most borrow 
 When life is fair ? 
 
 ' To-morrow.' 
 
 " What name doth best fit Sorrow 
 In Tomig despair ? 
 
 ' To-morrow.' " 
 
 There was a miich more lasting trouble at tlie rectory. 
 Rex arrived there only to tlirow 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 brightest, most grateful spirit in the household, was meta- 
 morphosed into an irresponsive, dull-eyed creature who met all 
 affectionate attempts with a murmur of " Let me alone." His 
 father looked beyond the crisis, and believed it to be the short- 
 est way out of an unlucky affair ; but he was sorry for the in- 
 evitable suffering, and went now and then to sit by him in si- 
 lence 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 who was always there was 
 Anna, and her little hand was allowed to rest within her broth- 
 er's, though he never gave it a welcoming pressure. Her soul 
 w^as divided between anguish for Rex and reproach of Gwen- 
 dolen. 
 
 " Perhaps it is wicked of me, but I think I never can love 
 her again," came as the recurrent burden of poor little Anna's 
 inward monody. And even Mrs. Gascoigne had an angry feel-
 
 86 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ing toward her niece whicli she could not refrain from express- 
 ing (apologetically) to her husband. 
 
 " I know, of course, it is better, and we ought to be thank- 
 ful 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 can 
 not help thinking that she must have made him believe some- 
 thing, 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 pos- 
 sible ; 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 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 I" he said, gently, taking her hand and leading her 
 slowly along with him to the drawing-room. 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 bow-window on the 
 lawn and shrubs covered with hoar-frost, 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 wagons and carts sometimes went on field-work : a railed
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 87 
 
 opening was made in the hedge, because the upland, with its 
 bordering wood and clump of ash-trees against the sky, was a 
 pretty sight. Presently there came along a wagon 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 knees, 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, Xannie. 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 every thing wild about 
 me, and a great wide quiet." 
 
 "And not take me with you ?" said Anna, the big tears com- 
 ing fast. 
 
 "How could I?" 
 
 " I should like it better than any thing ; and settlers go with 
 their families. I would sooner go there than stay here in En- 
 gland. 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 any thing — like playing at 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 every thing. 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 inter- 
 vals, 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 studv.
 
 88 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Their mother would become reconciled to whatever he decided 
 on ; but mentioned to her first, the question would have dis- 
 tressed 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 intention 
 of being aquiline, the short upper lip, the short but strong and 
 well-hung chin : there was even the same tone of complexion 
 and set of the eye. The gray-haired father was at once mass- 
 ive and keen -looking; there was a perpendicular line in his 
 brow which, when he spoke with any force of interest, deepen- 
 ed ; and the habit of ruling gave him an air of reserved authori- 
 tativeness. Rex would have seemed a vision of the father's 
 youth, if it had been possible to imagine Mr. Gascoigne with- 
 out 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 drawn 
 back and knotted, her face following his in its changes of ex- 
 pression, as if they had one soul between them. 
 
 " You know all about what has upset me, father," Rex be- 
 gan, 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 noth- 
 ing. 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 re- 
 butted 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
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 89 
 
 some one to take care of liim, jou know — some one to keep 
 house. And we stall 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 had risen from her seat, and used the feminine argu- 
 ment of going closer to her papa as she spoke. He did not 
 smile, 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 prac- 
 tical 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 press 
 that point — that you are bound in duty to consider my judg- 
 ment 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 — which was the 
 point in question. 
 
 " But you will do so if you persist in setting your mind to- 
 ward 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 your brains, unfitted you for any 
 thing but manual labor, 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 for it. I shall never be the same again. And with- 
 out 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 cominced on good e\ddence — as I am — 
 that this state of mind of yours is transient, and that if you 
 went off as you propose, you would by-and-by repent, and feel 
 that you had let yourself slip back from the point you have
 
 90 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 been gaining by your education till now ? Have you not 
 strength 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 shirt-sleeves with spade and hatch- 
 et — in my opinion you have no right whatever to expatriate 
 yourself until you have honestly endeavored to turn to account 
 the education you have received here. I say nothing of the 
 grief to yoyur mother and me." 
 
 " I'm 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 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 bonds 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 rebell- 
 ion, but he had no arguments to meet his father's ; and while 
 he was feeling, in spite of any thing that might be said, that 
 he should like to go off to " the colonies" to-morrow, 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 soul-sick- 
 nesses. 
 
 Rex got up from his seat, as if he held the conference to be 
 at an end. ^' You assent to my arrangement, then ?" said Mr. 
 Gascoigne, with that distinct resolution of tone which seems to 
 hold one in a vise. 
 
 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 had closed ; " it is very hard for him. 
 Doesn't he look ill ?" 
 
 " Yes, but he will soon be better ; it will all blow over. And
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 91 
 
 now, Anna, be as quiet as a mouse about it all. Never let it 
 be mentioned when lie is gone." 
 
 "No, papa. But I would not be like Gwendolen for any 
 thing — 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 afterward 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 
 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 enlargement of 
 churches, ball-rooms, and vehicles. But Anna Gascoigne's fig- 
 ure would only allow the size of skirt manufactured for young 
 ladies of fourteen. 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 " I'll tell thee, Berthold, what men's hopes are like : 
 A silly child that, quivering with joy. 
 Would east its little mimic fishing-line 
 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 rumor was 
 spread in the neighborhood which to 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 AVancester ; the corn-factors, the brew- 
 ers, the horse-dealers, and saddlers, all held it a laudable thing, 
 and one which was to be rejoiced in on abstract gTounds, as 
 showing the value of an aristocracy in a free country like En- 
 gland ; the blacksmith in the hamlet of Diplow felt that a good 
 time had come round ; the wives of laboring men hoped their 
 nimble boys of ten or twelve would be taken into employ by
 
 92 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the gentlemen in livery ; and the farmers about Diplow admit- 
 ted, 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 wagon-load of straw. If such w^ere 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 majesty is announced, the 
 dream of knighthood or a baronetcy is to be found under vari- 
 ous municipal night-caps, so the news in question raised a float- 
 ing, indeterminate vision of marriage in several well-bred imag- 
 inations. 
 
 The news was that Diplow Hall, Sir Hugo Mallinger's place, 
 which had for a couple of years turned its white window-shut- 
 ters in a painfully wall-eyed manner on its fine elms and beech- 
 es, 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 to house and stable. But not by Sir Hugo himself ; 
 by his nephew, Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt, who was presump- 
 tive 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 Avas pleasantly 
 called; 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 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 became 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 in-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 93 
 
 credible that people should construct matrimonial prospects on 
 the mere report that a bachelor of good fortune and possibili- 
 ties 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 specu- 
 lations might turn out to be fallacious, and would therefore not 
 entertain them. But, let it be observed, nothing is here nar- 
 rated of human nature generally ; the history in its present 
 stage concerns only a few^ people in a corner of AYessex ; 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 re- 
 lation to their daughter's marriage to parents who could leave 
 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 good-looking, of sound constitution, virtuous 
 or at least reformed, and if liberal-conservative, not too liberal- 
 conservative ; and without wishing any body to die, thought 
 his succession to the title an event to be desired. 
 
 If the Arrowpoints had such ruminations, it is the less sur- 
 prising that they were stimulated in Mr. Gascoigne, who for be- 
 ing 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 feel that he was 
 overcharged with the management of young creatures who were 
 hardly to be held in with bit or bridle, or any sort of metaphor 
 that would stand for judicious ad\dce. 
 
 Naturally, people did not tell each other all they felt and 
 thought about young Grandcourt's advent : on no subject is 
 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 toward the same 
 subjects may find your ideas ingenious and forestall you in ap-
 
 94 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 plying 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. ArroAvpoint 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. Davi- 
 low that if the possible peer sought a wife in the neighborhood 
 of Diplow, 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 contem- 
 plation 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 sis- 
 ter, " It would be a mercy, Fanny, if that girl were well mar- 
 ried !" to which Mrs. Davilow, discerning some criticism of her 
 darling in the fervor of that wish, had not chosen to make any 
 audible reply, though she had said inwardly, " You wdll not get 
 her to marry for your pleasure ;" the mild mother becoming 
 rather saucy when she identified herself vv^ith her daughter. 
 
 To her husband Mrs. Gascoigne 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 
 neighborhood. Have you heard what sort of young man he is, 
 Henry?" 
 
 Mr. Gascoigne had not heard ; at least, if his male acquaint- 
 ances had gossiped in his hearing, he was not disposed to re- 
 peat their gossip, or give it any emphasis in his own mind. He 
 held it futile, even if it had been becoming, to show any curios- 
 ity as to the past of a young man whose birth, wealth, and con- 
 sequent leisure made many habits venial which under other cir- 
 cumstances would have been inexcusable. Whatever Grand- 
 court had done, he had not ruined himself ; and 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 pro- 
 nounce him singular in feeling that a landed proprietor with a
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 95 
 
 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 af- 
 ford to do without it, can hardly be other than genuine. More- 
 over, it was not certain on any shov/ing hitherto that Mr. Grand- 
 court had needed reformation more than other young men in 
 the ripe youth of five-and-thirty ; and, at any rate, the signifi- 
 cance of what he had been must be determined by what he act- 
 ually 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 hand- 
 some, 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 excel- 
 lence ; and thus the image of the perfect suitor gave way be- 
 fore a fluctuating combination of qualities that might be imag- 
 ined to win Gwendolen's heart. In the difficulty of arri\dng 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 dwell much to Gwendolen 
 on the desirableness of marriage, dreading an answer something 
 like that of the future Madame Roland, when her gentle moth- 
 er, urging the acceptance of a suitor, said, "Tu 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 
 castle-building which she had the good taste to be ashamed of ; 
 for such a hint was likely enough to give an adverse poise to 
 Gwendolen's own thought, and make her detest the desirable
 
 96 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 husband beforehand. Since that scene after poor Rex's fare- 
 well visit, the mother had felt a new 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 color on her white cash- 
 mere, nothing, for her complexion, was comparable to pale 
 green — a feather which she was trying in her hat before the 
 looking-glass 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 presence of mind to answer immedi- 
 ately, and Gwendolen turned quickly round toward her, saying, 
 wickedly, 
 
 " Now, you know they have not, mamma. You and my un- 
 cle 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 wedding-ring of a happy woman — in the mean time 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 Grand- 
 court, who returns to Diplow, and, like M. Jabot, change de 
 linger 
 
 Was ever any young witch like this? You thought of hid-
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 97 
 
 ing tilings from her — sat upon your secret and looked innocent, 
 and all the while she knew by the comer of your 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 by 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 ap- 
 parent reason than the faculty of speech and the not knowing 
 what to do with it. 
 
 " AMiv, what kind of man do you imagine him to be, Gwen- 
 dolen?"" 
 
 " 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 trim- 
 ming 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." 
 
 " This is a portrait of some one you have seen already, Gwen. 
 Mr. Grandcourt may be a delightful young man, for what vou 
 know." 
 
 " Oh yes," said Gwendolen, with a high note of careless ad- 
 mission, taking off her best hat and turning it round on her 
 hand contemplatively. " I wonder what sort of behavior a de- 
 lightful young man would have ?" Then, with a merry change 
 of face, " I know he would have hunters and racers, and a Lon- 
 don house and two country-houses — one with battlements and 
 another with a veranda. And I feel sure that with a little mur- 
 dering 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 usually liter- 
 
 VoL. L — 5
 
 D8 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 al, 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 every thing. 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 hat 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. Davilovv, unable 
 to hear the retractation, and sobbing violently while she made 
 the effort to speak. " Your will was always too strong for me 
 — if every thing else had been different." 
 
 This disjointed logic was intelligible enough to the daughter, 
 " Dear manmia, I don't find fault with you — I love you," said 
 Gwendolen, really compunctious. " How can you help what 
 I am? Besides, I am very charming. Come, now." Here 
 Gwendolen, Avith her handkerchief, 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 un- 
 pleasant sense of compunction toward her mother, which was 
 the nearest approach to self-condemnation and self-distrust that 
 she had known ; and Mrs. Davilow's timid maternal conscience 
 dreaded whatever had brought on the slightest hint of re- 
 proach. Hence, after this little scene, the two concurred in ex- 
 cludins: 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 keen-sightedness about Avhat Avas probably in her un- 
 cle's mind ; but the fear Avas not justified. Gwendolen kncAv
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 99 
 
 certain differences in the characters ^vith which she was con- 
 cerned, 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 under- 
 standing 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. Toward Anna she took some pains to behave with a re- 
 gretful affectionateness ; but neither of them dared 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 
 Avho had ruined his happiness. She tried dutifully to repress 
 any sign of hor changed feeling ; but who in pain can imitate 
 the glance and hand-touch of pleasure ? 
 
 This unfair resentment had rather a hardening effect on 
 Gwendolen, and threw her into a more defiant temper. Iler 
 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 every body 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 in- 
 cluded several disengaged young men, each glad to seat him- 
 self 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 suitors more explicit tlian 
 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 eve^-y man who admires a fair girl 
 should not be enamored of her, and even that every man who 
 is enamored should not necessarily declare himself. There are 
 various refined shapes in which the price of corn, known to be
 
 loo DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 a potent cause in this relation, might, if inquired into, show 
 why a young lady, perfect in person, accomplishments, and cos- 
 tume, has not the trouble of rejecting many offers ; and Nat- 
 ure'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, was far from hold- 
 ing that supremacy in the minds of all observers. Besides, it 
 was but a poor eight months since she had come to Offendene, 
 and some inclinations become manifest slowly, like the sunward 
 creeping of plants. 
 
 In face of this fact that not one of the eligible young men al- 
 ready in the neighborhood 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 great deal of what passes for likelihood in the world is 
 simply the reflex of a wish. Mr. and Mrs. Arrowpoint, for ex- 
 ample, having no anxiety that Miss Harleth should make a brill- 
 iant marriage, had quite a different likelihood in their minds.
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 101 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 *' 1st Gent. "V^That woman should be ? Sir, consult the taste 
 Of marriageable men. This planet's store 
 In iron, cotton, wool, or chemicals — 
 All matter rendered to our plastic skill — 
 Is wrought in shapes responsive to demand : 
 The market's pulse makes index high or low, 
 By rule subUme. 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 ? — the sense well winged and poised 
 With t's and s's. 
 
 " 2d Gent. Xav, but turn it round : 
 
 Give us the test of taste. A fine merai^—' 
 Is it to-day 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 neighboring 
 valley to the outlying eastern downs, and the broad slow rise 
 of cultivated country hanging like a vast curtain toward the 
 west. The castle, which stood on the highest platform of the 
 clustered hills, was built of rough-hewn limestone, full of lights 
 and shadows made by the dark dust of lichens and the wash- 
 ings of the rain. Masses of beech and fir sheltered it on the 
 north, and spread down here and there along the green slopes 
 like flocks seeking the water which gleamed below. The arch- 
 ery-ground was a carefully kept inclosure on a bit of table-land 
 at the farthest end of the park, protected toward the south- 
 west by tall elms and a thick screen of hollies, which kept the 
 gravel-walk, and the bit of newly mown turf where the targets 
 were placed in agreeable afternoon shade. The archery hall, 
 with an arcade in front, showed like a white temple against the 
 greenery on the northern side. 
 
 ^\Tiat could make a better background for the flower-groups 
 of ladies, modng and bowing, and turning their necks as it
 
 102 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 would become the leisurely lilies to do if they took to locomo- 
 tion ? 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 toward mild excitement, now sinking to 
 an agreeable murmur. 
 
 No open-air amusement could be much freer from those 
 noisy, crowding conditions 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 conven- 
 ience for the dinner and ball to be held in the castle. Within 
 the inclosure 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 which the stake was " any thing you 
 like," on their favorite archers ; but the young maidens, having 
 a different principle of discrimination, were considering which 
 of those sweetly dressed 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 una- 
 nimity in pronouncing her the finest girl present. 
 
 No wonder she enjoyed her existence on that July day. Pre- 
 eminence 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 barn-door 
 fowl on sale, though he may not have understood himself to be 
 called the best of a bad lot, may have a self-informed conscious- 
 ness of his relative importance, and strut consoled. But for 
 complete enjoyment the outward and the inward must concur. 
 And that concurrence was happening to Gwendolen. 
 
 Who can deny that bows and arrows are among the pret- 
 tiest weapons in the world for feminine forms to play with? 
 They prompt attitudes full of grace and power, where that fine
 
 BOOK r. THE SPOILED CHILD 103 
 
 concentration of energy seen in all marksmansLip is freed from 
 associations of bloodshed. The time-honored British resource 
 of " killing something " is no longer carried on with bow and 
 quiver; bands defending their passes against an invading na- 
 tion fight under another sort of shade than a cloud of arrows ; 
 and poisoned darts are harmless surviv^als 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 mold skillful action. And among the Brackenshaw 
 archers the prizes were all of the nobler symbolic kind : not 
 property to be carried ofE in a parcel, degrading honor 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 pre- 
 eminence had the virtue of wreaths without their inconven- 
 iences, which might have produced a melanchoy effect in the 
 heat of the ball-room. Altogether the Brackenshaw Archery 
 Club was an institution framed with good taste, so as not to 
 have by necessity any ridiculous incidents. 
 
 And to-day al\ incalculable elements were in its favor. There 
 was mild warmth, and no wind to disturb either hair or drapery 
 or the course of the arrow; all skillful preparation had fau* 
 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 toward 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 every one was obliged to admit her surpassing 
 charm. 
 
 " That girl is like a high-mettled racer," said Lord Bracken- 
 shaw to young Clintock, one of the invited spectators. 
 
 " First chop ! tremendously pretty too," said the elegant 
 Grecian, who had been paying her assiduous attention ; " I nev- 
 er saw her look better." 
 
 Perhaps she had never looked so well. Her face was beam- 
 ing with young pleasure in which there were no malign rays 
 of discontent ; for, being satisfied with her own chances, she 
 felt kindly toward every body, and was satisfied with the uni-
 
 104 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 verse. Not to have the liigliest distinction in rank, not to be 
 marked out as an lieiress, like Miss Arrowpoint, gave an added 
 triumph in eclipsing those advantages. For personal recom- 
 mendation she would not have cared to change the family 
 group accompanying her for any other : her mamma's appear- 
 ance 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 re - appearance 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 looked toward the 
 Arrowpoint party on their first entrance, when the contrast be- 
 tween Klesmer and the average group of English county people 
 seemed at its utmost intensity in the close neighborhood of his 
 hosts — or patrons, as Mrs. Arrowpoint would have liked to hear 
 them called, that she might deny the possibility of any longer 
 patronizing genius, its royalty being universally acknowledged. 
 The contrast might have amused a graver personage than Gwen- 
 dolen. We English are a miscellaneous people, and any chance 
 fifty of us Avill present many varieties of animal architecture or 
 facial ornament ; but it must be admitted that our prevailing 
 expression is not that of a lively, impassioned race, preoccupied 
 with the ideal and carrying the real as a mere make-weight. 
 The strong point of the English gentleman pure is the easy 
 style of his figure 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 ordinary 
 stamp of the well-bred Englishman watching the entrance of 
 Herr Klesmer — his mane of hair floating backward in massive 
 inconsistency with the chimney-pot hat, 'which had the look of 
 having been put on for a joke above his pronounced but well- 
 modeled features and powerful, clean-shaven mouth and chin ; 
 liis tall thin figure clad in a way which, not being strictly En- 
 glish, was all the worse for its apparent emphasis of intention.
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 105 
 
 Draped in a loose garment with a Florentine berretta on his 
 head, he would have been fit to stand by the side of Leonardo 
 da Yinci; but how when he presented himself in trowsers 
 which were not what English feeling demanded about the 
 knees ? — and when the fire that showed itself in his glances and 
 the movements of his head, as he looked round him with curi- 
 osity, was turned into comedy by a hat which ruled that man- 
 kind should have well-cropped hair and a staid demeanor, such, 
 for example, as Mr. Arrowpoint's, whose nullity .of face and per- 
 fect tailoring might pass everywhere without ridicule? One 
 sees why it is often better for greatness 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 candle-light occasions when he appeared sim- 
 ply as a musician, and he had not yet that supreme, world-wide 
 celebrity which makes an artist great to the most ordinary peo- 
 ple by their knowledge of his great expensiveness. It was lit- 
 erally a new light for them to see him in — presented unexpect- 
 edly on this July afternoon in an exclusive society : some were in- 
 clined to laugh, others felt a little disgust at the want of judgment 
 shown by the Arrowpoints in this use of an introductory card. 
 
 " "WTiat extreme guys those artistic fellows usually are !" said 
 young Chntock 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 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." Kles- 
 mer'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 Ar- 
 rowpoint looks to-day ! She would make quite a fine picture 
 in that gold-colored dress." 
 
 5*
 
 106 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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's 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 ^vay, 
 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 every one in a new member; and 
 to Gwendolen's temperament one success determined another. 
 She trod on air, and all things pleasant seemed possible. The 
 hour was enough for her, and she w^as not obliged to think 
 what she should do next to keep her life at the due pitch. 
 
 " How does the scoring stand, I wonder ?" said Lady Brack- 
 enshaw, 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 these games 
 of skill. That's better. It gives the hinder ones a chance." 
 
 " Catherine will be very glad for others to win," said Mrs. 
 Arrowpoint, " she is so magnanimous. It was entirely her con- 
 siderateness that made us bring Ilerr 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 regie to bring one so far out of our own set ; but she 
 said, * Genius itself is not en regie; it comes into the world to 
 make new rules.' And one must admit that." 
 
 " Ay, to be sure," said Lord Brackenshaw, in a tone of care- 
 less dismissal, adding quickly, " For my part, I am not magnan- 
 imous ; I should like to win. But, confound it ! I never have 
 the chance now. I'm getting old and idle. The young ones
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 107 
 
 beat me. As old Nestor says — the gods don't give us every 
 thing 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 every body if they live long enough, so it raises 
 no jealousy." The earl smiled comfortably at his wife. 
 
 " Oh, my lord, people who have been neighbors twenty years 
 must not talk to each other about age," said Mrs. Arrowpoint. 
 " Years, as the Tuscans sav, are made for the lettincr of houses. 
 But where is our new neighbor ? I thought Mr. Grandcourt 
 was to be here to-day." 
 
 "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 Tuesday 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 
 lord. I only meant her to make a tolerable figure, without sur- 
 passing any one." 
 
 " It is not my fault 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, good-humoredly ; then, taking out his watch 
 and looking at 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 — understands noth- 
 ing about it. But I told him he must come ; he would see the 
 flower of the neighborhood here. He asked about you — had 
 seen Arrowpoint's card. I think you had not made his ac- 
 quaintance in town. He has been a good deal abroad. People 
 don't know him much." 
 
 " Xo ; we are strangers," said Mrs. AiTowpoint. " But that 
 is not what might have been expected. For his uncle, Sir Hugo 
 Mallinger, and I are great friends when we meet."
 
 108 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I don't know ; uncles and nephews are not so likely to be 
 seen together as uncles and nieces," said his lordship, smiling 
 toward the rector. " But just come with me one instant, Gas- 
 coigne, will you? I want to speak a word about the clout- 
 shooting." 
 
 Gwendolen chose to go too, and be deposited in the same 
 gi'oup with her mamma and aunt until she had to shoot again. 
 That Mr. Grandcourt might, after all, not appear on the arch- 
 ery-ground had begun to enter into Gwendolen's thought as a 
 possible deduction from the completeness of her pleasure. Un- 
 der 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 indifference as to the impression 
 she would make on him. True, he was not to have the slight- 
 est 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 whom even her narrow experience 
 had shown her several, with various- colored beards and various 
 styles of bearing; and the sense that her friends would Avant 
 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 trou- 
 ble, 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 hard- 
 ly any notice of her, and becoming shortly engaged to Miss 
 Arrowpoint, was not a picture which flattered her imagina- 
 tion. 
 
 Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw's 
 mode of accounting for Grandcourt's non-appearance; and 
 when he did arrive, no consciousness — not even Mrs. Arrow- 
 point's or Mr. Gascoigne's — was more awake to the fact than 
 hers, although she steadily avoided looking toward any point 
 where he was likely to be. There should be no slightest shift- 
 ing of angles to betray that it was of any consequence to her 
 whether the much-talked-of Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt present- 
 ed himself or not. She became again absorbed in the shoot- 
 ing, and so resolutely abstained from looking round observantly
 
 BOOK I. THE SPOILED CHILD. 109 
 
 that, even supposing liim to have taken a conspicuous 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 shootino- 
 was the better for it ; at any rate, it gained in precision, and 
 she at last raised a delightful stonn 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 shlllino- 
 poll-tax, 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 o-old 
 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 pict- 
 ure, and every one present must gaze at her. That was enouf^h ; 
 she herself was determined to see nobody in particular, or to 
 turn her eyes any way except toward 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 a love which it 
 can not 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 sur- 
 prise), 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
 
 110 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 outside examining the point of an arrow with rather an absent 
 air, when Lord Brackenshaw came up to her, and said, 
 
 "Miss Harleth, here 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. AVill you allow me to intro- 
 duce Mr. Mallinger Grandcourt ?"
 
 BOOK II. 
 MEETING STREAMS.
 
 BOOK II. 
 
 MEETING STREAMS. 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 " The beginning of an acquaintance, whether with persons or things, is 
 to get a definite outline for our ignorance." 
 
 Mr. Grandcourt's wisli to be introduced had no suddenness 
 for Gwendolen ; but when Lord Brackenshaw moved aside a 
 little for the prefigured stranger to come forward, and she 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 portraits 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 
 self-consciousness or anxiety in his bearing. "When he raised 
 his hat he showed an extensive baldness, surrounded with a 
 mere fringe of reddish blonde hair, but he also showed a 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 perpen- 
 dicular. It Av^as 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 in- 
 ternal drill, suggests a suppressed vivacity, and may be suspect- 
 ed of letting go with some violence when he is released from
 
 114 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 parade ; but Grandcourt's bearing liad no rigidity : it inclined 
 rather to tlie flaccid. His complexion had a faded fairness re- 
 sembling that of an actress when bare of the artificial white 
 and red ; his long, narrow, gray eyes expressed nothing but in- 
 difference. 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 cir- 
 cumstances. We recognize the alphabet ; we are not sure of 
 the language. I am only mentioning the points that Gwendo- 
 len 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 Bracken- 
 shaw was gone, and Avhat 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 with- 
 out change of expression, M'hile she only occasionally looked at 
 him with a flash of observation a little softened by coquetry. 
 Also, after her answers there was a longer or shorter pause be- 
 fore he spoke again. 
 
 " I used to think archery was a great bore," Grandcourt be- 
 gan. 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 to-day ?" 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 first-rate shot with a rifle." 
 
 (Pause, during which Gwendolen, having taken a rapid ob- 
 servation 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 con- 
 temptible, as if one were using cast-off fashions. I hope you 
 have not left off all follies, because I practice a great many."
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 115 
 
 (Pause, during which Gwendolen made several interpretations 
 of her own speech.) 
 
 " What do you call follies r 
 
 " Well, in general, I think whatever is agTeeable 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 
 aristocratic-looking man she had ever seen.) 
 
 " 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 man of ex- 
 tremely calm, cold manners might be less disagi-eeable as a hus- 
 band 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 
 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 horseback I never think of 
 danger. It seems to me that if I broke my bones I should not 
 feel it. I should go at any thing 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 tiger-hunting or pig-sticking. I 
 saw some of that for a season or two in the East. Every thing 
 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 strength of her own insight, supposing the ques- 
 tion had to be decided.) 
 
 " One must have something or other. But one gets used 
 to it."
 
 116 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I begin to tliink I am very fortunate, because every thing 
 is new to me : it is only that I can't get enough of it. I am 
 not used to any thing except being dull, which I should like to 
 leave off as you have left off shooting." 
 
 (Pause, during which it occurred to Gwendolen that a man 
 of cold and distinguished manners might possibly be a dull 
 companion ; but, on the other hand, she thought that most per- 
 sons were dull, that she had not observed husbands to be com- 
 panions — and that, after all, she was not going to accept Grand- 
 court.) 
 
 "Why are you dull?" 
 
 " This is a dreadful neighborhood. There is nothing to be 
 done in it. That is why I practiced my archery." 
 
 (Pause, during which Gwendolen reflected that the life of an 
 unmarried woman who could not go about, and had no com- 
 mand of any thing, must necessarily be dull through all the de- 
 grees of comparison as time went on.) 
 
 " You have made yourself queen of it. I imagine you will 
 carry off the first prize." 
 
 " I don't know that. I have great rivals. Did you not ob- 
 serve how well Miss Arrowpoint shot ?" 
 
 (Pause, wherein Gwendolen was thinking that men had been 
 known to choose some one else than the woman they most ad- 
 mired, and recalled several experiences of that kind in novels.) 
 
 " Miss Arrowpoint ? No — that is, yes." 
 
 " Shall we go now 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 toward 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 the un- 
 wonted flush in her cheeks, and the sense of 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 — 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 desirable 
 match she held herself altogether at his beck. How Grand- 
 court had filled up the pauses will be more evident hereafter.
 
 BOOK 11. MEETING STREAMS. 117 
 
 " Youliave just missed the gold aiTow, Gwendolen," said Mr. 
 Gascoigne. " Miss Juliet Fenn scores eight above you." 
 
 " I am very glad to hear it. I should have felt that I was 
 making myself too disagreeable — taking the best of everything," 
 said Gwendolen, quite easily. 
 
 It was impossible to be jealous of Juliet Fenn, a girl as mid- 
 dling as midday market in every thing but her archery and her 
 plainness, in which last she was noticeably like her father — un- 
 derhuno-, and with recedino; brow resemblincr 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 to ev- 
 ery one else by turns, and Gwendolen, who chose to see what 
 was going on around her now, observed that Grandcourt was 
 having Klesmer presented to him by some one unknown to her 
 — a middle-aged 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. VTho this 
 stranger was she did not care much to know ; but she wished 
 to obser\^e what was Grandcourt's manner toward 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 lono; fino-ers hoiizon- 
 tally, now pointing downward with his forefinger, now folding 
 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 wliile her 
 eyes and lips gathered rather a mocking expression. But she 
 would not indulo-e her sense of amusement bv watching as if
 
 118 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 she were curious, and she gave all her animation to those im- 
 mediately around her, determined not to care whether Mr. 
 Grandcourt came near her again or not. 
 
 He did come, however, and at a moment when he could pro- 
 pose to conduct Mrs. Davilow to her carriage. " Shall we meet 
 again in the ball-room ?" she said, as he raised his hat at part- 
 ing. The " yes " in reply had the usual slight drawl and per- 
 fect 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 any thing 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 gentle- 
 men to dine apart, so that the dinner might make 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 the 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 By- 
 ron's opinion that a woman should never be seen eating, intro- 
 ducing 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' dining-room it was evident that Gwendolen 
 was not a general favorite with her own sex ; there w^re no be- 
 ginnings of intimacy between her and other girls, and in con- 
 versation they rather noticed what she said than spoke to her 
 in free exchange. Perhaps it was that she was not much inter- 
 ested in them, and when left alone in their company had a sense 
 of empty benches. Mrs. Vulcany once remarked that Miss Har- 
 leth 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 hom- 
 age, and women did not give her homage. The exception to
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 119 
 
 tliis willing aloofness from her was Miss Arrowpoint, who often 
 managed unostentatiously to be by her side, and talked to her 
 with quiet friendliness. 
 
 " She knows, as I do, that our friends are ready to quarrel 
 over a husband for us," thought Gwendolen, " and she is deter- 
 mined not to enter into the quarrel." 
 
 " I think Miss Arrowpoint has the best manners I ever saw," 
 said Mrs. Da\'ilow, when she and Gwendolen were in a dressinor- 
 room 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 ?" 
 
 "Xo; but I am discontented with things. She seems con- 
 tented." 
 
 " I am sure you ought to be satisfied to-day. 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 were 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." 
 
 " AMiy in the world do you say that, all on a sudden ?" 
 
 " I can't bear having ugly people so near me." 
 
 " ^Miom do vou mean bv ugly people ?" 
 - "Oh, plenty." 
 
 "Mr. Clintock, for example, is not ugly." Mrs. Davilow 
 dared not mention Grandcourt.
 
 120 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " Well, I hate woolen cloth touching me." 
 
 " Fancy !" said Mrs. Davilow to her sister, who now came up 
 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 first-rate dancing lessons." 
 
 " Why should I waltz if I don't like it, aunt ? It is not in 
 the Catechism." 
 
 " My dear P'' 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 since 
 the hour of exulting enjoyment in the archery-ground. But 
 she did not look the worse under the chandeliers in the ball- 
 room, where the soft splendor of the scene and the pleasant 
 odors from the conservatory could not but be soothing to the 
 temper, when accompanied with the consciousness of being pre- 
 eminently sought for. Hardly a dancing man but w^as 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 Ilarleth?" — "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 and 
 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. Grand- 
 court was not numbered. After standing up for a quadrille 
 with Miss Arrowpoint, it seemed that he meant to ask for no
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 121 
 
 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 every thing 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 hav- 
 ing seen him even through a telescope. Probably he meant to 
 marry Miss AiTowpoint. Whatever might come, she, Gwendo- 
 len, was not going to be disappointed : the affair was a joke 
 whichever way it turned, for she had never committed herself 
 even by a silent confidence in any thing Mr. Grandcourt would 
 do. Still, she noticed that he did sometimes quietly and grad- 
 ually change his position according to hers, so that he could sec 
 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 sioht of her was 
 more direct than usual rather late in the evening, when Gwen- 
 dolen had accepted Klesmer as a partner ; and that wide-glan- 
 cing personage, who saw every thing 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 hkes 
 disgust for a variety." 
 
 "Those w^ords 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 no- 
 ble music." 
 
 " That is a compliment as well as a correction. I am obliged 
 for both. But do you know I am bold enough to wish to cor- 
 rect yoM, and require vou to understand a joke ?" 
 
 Vol. I.— 6
 
 122 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 be- 
 cause he looks grave. ' You don't see the witticism, sir ?' ' No, 
 sir, but I see what you meant.' Then I am what we call tick- 
 eted 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 Avit and hu- 
 mor." 
 
 " 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 card-room door ?" she went on, seeing there 
 the same stranger with whom Klesmer had been in animated 
 talk on the archery-ground. " 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 me- 
 chanical-dramatic." 
 
 " Thanks. I wanted to know whether you thought his face 
 and form required that his words should be among the mean- 
 ings 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. 
 
 Three minutes afterward her preparations for Grandcourt's 
 indifference were all canceled. 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 me the honor — the next — or another qua- 
 drille ?" 
 
 " I should have been very happy," said Gwendolen, looking 
 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
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 123 
 
 liked to dance with him. She gave him a charming smile as 
 she looked up to deliver her answer, and he stood still, looking 
 do'svn at her with no smile at all. 
 
 "I am unfortunate in being too late," he said, after a mo- 
 ment's pause. 
 
 " It seemed 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 Grand- 
 court. Always there was the same pause before he took up 
 his cue. " You make dancing a new thing — as you make arch- 
 ery." 
 
 " 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 strike people as slow to un- 
 derstand." 
 
 "Mamma," said Gwendolen, in a deprecating tone, "I am 
 adorably stupid, and want every thing explained to me — when 
 the meaning is pleasant." 
 
 " K you are stupid, I admit that stupidity is adorable," re- 
 turned 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," Gwen- 
 dolen observed after a little while. " I see the quadrille is be- 
 ing formed." 
 
 "He deserves to be renounced," said Grandcourt. 
 
 " I think he is veiy pardonable," said Gwendolen. 
 
 "There must have been some misunderstanding," said Mrs. 
 Davilow. "Mr. Clintock was too anxious about the enorao-e- 
 ment to have forgotten it." 
 
 But now Lady Brackenshaw came up and said, " ]\Iiss Har-
 
 124 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 leth, 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 felic- 
 itous 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 revival in her of the exultation — the sense of carrying 
 every thing before her, which she had felt earlier in the day. 
 No man could have walked through the quadrille with more 
 irreproachable ease than Grandcourt ; and the absence of all ea- 
 gerness in his attention to her suited his partner's taste. She 
 was now convinced that he meant to distinguish her, to mark 
 his admiration of her in a noticeable way ; and it began to ap- 
 pear probable that she would have it in her power to reject 
 him, whence there was a pleasure in reckoning up the advan- 
 tages which would make 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 observa- 
 tion ; though she studiously avoided seeing this, and at the end 
 of the quadrille walked away on Grandcourt's arm as if 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 gen- 
 tlemen. The heiress looked at Gwendolen invitingly, and said, 
 " I hope you will vote with us. Miss Harleth, and Mr. Grand- 
 court too, though he is not an archer." Gwendolen and Grand- 
 court paused to join the group, and found that the voting turned 
 on the project of a picnic archery meeting to be held in Car-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 125 
 
 dell Chase, where the evening entertainment would be more po- 
 etic than a ball under chandeliers — a feast of sunset lights along 
 the glades and through the branches and over the solemn tree- 
 tops. 
 
 Gwendolen thought the scheme delightful — equal to playing 
 Robin Hood and Maid Marian ; and Mr. Grandcourt, w hen ap- 
 pealed to a second time, said it was a thing to be done ; where- 
 upon Mr. Lush, who stood behind Lady Brackenshaw's elbow, 
 drew Gwendolen's 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 toward 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 on terms of intimacy with the 
 tenant of Diplow, and, secondly, that she would never, if she 
 could help it, let him come within a yard of her. She was sub- 
 ject to physical antipathies, and Mr. Lush's prominent eyes, fat 
 though not clumsy figure, and strong black, gray -besprinkled 
 hair of frizzy thickness, which, with the rest of his prosperous 
 person, was en\dable to many, created one of the strongest of 
 her antipathies. To be safe from his looking at her, she mur- 
 mured 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 half -amused, half -serious inclination for experi- 
 ment, would not speak first. They turned into the large con- 
 servatory, beautifully lighted up with Chinese lamps. The oth- 
 er couples there were at a distance which would not have inter- 
 fered with any dialogue ; but still they walked in silence until 
 they had reached the farther end, where there was a flush of 
 pink light, and the second wdde opening into the ball-room. 
 Grandcourt, when they had half turned round, paused, and said, 
 languidly, 
 
 " Do you like this kind of thing ?" 
 
 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, satirical answer. 
 But for some mysterious reason — it was a mystery of which
 
 126 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 she had a faint, wondering consciousness — she dared not be sa- 
 tirical : she had begun to feel a wand over her that made 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 Avalking with Mr. Grandcourt in par- 
 ticular. And they returned along the conservatory without 
 further interpretation. She then proposed to go and sit down 
 in her old place, and they walked among scattered couples pre- 
 paring for the waltz to the spot where Mrs. Davilow had been 
 seated all the evening. As they approached it her seat was va- 
 cant, but she was coming toward 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 per- 
 sonage, as an intimate and constant companion of Mr. Grand- 
 court's, Mrs. Davilow imagined it altogether desirable that her 
 daughter also should make the acquaintance. 
 
 It Avas hardly a bow that Gwendolen gave — rather, it was 
 the slightest forward sweep of the head away from the physi- 
 ognomy that inclined itself toward her, and she immediately 
 moved toward her seat, saying, " I want to put on my bur- 
 noose." No sooner had she reached it, than Mr. Lush was there, 
 and had the burnoose in his hand : to annoy this supercilious 
 young lady, he would incur the offense of forestalling Grand- 
 court ; 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 Avho forgave this would have much Christian feeling, 
 supposing he had intended to be agreeable to the young lady ; 
 but before he seized the burnoose 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, ris-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 127 
 
 ing, and submitting- very gracefully to take the bumoose 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 offend- 
 ed by the insult directed toward his friend. Certainly, Gwen- 
 dolen's refusal of the bnrnoose from Mr. Lush was open to the 
 interpretation that she wished to receive it from Mr. Grand- 
 court. But she, poor child, had had no design in this action, 
 and was simply following her antipathy and inclination, con- 
 fiding 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 w^ere dark enigmas to her, or that she 
 needed any help in drawing conclusions about them — Mr. Grand- 
 court, at least. The chief question was, how far his character 
 and ways might answer her wishes ; and unless she were satis- 
 fied about that, she had said to herself that she would not ac- 
 cept his offer. 
 
 Could there be a slenderer, more insignificant thread in hu- 
 man history than this consciousness of a girl, busy with her 
 small inferences of the way in which she could make her life 
 pleasant? — in a time, too, when ideas were with fresh vigor 
 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 Avho 
 died bravely in a common cause, and men stinted of bread on 
 our side of the world heard of that willing loss and were pa- 
 tient; a time when the soul of man was waking to pulses 
 which had for centuries been 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 ves- 
 sels is borne onward through the ages the treasure of human 
 affections.
 
 128 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 " gentlemen, the time of life is short : 
 To spend that shortness basely were too long. 
 If life did ride upon a dial's point, 
 Still ending at the arrival of an hour." 
 
 Shakspeare : Henry IV. 
 
 On the second day after the archery meeting, Mr. Henleigh 
 Mallinger Grandcourt was at his breakfast-table with Mr. Lush. 
 Every thing around them was agreeable : the sufumer air through 
 the open windows, at which the dogs could walk in from the 
 old green turf on the lawn ; the soft, purplish coloring of the 
 park beyond, stretching toward a mass of bordering wood ; the 
 still-life in the room, which seemed the stiller for its sober, an- 
 tiquated elegance, as if it kept a conscious, well-bred silence, 
 unlike the restlessness of vulgar furniture. 
 
 Whether the gentlemen were agreeable to each other was less 
 evident. Mr. Grandcourt had drawn his chair aside so as 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 — half a dozen of vari- 
 ous kinds were moving lazily in and out, or taking attitudes of 
 brief attention — gave a vacillating preference first to one gen- 
 tleman, then to the other ; being dogs in such good circum- 
 stances 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 beautiful liver-colored water-spaniel, which 
 sat with its forepaws firmly planted, and its expressive brown 
 face turned upward, watching Grandcourt with unshaken con- 
 stancy. He held in his lap a tiny Maltese dog with a tiny sil- 
 ver collar and bell, and when he had a hand unused by cigar or 
 coffee-cup, it rested on this small parcel of animal warmth. I 
 fear that Fetch was jealous, 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
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 129 
 
 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 forth in a howling bark, Grandcourt pushed Fetch down 
 without speaking, and, depositing Fluff carelessly on the table 
 (where his black nose predominated over a salt-cellar), began 
 to look to his cigar, and found, wdth some annoyance against 
 Fetch as the cause, that the brute of a cigar required relight- 
 ing. 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 raisinoj his voice or lookinor 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 lighted a cigar, placed 
 himself at an angle where he could see Grandcourt's face with- 
 out turning, and presently said, 
 
 " Shall you ride or drive to Quetcham to-day ?" 
 
 " I am 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 to-day." 
 
 Silence for a couple of minutes. Then Grandcourt said, 
 " "\Miat men are invited here with their wives V 
 
 C*
 
 130 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Lush drew out a note-book. " The captain and Mrs. Tor- 
 rington come next week. Then there are Mr. Hollis, and Lady- 
 Flora, and the Cushats, and the Gogoffs." 
 
 " Rather a ragged 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 bring- 
 ing down a giantess on me without my knowledge. She spoils 
 the look of the room." 
 
 " You invited the Gogoffs yourself, when you met them in 
 Paris." 
 
 " What has my meeting them in Paris to do with it ? I 
 told you to give me a list." 
 
 Grandcourt, like many others, had two remarkably different 
 voices. Hitherto we have heard him speaking in a superficial, 
 interrupted drawl suggestive chiefly of languor and ennui. But 
 this last brief speech was uttered in subdued, inward, yet dis- 
 tinct tones, which Lush had long been used to recognize 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 d — d musicians. But not a comic fellow." 
 
 " I wonder if Klesmer would consent to come to us when he 
 leaves Quetcham. Nothing but first-rate music will go down 
 with Miss Arrowpoint." 
 
 Lush spoke carelessly, but he was really seizing an opportu- 
 nity, and fixing an observant look on Grandcourt, who now for 
 the first time turned his eyes toward his companion, but slowly, 
 and without speaking until he had given two long luxurious 
 puffs, when he said, perhaps in a lower tone than ever, but 
 \wi\h a perceptible edge of contempt, 
 
 " What in the name of nonsense have I to do with Miss Ar- 
 rowpoint 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."
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 131 
 
 " You have some debts, you know, and things may turn out 
 inconveniently, after all. The heirship is not absolutely cer- 
 tain." 
 
 Grandcourt did not answer, and Lush went on. 
 
 "It really is a fine opportunity. The father and mother 
 ask for nothino- better, I can see, and the dauo-hter's looks and 
 manners require no allowances, any more than if 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 any thing you 
 liked with them." 
 
 " But I should not like to do any thing with them." 
 
 Here it was Lush who made a little pause before speaking 
 again, and then he said, in a deep voice of remonstrance, " Good 
 God, Grandcourt ! after your experience, will you let a whim in- 
 terfere 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 exaspera- 
 ting, but meant to keep his temper. 
 
 " I am going to marry the other girl." 
 
 " Have you fallen 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. Ex- 
 tremely 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 on the lawn, all the dogs following 
 him.
 
 132 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Lush glanced after him a moment, then resumed his cigaf 
 and Ughted it, but smoked slowly, consulting his beard with in- 
 specting 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 Grand- 
 court for fifteen years without learning what sort of measures 
 were useless with him, though what sort might be useful re- 
 mained often dubious. In the beginning of his career he held 
 a fellowship, and w^as near taking orders for the sake of a col- 
 lege living, but, not being fond of that prospect, accepted in- 
 stead the office of traveling companion to a marquess, and aft- 
 erward to young Grandcourt, who had lost his father early, and 
 who found Lush so convenient that he had allowed him to be- 
 come prime minister in all his more personal affairs. The habit 
 of fifteen years had made Grandcourt more and more in need 
 of Lush's handiness, and Lush more and more in need of the 
 lazy luxury to which his transactions on behalf of Grandcourt 
 made no interruption worth reckoning. I can not say that the 
 same lengthened habit had intensified Grandcourt's want of re- 
 spect for his companion, since that w^ant 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 exposed himself to be kicked if 
 his confidant had been a man of independent 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 in- 
 dependent spirit when he is bent on dining with high discrimi- 
 nation, riding good horses, living generally in the most luxuriant, 
 honey-blossomed clover — and all without working? Mr. Lush 
 had passed for a scholar once, and had still a sense of scholar- 
 ship when he was not trying to remember much of it ; but the 
 bachelors' and other arts which soften manners are a time-hon- 
 ored preparation for sinecures ; and Lush's present comfortable 
 provision was as good as a sinecure in not requiring more than 
 the odor of departed learning. He was not unconscious of 
 being held kickable, but he preferred counting that estimate
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 133 
 
 among the peculiarities of Grandcourt's character, which made 
 one of his incalculable moods 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 if his love of ease required it. Lush's love of ease 
 was well satisfied at present, and if his puddings were rolled to- 
 ward 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 sitting-room and 
 played a good hour on the violoncello. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 " Philistia, be thou glad of me ! 
 
 Grand COURT, having made up his mind to marry Miss Har- 
 leth, showed a power of adapting means to ends. During the 
 next fortnight there was hardly a day on which, by some ar- 
 rangement 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 honors of his house, so that 
 Mrs. Davilow and Gwendolen could be invited to a large party 
 at Diplow in which there were many witnesses how the host 
 distinguished the dowerless beauty, and showed no solicitude 
 about the heiress. The world — I mean Mr. Gascoigne and all 
 the families worth speaking of within visiting distance of Pen- 
 nicote — 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 to-day give Gwendolen the opportu- 
 nity of accepting him, and had found in the evening that the
 
 134 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 necessary formality was still unaccomplished. This remarka- 
 ble fact served to heighten his determination on another day. 
 He had never admitted to himself that Gwendolen might re- 
 fuse him, but — Heaven help us all ! — we are often unable to 
 act on our certainties ; our objection to a contrary issue (were 
 it possible) is so strong that it rises like a spectral illusion 
 between us and our certainty: we are rationally sure that the 
 blind-worm can not bite us mortally, but it would be so intol- 
 erable to be bitten, and the creature has a biting look — we de- 
 cline 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, Grand- 
 court conducting them. It was a fine mid-harvest 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 un- 
 cut corn, and to wing the shadow of a cloud across the soft 
 gray 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 corn-fields, and the cattle took their rest 
 under wide branches. The road lay through a bit of country 
 where the dairy-farms 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 distance. 
 
 But the spirit of peace and permanence did not penetrate 
 poor Mrs. Davilow's mind so as to overcome her habit of un- 
 easy foreboding. Gwendolen and Grandcourt cantering in 
 front of her, and then slackening their pace to a conversational 
 walk till the carriage came up with them again, made a gratify- 
 ing sight ; but it served chiefly to keep up the conflict of hopes 
 and fears about her daughter's lot. Here w^as an irresistible 
 opportunity for a lover to speak and put an end to all uncer- 
 tainties, and Mrs. Davilow could only hope with trembling that 
 Gwendolen's decision would be favorable. Certainly if Rex's 
 love had been repugnant to her, Mr. Grandcourt had the advan- 
 tage of being in complete contrast with Rex ; and that he had
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 135 
 
 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. Davi- 
 low did not dare to break. "Is he a man she would be hap- 
 py 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 circum- 
 stances." 
 
 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 far-off echo. For her, too, there was 
 some peculiar quality in the air — not, she was sure, any subju- 
 gation of her will by Mr. 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 hus- 
 band, she would have him know that she was not going to re- 
 nounce her freedom, or, according to her favorite 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 give signs of a suppressed and formidable ability to say 
 more, and have also the meritorious quality of allowing lengthi- 
 ness 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
 
 136 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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, thanks. Mamma is so timid — if 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 any 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, look- 
 ing toward 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 her 
 a long while that she was first blushing, and then turning pale ; 
 but to Grandcourt's rate of judgment she answered soon 
 enough, with the lightest flute-tone 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 lib- 
 erty to do it." 
 
 She checked her horse as she spoke, and turned in her sad- 
 dle, looking toward 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 some- 
 thing — not her neck, but the possibility of finally checking 
 Grandcourt's advances, and she did not feel contented with tlie 
 possibility. 
 
 "D — n 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
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 137 
 
 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 privileges he 
 could give her. Or did she expect him to write his proposals ? 
 Equally a delusion. He would not make his offer in any way 
 that could place him definitely in the position of being reject- 
 ed. But as to her accepting him, she had done it already in 
 accepting his marked attentions ; and any thing which hap- 
 pened to break them off would be understood to her disadvan- 
 tage. She was merely coquetting, then ? 
 
 However, the carriage came up, and no further tete-a-tete 
 could well occur before their amval at the house, where there 
 was abundant company, to whom Gwendolen, clad in riding- 
 dress, with her hat laid aside, clad also in the repute of being 
 chosen by Mr. Grandcourt, was naturally a centre of observa- 
 tion ; 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 threatened her with repentance of her 
 own acts. Whether Grandcourt had been offended or not, 
 there was no judging : his manners were unchanged, but Gwen- 
 dolen's acuteness had not gone deeper than to discern that his 
 manners were no clue for her, and because these were unchanged 
 she was not the less afraifl 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 luncheon, 
 when some of the guests had dispersed, and the sun was slop- 
 ing toward 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.
 
 138 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 After they had nearly made the tour of the grounds, the whole 
 party paused by the pool to be amused with Fetch's accomplish- 
 ment of bringing a water-lily to the bank like Cowper's spaniel 
 Beau ; and having been disappointed in his first attempt, in- 
 sisted on his trying again. 
 
 Here Grandcourt, who stood with Gwendolen outside the 
 group, turned deliberately, and, fixing his eyes on a knoll plant- 
 ed with American shrubs, and having a winding path up it, 
 said, languidly, 
 
 " This is 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 
 Avalked up in silence. When they wTre on the 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 per- 
 fectly 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 any thing 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 advent- 
 ^^res — to find out the North-west Passage or the source of tlio 
 Nile, or to hunt tigers in the East. We must stay where we 
 grow, or where the gardeners 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 notion about the
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 139 
 
 plants ; they are often bored, and tliat is the reason why some 
 of them have got poisonous. What do you think ?" Gwendo- 
 len had run on rather nervously, lightly whipping the rhodo- 
 dendron 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 not both cruel and obstinate." 
 Here Gwendolen suddenly turned her head and looked full at 
 Grandcourt, whose eyes she had felt to be upon her through- 
 out 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 her ; 
 and it flashed through her thought that a sort of lotos-eater'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 un- 
 certain 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 dis- 
 tress. She had let it go — what could be more natural in a 
 slight agitation ? — and (but this seemed less natural in a gold- 
 handled whip which had been left altogether to itself) it had 
 o-one with some force over the immediate shrubs, and had 
 lodged itself in the branches of an azalea half-way down the 
 knoll. She could run down now, laughing prettily, and Grand-
 
 140 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 court 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 color, 
 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 this final beckoning might hap- 
 pen 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 likeli- 
 hoods that presented themselves alternately, one of two decisions 
 toward which she was being precipitated, as if they were two 
 sides of a boundary-line, 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 favorite 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 real- 
 ly seemed more attractive to her than she had believed before- 
 hand 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 her nature as if it had been the strong 
 odor 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 her- 
 self, with a spouse by her side who would fold his arms and 
 give her his countenance without looking ridiculous. Certain- 
 ly, with all her perspicacity, and all the reading which seemed 
 to her mamma dangerously instructive, her judgment was con- 
 sciously a little at fault before Grandcourt. He was adorably 
 quiet and free from absurdities — he could be a husband en suite 
 with the best appearance a woman could make. But what else 
 was he ? He had been everywhere, and seen every thing. That
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 141 
 
 was desirable, and especially gratifying as a preamble to bis su- 
 preme preference for Gwendolen Harletb. He did not appear 
 to enjoy any tbing mucb. Tbat was not necessary: and tbe 
 less be bad of particular tastes or desires, tbe more freedom bis 
 wife was likely to bave in following bers. Gwendolen con- 
 ceived tbat after marriage sbe would most probably be able to 
 manage bim tborougbly. 
 
 How was it tbat be caused ber unusual constraint now ? — 
 tbat sbe was less daring and playful in ber talk witb bim tban 
 witb any otber admirer sbe bad known ? Tbat absence of de- 
 monstrativeness wbicb sbe was glad of acted as a cbarm in more 
 senses tban one, and was sligbtly benumbing. Grandcourt, after 
 all, was formidable — a bandsome lizard of a bitberto unknown 
 species, not of tbe lively, darting kind. But Gwendolen knew 
 bardly any tbing about lizards, and ignorance gives one a large 
 range of probabiHties. Tbis splendid specimen was probably 
 gentle, suitable as a boudoir pet : wbat may not a lizard be, if 
 you know notbing to tbe contrary? Her acquaintance witb 
 Grandcourt was sucb tbat no accomplisbment suddenly revealed 
 in bim would bave surprised ber. And be was so little suggest- 
 ive of drama, that it bardly occurred to ber to tbink witb any 
 detail how his life of thirty-six years had been passed : in gen- 
 eral, she imagined him always cold and dignified, not likely ever 
 to bave committed himself. He bad bunted the tiger — had he 
 ever been in love, or made love ? Tbe 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 ; be suited her pui-pose. Her prevail- 
 ing, deliberate intention was, to accept him. 
 
 But was she going to fulfill 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 independence 
 in evading his advances had been carried farther than was nec- 
 essary, and sbe was thinking with some anxiety wbat she might 
 do on tbe next occasion. 
 
 Seated, according to her habit, with her back to tbe horses
 
 142 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 on their drive homeward, she was completely mider the obser- 
 vation of her mamma, who took the excitement and changeful- 
 ness in the expression of her eyes, her unwonted absence of 
 mind and total silence, as unmistakable signs that something 
 unprecedented had occurred between her and Grandcourt. Mrs. 
 Davilow's uneasiness determined her to risk some speech on the 
 subject : the Gascoignes were to dine at Offendene, and in what 
 had occurred this morning there might be some reason for con- 
 sulting the rector ; not that she expected him any more than 
 herself to influence Gwendolen, but that her anxious mind 
 wanted to be disburdened. 
 
 " Something has happened, dear ?" she began, in a tender tone 
 of question. 
 
 Gwendolen looked round, 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 shad- 
 ows from the bordering trees fell across it, and no observers 
 were within sight. Her eyes continued to meet her mother's, 
 but she did not speak. 
 
 "Mr. Grandcourt has been saying something? Tell me, 
 dear." The last words were uttered beseechingly. 
 
 " AVhat am I to tell you, mamma ?" was the perverse answer. 
 
 " I am sure something has agitated you. You ought to con- 
 fide in me, Gw^en. 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's intentions?" said Mrs. Davilow, 
 gathering determination from her alarms. 
 
 " No ; not at 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."
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 143 
 
 '' You expect him to persevere?" Mrs. Davilow put this ques- 
 tion rather anxiously, and receiving no answer, asked another. 
 " You don't consider that you have discouraged him ?" 
 
 " I dare say not." 
 
 "I thought vou liked him, dear," said Mrs. Davilow, tim- 
 idly. 
 
 " So I do, mamma, as liking goes. There is less to dislike 
 about him than about most men. He is quiet and distinguey 
 Gwendolen so far spoke with a pouting sort of gTavity ; but 
 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, stables, etc., no grins, and no glass in his eye." 
 
 " Do be serious with me for a moment, dear. Xm. I to un- 
 derstand that you mean to accept him ?" 
 
 '' Oh pray, mamma, leave me to myself," said Gwendolen, 
 with a pettish distress in her voice. 
 
 And Mrs. Davilow said no more. 
 
 AYhen 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 
 Avould hear what had passed did not trouble her. She was con- 
 vinced 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 generalized account of them. The 
 mother conveyed as vaguely as the keen rector's questions 
 would let her the impression that Gwendolen was in some un- 
 certainty about her own mind, but inclined on the whole to ac- 
 ceptance. 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 willful). But the rector's was 
 a firm mind, grasping its first judgments tenaciously and acting 
 on them promptly, whence counter -judgments were no more
 
 144 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 strengthen the Establishment. To the rector, whose fa- 
 ther (nobody would have suspected it, and nobody was told) 
 had risen to be a provincial corn-dealer, aristocratic heirship re- 
 sembled regal heirship in excepting its possessor from the or- 
 dinary standard of moral judgments. Grandcourt, the almost 
 certain baronet, the probable peer, was to be ranged with pub- 
 lic personages, and was a match to be accepted on broad gen- 
 eral grounds, national and ecclesiastical. Such public person- 
 ages, it is true, are often in the nature of giants which an an- 
 cient 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. Gascoignc was disposed to think the 
 best. Gossip is a sort of smoke that comes from the dirty to- 
 bacco-pipes of those who diffuse it : it proves nothing but the 
 bad taste of the smoker. But if Grandcourt had really made 
 any deeper or more unfortunate experiments in folly than were 
 common in young men of 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 dining-room. He 
 threw aside the paper as she entered, and greeted her with his 
 usual kindness. As his wife had remarked, he ahvays " 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 matters I consider my-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 145 
 
 self bound to act as vour 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 rec- 
 tor's mode of speech alw^ays conveyed a thrill of authority, as 
 of a word of command ; it seemed to take for granted that 
 there could be no wavering in the audience, and that eveiy 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 to-morrow," said Gwendolen. 
 
 " Why to-morrow ? Has he made advances which you have 
 discouraged ?" 
 
 " I think he meant — he began to make advances — but I did 
 not encourage 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." Gwendolen 
 laughed rather artificially. 
 
 "You are quite capable of reflecting, Gwendolen. You are 
 aware that this is not a tridal occasion, and it concerns your 
 establishment for life under circumstances which may not oc- 
 cur again. You have a duty here both to yourself and your 
 family. I w^ish 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 you personally ?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Have you heard any thing of him which has affected you 
 
 Vol. I.— 7
 
 146 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 disagreeably ?" The rector tlioiiglit it impossible that Gwendo- 
 len could have heard the gossip he had heard, but in any case 
 he must endeavor 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 af- 
 fects me very agreeably." 
 
 " Then, my dear Gwendolen, I have nothing further to say 
 than this : you hold your fortune in your own hands — a fort- 
 une 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 — es- 
 pecially when unclogged by any conditions that are repugnant 
 to you — your course is one of responsibility, into which ca- 
 price must not enter. A man does not like to have his attach- 
 ment trifled with : he may not be at once repelled — these 
 things are matters of individual disposition. But the trifling- 
 may be carried 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 w^as pressing 
 upon her the 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 pas- 
 sivity. " 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 re-enforcing herself by 
 speaking with this decisiveness to her uncle.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 147 
 
 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 senti- 
 ments proper to a girl, and such as are presupposed in the ad- 
 vice of a clergyman, although he may not consider them always 
 appropriate to be put forward. He wished his niece parks, 
 carriages, a title — every thing that would make this world a 
 pleasant abode ; but he wished her not to be cynical — to be, 
 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 considera- 
 tions 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 or- 
 dinary 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 the happier," said Gwendolen, in a 
 more cheerful way, lifting her hands backward to her neck and 
 mo\ing toward the door. She wanted to waive those higher 
 considerations. 
 
 Mr. Gascoigne felt that he had come to a satisfactory un- 
 derstanding with his niece, and had furthered her happy set- 
 tlement in life by furthering her engagement to Grandcourt. 
 Meanwhile there was another person to whom the contempla- 
 tion of that issue had been a motive for some activity, and 
 who believed that he too, on this particular day, had done some- 
 thing toward bringing about a favorable decision in his sense — 
 which happened to be 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 su- 
 percilious young lady, or of being abashed by her frank dislike, 
 but to an engagement from which he expected important con- 
 sequences. He was gone, in fact, to the Wancester station to
 
 148 • DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 meet a lady accompanied by a maid and two children, whom 
 he put into a fly, and afterward followed to the hotel of The 
 Golden Keys in that town. An impressive woman, whom 
 many would turn to look at again in passing : her figure was 
 slim and sufficiently tall ; her face rather emaciated, so that its 
 sculpturesque beauty was the more pronounced ; her crisp hair 
 perfectly black ; and her large anxious eyes also what we call 
 black. Her dress was soberly correct, her age perhaps physic- 
 ally more advanced than the number of years would imply, but 
 hardly less than seven-and-thirty. An uneasy-looking woman : 
 her glance seemed to presuppose that people and things were 
 going to be unfavorable to her, while she was nevertheless ready 
 to meet them with resolution. The children were lovely — a 
 dark-haired girl of six or more, a fairer boy of five. When 
 Lush incautiously expressed some surprise at her having brought 
 the children, she said, with a sharp-edged intonation, 
 
 " Did you suppose I should come wandering about here by 
 myself ? Why should I not bring all four if I liked ?" 
 
 " Oh, certainly," said Lush, with his usual fluent nonchalance. 
 
 He staid an hour or so in conference with her, and rode 
 back to Diplow in a state of mind that was at once hopeful and 
 busily anxious as to the execution of the little plan on which 
 his hopefulness was based. Grandcourt's marriage to Gwendo- 
 len Harleth would not, he believed, be much of a good to either 
 of them, and it would plainly be fraught with disagreeables to 
 himself. But now he felt confident enough to say inwardly, 
 " I will take odds that the marriage will never happen." 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 " I will not clothe myself in wreck — wear gems 
 Sawed from cramped finger-bones of women drowned ; 
 Feel chilly vaporous hands of ireful ghosts 
 Clutching my necklace ; trick my maiden breast 
 With orphans' heritage. Let your dead love 
 Marry its dead." 
 
 Gwendolen looked lovely and vigorous as a tall, newly 
 opened lily the next morning : there was a reaction of young
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 149 
 
 energy in her, and yesterday's self - distrust seemed no more 
 than the transient shiver on the surface of a full stream. The 
 roving archery match in Cardell Chase was a delightful pros- 
 pect for the sport's sake : she felt herself beforehand moving 
 about like a wood-nymph under the beeches (in appreciative 
 company), and the imagined scene lent a charm to further ad- 
 vances on the part of Grandcourt — not an impassioned lyrical 
 Daphnis for the wood-nymph, certainly : but so much the bet- 
 ter. To-day Gwendolen foresaw him making slow conversa- 
 tional approaches to a declaration, and foresaw herself awaiting 
 and encouraging it according to the rational conclusion which 
 she had expressed to her uncle. 
 
 When she came down to breakfast (after every one had left 
 the table except Mrs. Davilow) there were letters on her plate. 
 One of them she read with a gathering smile, and then handed 
 it to her mamma, who, on returning it, smiled also, finding new 
 cheerfulness in the good spirits her daughter had shown ever 
 since waking, and said, 
 
 " You don't feel inclined to go a thousand miles away ?" 
 
 " Xot exactly so far." 
 
 " It was a sad omission not to have written again before this. 
 Can't you write now — ^before we set out this morning ?" 
 
 " It is not so pressing. To-moiTOw will do. You see they 
 leave town to-dav. I must write to Dover. They will be there 
 till Monday." 
 
 " Shall I write for you, dear — if it teases you ?" 
 
 Gwendolen did not speak immediately, but, after sipping her 
 coffee, answered brusquely, " Oh no, let it be ; I ^-ill write to- 
 morrow." Then feeling a touch of compunction, she looked 
 up and said, with playful tenderness, "Dear, old, beautiful 
 mamma !" 
 
 "Old, child, truly." 
 
 " Please don't, mamma ! I meant old for darling. You are 
 hardly twenty-five years older than I am. ^\Tien you talk in 
 that way, my life shrivels up before me." 
 
 " One can have a great deal of happiness in twenty-five years, 
 my dear." 
 
 " I must lose no time in beginning," said Gwendolen, mer- 
 rily. " The sooner I get my palaces and coaches, the better."
 
 150 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 "And a good husband who adores you, Gwen," said Mrs. 
 Davilow, encouragingly. 
 
 Gwendolen put out lier lips saucily, and said nothing. 
 
 It was a slight drawback on lier pleasure in starting that the 
 rector was detained by magistrate's business, and would proba- 
 bly not be able to get to Cardell Chase at all that day. She 
 cared little that Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna chose not to go with- 
 out him, but her uncle's presence would have seemed to make 
 it a matter of course that the decision taken would be acted on. 
 For decision in itself began to be formidable. Having come 
 close to accepting Grandcourt, Gwendolen felt this lot of un- 
 hoped-for fullness rounding itself too definitely : when we take 
 to wishing a great deal for ourselves, whatever w^e get soon 
 turns into mere limitation and exclusion. Still there was the 
 re-assuring thought that marriage would be the gate into a 
 larger freedom. 
 
 The place of meeting was a grassy spot called Green Arbor, 
 where a bit of hanging Avood made a sheltering amphitheatre. 
 It was here that the coachful of servants with provisions had 
 to prepare the picnic meal ; and a warden of the Chase was to 
 guide the roving archers so as to keep them within the due dis- 
 tance from this centre, and hinder them from wandering be- 
 yond the limit which had been fixed on — a curve that might 
 be drawn through certain well-known points, such as the Dou- 
 ble Oak, the AVhispering Stones, and the High Cross. The 
 plan was, to take only a preliminary stroll before luncheon, 
 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 
 liere by closely neighboring beeches and there by rarer oaks, 
 one may suppose that a painter would have been glad to look 
 on. This roving archery was far prettier than the stationary 
 game, but success in shooting at variable marks was less favor- 
 ed by practice, and the hits were distributed among the volun- 
 teer archers otherwise than they would have been in target- 
 shooting. From this cause perhaps, as well as from the two- 
 fold distraction of being preoccupied, and wishing not to betray 
 her preoccupation, Gwendolen did not greatly distinguish her-
 
 BOOK n. MEETING STREAMS. 151 
 
 self in these first experiments, unless it were by the lively grace 
 with which she took her comparative 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 con- 
 versation. Still there were other grounds that made most per- 
 sons conclude them to be, if not engaged already, on the eve 
 of being so. And she believed this herself. As they were all 
 returning toward Green Arbor in divergent groups, not think- 
 ing at all of taking aim, but merely chatting, words passed 
 which seemed really the beginning of that end — the beginning 
 of her acceptance. Grandcourt said, '' Do you know how long 
 it is since I first saw you in this dress ?" 
 
 " The archery-meeting was on the 2oth, 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 thinkings 
 "He is really very ingenious. He never speaks stupidly." 
 Her silence was so unusual, that it seemed the strongest of fa- 
 vorable 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 look 
 right into them, which seemed like vision in the abstract, and 
 said, " Do you mean more torment for me V 
 
 There was something so strange to Gwendolen in this mo- 
 ment that she was quite shaken out of her usual self-conscious- 
 ness. Blushing and turning away her eyes, she said, " Xo ; 
 that would make me soitv."
 
 152 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Grandcoiirt would have followed up this answer, which the 
 change in her manner made apparently decisive of her favora- 
 ble intention ; but he was not in any way overcome so as to 
 be unaware that they were now, within sight of every body, 
 descending the slope into Green Arbor, and descending it at 
 an ill-cliosen 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 ob- 
 served 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 Avith dis- 
 passionate 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 out- 
 live him, notwithstanding the difference of years. It is ill cal- 
 culating 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 satisfied with the actual situ- 
 ation 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 
 scenery 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 almost as little penetrated by a 
 feeling of wider relations as if it had been a puppet-show. 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 
 any thing in particular, and the advantages of the world are 
 taken with that high-bred depreciation which follows from be- 
 ing accustomed to them. Some of the gentlemen strolled a lit-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 153 
 
 tie 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 
 to-day by making himself particularly serviceable, ordering ev- 
 ery thing for every body, and by -this activity becoming more 
 than ever a blot on the scene to Gwendolen, though he kept 
 himself amiably aloof from her, and never even looked at her 
 obviously. AVhen 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 con- 
 cerned 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, modng 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 toward 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 Whispering Stones and return to that spot. She will then 
 hear something to decide her, but she can only hear it by keep- 
 ing 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 it has repented. The secrecy Miss Harleth will feel her- 
 self bound in honor 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 contri\'ance that could justi- 
 fy her in showing the letter. Her mind gathered itself up at
 
 154 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 once into the resolution that she would manage to go unob- 
 served 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 by -and -by," 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 the 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 good-natured 
 earl gave Gwendolen a distant jocose hint to that effect, which 
 she took with suitable quietude. But the thought in her own 
 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 expres- 
 sion 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 to the 
 contrary, became another gratification of mere will, sublimely 
 independent of definite motive. At that moment he had be- 
 gun 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 re- 
 turn, would have expressed itself by a slow removal of his ci- 
 gar to say, in an under-tone, " You'll be kind enough to go to 
 the devil, will you ?" 
 
 But he was not interrupted, and the rovers set off without 
 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 arch- 
 ery getting more spirited, and the changing scenes of the forest 
 from roofed grove to open glade grooving lovelier with the 
 lengthening shadows, and the deeply felt but indefinable grada- 
 tions of the mellowing afternoon. It was agreed that they 
 were playing an extemporized " As you Like It ;" and when a
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 155 
 
 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 veiy difficult to her, for 
 the effect of what had happened to-day was an excitement 
 which needed a vent, a sense of adventure rather than alarm, 
 and a straining toward the management of her retreat so as 
 not to be impeded. 
 
 The roving had been lasting nearly an hour before the ar- 
 rival at the AVhispering Stones — two tall conical blocks that 
 leaned toward each other like gigantic gray -mantled figures. 
 They were soon surveyed and passed by with the remark that 
 they would be good ghosts on a starlit night. But a soft sun- 
 lio-ht 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 Arbor now- i" said Gwendolen, 
 having got in front by the side of the warden. 
 
 " Oh, not more than half a mile, taking along the avenue 
 we're going to cross up there : but I shall take round a couple 
 of miles, by the 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 w^as out of sight, 
 and without running she seemed to hei-self to fly along the 
 ground and count the moments nothing till she found herself 
 back again at the Whispering Stones. They turned their blank 
 gray 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 mystification ; and walking round 
 the right-hand stone Vithout pause, she found herself in front 
 of some one whose large dark eyes met hers at a foot's dis- 
 tance. In spite of expectation, she was startled, and shrunk 
 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 T' said the lady.
 
 156 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " Yes." All Gwendolen's consciousness was wonder. 
 " Have you accepted Mr. Grandcourt V 
 
 "No." 
 
 "I have promised to tell you something. And you will 
 promise 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 husband 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 looked toward 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 sun-rays. He was a cherub. 
 
 The two women's eyes met again, and Gwendolen said proud- 
 ly, " 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 imbittered. It is not fair that he should be 
 happy and I miserable, and my boy thrust out of sight for an- 
 other." 
 
 These words were uttered with a biting accent, but with a 
 determined abstinence from any thing violent in tone or man- 
 ner. Gwendolen, watching Mrs. Glasher's face while she 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 any thing more to say to me ?" she asked, in a 
 low tone, but still proudly and coldly. The revulsion within 
 her was not tending to soften her. Every one seemed hate- 
 ful. 
 
 " Nothing. You know what I washed you to know. You 
 can inquire about me, if you like. My husband was Colonel 
 Glasher."
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. lo7 
 
 "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 ao;ain, 
 but her party had gone out of sight, and apparently had not 
 sent in search of her, for all was solitude till she had reached 
 the avenue pointed out by the warden. She determined to 
 take this way back to Green Arbor, which she reached quickly ; 
 rapid movements seeming to her just now a means of suspend- 
 ing the thoughts which might prevent her from behavino; with 
 due calm. She had already made up her mind what step she 
 would take. 
 
 Mrs. Davilow was of course astonished to see Gwendolen re- 
 turning 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 somethinor, 
 so I lost sight of them. I thought it best to come home bv 
 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 cannings on the trees 
 either. Where can he be? I should think he has fallen into 
 the pool or had an apoplectic 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. 
 
 Mrs. Arrowpoint thought that the self-confident 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 the car- 
 riage," said Gwendolen. " I am tired : and every one will be 
 going soon." 
 
 Mrs. Da\'ilow assented ; but by the time the carriage was an- 
 nounced as ready — the horses having to be fetched from the 
 stables on the warden's premises — the roving party re-appeared, 
 and with them Mr. Grandcoart.
 
 158 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " Ah, there you are !" said Lord Brackenshaw, going up to 
 GAvendolen, who was arranging her mamma's shawl for the 
 drive. " We thought at first yoii had alighted on Grandcourt, 
 and he had taken you home. Lush said so. But after that 
 we met Grandcourt. 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 to-morrow ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, if you like," said Gwendolen, sweeping him from 
 a distance with her eyelashes. Her voice w^as 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 unsatis- 
 factory 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 at Dover, 
 mamma. I shall pack up immediately on getting home, and 
 set off by the early train. I shall be at Dover ahiiost 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." 
 
 "Is it because you are offended with Mr. Grandcourt's odd 
 behavior in walking off to-day ?"
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 159 
 
 " It is useless to enter into such questions. I am not going, 
 in any case, to marry Mr. Grandcourt. Don't interest yourself 
 further about him." 
 
 " \Yhat 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 favor of Mr. Grand- 
 court." 
 
 " I am very sorry to cause you annoyance, mamma dear, but 
 I can't help it," said Gwendolen, with still harder resistance in 
 her tone. "^ATiatever 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 don't 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. 
 Da\'ilow, miserable and helpless. 
 
 " Now, mamma, don't interfere with me. K you have ever 
 had any trouble in your own life, remember it, and don't inter- 
 fere with me. If I am to be miserable, let it be by my own 
 choice." 
 
 The mother was reduced to tremblino^ silence. She beoran 
 to see that the difficulty would be lessened if Gwendolen went 
 away. 
 
 And she did go. 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 travelers 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 twenty-four 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 in persons or things 
 is upset. Gwendolen's uncontrolled reading, though consisting 
 chiefly in what are called pictures of life, had somehow not pre- 
 pared her for this encounter with reality. Is that surprising ? 
 It is to be believed that attendance at the opera houffe in the
 
 160 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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. Perspective, as its 
 inventor remarked, is a beautiful thing. What horrors of damp 
 huts, where human beings languish, may not become pictur- 
 esque through aerial distance ! What hymning of cancerous 
 vices may we not languish over as sublimest art in the safe re- 
 moteness 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 brightening morning 
 was sadder to her than before. 
 
 Mr. Grandcourt called that day at Offendene, but nobody was 
 at home. 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 ^'- Festina lente — celerity should be contempered with cunctation." — Sir 
 Thomas Browne. 
 
 Gwendolen, we have seen, passed her time abroad in the 
 new excitement of gambling, and in imagining herself an em- 
 press of luck, having brought from her late experience a vague 
 impression that in this confused world it signified nothing what 
 people did, so that they amused themselves. We have seen, 
 too, that certain persons, mysteriously symbolized as Grapnell 
 & 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 circumstan- 
 ces ; 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 com- 
 ing 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 appointments with
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 161 
 
 them, which, however, his desire to be at Leubronn ultimately 
 caused him to break. Grandcourt's passions were of the inter- 
 mittent, flickering kind: never flaming out strongly. But a 
 great deal of life goes on without strong passion : myriads of 
 cravats are carefully tied, dinners 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 En- 
 glish 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 false 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 mere ooze and mud, and at any press- 
 ure yields nothing but a spurt or a puddle. 
 
 Grandcourt had not been altogether displeased by Gwendo- 
 len'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 behavior 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 opportu- 
 nities of winning the consent which he had made her under- 
 stand 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 toward 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 churn- 
 ing chances of his mind. Still, to have put off a decision was 
 to have made room 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?
 
 162 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Was it credible that she had refused Mr. Grandcoiirt ? 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 Quetch- 
 am, and thus not only got twice over, but also discussed with 
 the Arrowpoints, the information 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 resolved itself into a 
 wish that Gwendolen's disappearance should not be interpreted 
 as any thing eccentric or needful to be kept secret. The rec- 
 tor'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 his practical ability, some of his ex- 
 perience 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 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 yacht- 
 ing to the Baltic or somewhere — it being impossible to stay 
 at Diplow as if he were a prisoner on parole, with a set of peo- 
 ple whom he had never wanted. Lush needed no clearer an- 
 nouncement 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; Gwen- 
 dolen'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.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 163 
 
 This Avas how it happened 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 will- 
 fulness in the other — happen to bring them to the same spot. 
 Sir Hugo was an easy-tempered man, tolerant both of differ- 
 ences and defects ; but a point of \dew 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 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 set- 
 tlement which his 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 confirma- 
 tion 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 friend- 
 ly as possible. It led him to dwell on a plan which had grown
 
 164 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 up side by side witli liis disappointment 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 in- 
 heritance for his own offspring in spite of that disappointment. 
 Such knowledge as he had of his nephew's disposition and af- 
 fairs encouraged the belief that Grandcourt might consent to a 
 transaction by which he would get a good sum of ready money, 
 as an equiv^alent 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 throw^n away, and Grandcourt would have been paid 
 for giving up interests that had turned out good for nothing ; 
 but Sir Hugo set dowai this risk as nil, and of late years he had 
 husbanded his fortune so well by the w- orking 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 quar- 
 rel with Grandcourt. Some years before, when he w^as making- 
 improvements at the Abbey, and needed Grandcourt's concur- 
 rence in his felling an obstructive mass of timber on the de- 
 mesne, 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 ac- 
 commodation 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 im- 
 proved 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 lie 
 had not thought it in the least likely that he w^ould choose to 
 accept it, his sense of power would have been flattered by his 
 being able to refuse what Sir Hugo desired. The hinted trans- 
 action 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 hunt- 
 ing in the neighborhood 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 de-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 165 
 
 siring 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 meet- 
 ing 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 faint- 
 ly marked but peculiar relation, depending on circumstances 
 which have yet to be made known. But on no side was there 
 any sign of suppressed chagrin on the first meeting at the table- 
 dhbte^ an hour after Grandcourt's anival; and when the quar- 
 tet of gentlemen afterward met on the terrace, without Lady 
 Mallinger, they moved ofE together to saunter through the 
 rooms. Sir Hugo saying, as they entered the large Saal^ 
 
 " Did you play much at Baden, Grandcourt T' 
 
 " Xo ; I looked on and bet 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 demeanor, as 
 he moved along playing slightly with his whisker, were being a 
 good deal stared at by rouged foreigners interested in a new 
 milord. 
 
 " The fact is, somebody should invent a mill to do amuse- 
 ments for you, my dear fellow," said Sir Hugo, " as the Tar- 
 tars get their praying done. But I agree with you ; I never 
 cared for play. It's monotonous — knits the brain up into 
 meshes. And it knocks me up to watch it now. I suppose 
 one gets poisoned with the bad air. I never stay here more 
 than ten minutes. But where' s your gambling beauty, Deron- 
 da ? Have you seen her lately ?" 
 
 " She's gone," said Deronda, curtly. 
 
 " An uncommonly fine girl, a perfect Diana," said Sir Hugo, 
 turning to Grandcourt again. " Really worth a little straining
 
 166 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 sec 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 per- 
 ceptible shrug. " Yandernoodt told me her name was Harleth, 
 and she was with the Baron and Baroness von Langen. I saw 
 by the list that Miss Harleth was no longer there." 
 
 This held no further information for Lush than that Gwen- 
 dolen had been gambling. He had already looked at the list, 
 and ascertained that Gwendolen had gone, but he had no in- 
 tention of thrusting this knowledge on Grandcourt before he 
 asked for it ; and he had not asked, finding it enough to be- 
 lieve that the object of search would turn up somewhere or 
 other. 
 
 But now Grandcourt had heard what was rather piquant, 
 and not a word about Miss Harleth had been missed by him. 
 After a moment's pause, he said to Deronda, 
 
 "Do you know those 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 inten- 
 sity 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 spoken, so that servants and oflicials asked him automat- 
 ically, "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 turn- 
 ing round on him when he was not asked to do more than 
 speak. But he answered, with his nsual drawl, " Yes, I know
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 167 
 
 her," and paused with his shoulder toward 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 Offen- 
 dene. 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. 
 
 "^yhy? how?" said the baronet. They all moved out of 
 the salon into a more airy promenade. 
 
 " He has been on the brink of marrying her," Lush went on. 
 " 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 him, 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 likely enough not to get 
 toorether aojain. 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 Husjo and Deronda were alone, the baronet ben^an : 
 
 " Rather a pretty story. That girl has some drama in her. 
 She must be worth running after — has de Vimprevu. 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 man-iage 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 in- 
 clined to run away from her." 
 
 " Why, you would easily cut out Grandcourt. A girl with 
 her spirit 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.)
 
 168 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 ancetre,''^ said Sir 
 Hugo, who habitually undervalued birth, as men after dining 
 well often agree that the good of life is distributed with won- 
 derful 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 pass- 
 ed 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 stronger bias in another direction. He felt him- 
 self in no sense free. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 "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 orbit ; and the narrator of human ac- 
 tions, 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 mo- 
 ment 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 burned into his life as its chief epoch 
 — a moment full of July sunshine and large pink roses shed- 
 ding their last petals on a grassy court inclosed on three sides 
 by a Gothic cloister. Imagine him in such a scene : a boy of 
 thirteen, stretched prone on the grass where it was in shadow, 
 his curly head propped on his arms over a book, while his tu- 
 tor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool under shelter. Deronda's 
 book was Sismondi's " History of the Italian Republics :" the
 
 (fnn 
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 169 
 
 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 polit- 
 ical economy, answered with the clear-cut, emphatic chant 
 which makes a truth doubly telling in Scotch utterance, 
 
 " 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 ille- 
 gitimate." 
 
 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 occurred to him to ask about his father and mother, 
 the baronet had answered, " Yon 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 hadng been kissed very much, and 
 surrounded by thin, cloudy, scented drapery, till his fingers 
 caught in something hard, which hurt hira, 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 
 learning 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 ab- 
 solutely perfect, and whose place was one of the finest in En- 
 gland, at once historical, romantic, and home-like : a picturesque 
 architectural outgrowth from an abbey, which had still rem- 
 nants of the old monastic trunk. Diplow lay in another coun- 
 ty, and was a comparatively landless place which had come into 
 ' Vol. L— 8
 
 170 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the family from a rich lawyer on the female side, who wore the 
 peruke of the Restoration ; whereas the Mallingers had the 
 grant of Monk's Topping under Henry the Eighth, and ages 
 before had held the neighboring lands of King's Topping, tra- 
 cing, indeed, their origin to a certain Hugues le Malingre, who 
 came in with the Conqueror — and also apparently with a sickly 
 complexion, which had been happily corrected in his descend- 
 ants. Two rows of these descendants, direct and collateral, fe- 
 males 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 armor 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 perukes, and ladies of the 
 prize-animal kind, with rose-bud mouths and full eyelids, accord- 
 ino* to Lely ; then a generation whose faces w^re revised and 
 embellished in the taste of Kneller ; and so on through refined 
 editions of the family types in the time of Reynolds and Rom- 
 ney, 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 be- 
 tween 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 was in reality shorter than 
 rai2;ht have been expected in a Mallinger. Happily the appro- 
 priate nose of the family re-appeared in his younger brother, 
 and was to be seen in all its refined regularity in his nephew 
 Mallinger Grandcourt. But in the nephew Daniel Deronda the 
 family faces of various types, seen on the walls of the gallery, 
 found no reflex. Still, he was handsomer than any of them.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 1/1 
 
 and wlien 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 thoroughly meeting yours 
 without believing that human creatures had done nobly in 
 times past, and might do more nobly in time to come. The 
 finest child-like 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, Dan- 
 iel 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 w^hen 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 indescribable look of sub- 
 dued activity which often accompanies a new mental survey of 
 familiar facts. He had not lived with other boys, and his 
 mind showed the same blending of child's ignorance with sur- 
 prising knowledge w^hich is oftener seen in bright girls. Hav- 
 ing read Shakspeare 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 conse- 
 quence, 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 bom 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 quick comparison, the possibility that here w^as the 
 secret of his own birth, and that the man whom he called un- 
 cle 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 buy every thing, 
 were poor and in hard money troubles. Daniel felt the pres- 
 ence of a new guest who seemed to come with an enigmatic 
 veiled face, and to carry dimly conjectured, dreaded revelations.
 
 1V2 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 The ardor which he had given to the imaginary world in his 
 books suddenly rushed toward 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 utterance 
 about any shame connected with their parents. The impetu- 
 ous advent of new images took possession of him with the force 
 of fact for the first time told, and left him no immediate pow- 
 er for the reflection 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 betrayal 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 grounds, 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 histo- 
 ry, as he had often made stories about Pericles or Columbus, 
 just to fill up the blanks 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 banished 
 as an offense, 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 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 re- 
 lation to all the elements of his life. And the idea that others
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. l73 
 
 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 that 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 ac- 
 companiments for himself on the piano, while he sung 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 pres- 
 ence 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 neighbor, said, 
 
 " Come here, Dan !" 
 
 The boy came forward with unusual reluctance. He wore 
 an embroidered holland blouse, which set off the rich color- 
 ing 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. 
 
 "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, per- 
 ceptible 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 chamber, threw himself on 
 the broad window-sill, which was a favorite 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 lighted up a great reach of the park, where the old oaks
 
 174 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 
 with 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 for- 
 got 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 (though not greatly believed in at 
 present) to be fond of poverty and take it for a bride ; to pre- 
 fer scoured deal, red quarries, and whitewash for one's private 
 surroundings; to delight in no splendor 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 idle- 
 ness, that they might bind themselves for small pay to hard- 
 handed labor. But Daniel's tastes were altogether in keeping 
 with his nurture : his disposition was one in which every-day 
 scenes and habits beget not ennui or rebellion, but delight, af- 
 fection, aptitudes; and now the lad had been stung to the 
 quick by the idea that his uncle — perhaps his father — thought 
 of a career for him which was totally unlike his own, and which 
 he knew very well was not thought of among possible destina- 
 tions for the sons of English gentlemen. He had often staid 
 in London with Sir Hugo, who, to indulge the boy's ear, had 
 carried him to the opera to hear the great tenors, so that the 
 image of a singer taking the house by storm was very vivid to 
 him ; 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 wonder- 
 ful 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 ever be mentioned to him ? Would the time come 
 when his uncle would tell him every thing ? He shrunk from
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. iTo 
 
 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 
 euttinoj thought that such knowledo'e mig-ht be in other minds. 
 Was it in Mr. Eraser'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 housekeep- 
 er ? — 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. 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 had merely thought that Banks made a silly face, as the 
 common farmingr men often did — laughing at what was not 
 laughable ; and he rather resented being winked at and talked 
 of as if he did not understand every thing. But now that 
 small incident became information : it was to be 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 changed his name, as Mr. Henleigh Mallinger did when he 
 married Miss Grandcourt. But then, why had he never heard 
 Sir Hugo speak 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 now his mind turned to a 
 cabinet of estate-maps in the library, where he had once seen 
 an illuminated parchment hanging out, that Sir Hugo said was 
 the family tree. The phrase was new and odd to him — he was 
 a little fellow then, hardly more than half his present age — 
 and he gave it no precise meaning. He knew more now, 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
 
 176 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 never bring liimself near even a silent admission of the sore 
 that had opened in him. 
 
 It is in such experiences of boyhood or girlhood, while elders 
 are debating- whether most education lies in science or literature, 
 that the main lines of character are often laid down. If Dan- 
 iel 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, might have turned into a 
 hard, proud antagonism. But inborn lovingness was strong 
 enough to keep itself level with resentment. There was hard- 
 ly 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 strait-laced man, and left his dignity to 
 take care of itself. Him Daniel loved in that deep-rooted 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 watch-chain and seals, his 
 handwriting, his mode of smoking and of talking to his dogs 
 and horses, had all a rightness and charm about them 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 nnder the same 
 consecration of loving belief which differenced what was his 
 from what was not his, in spite of general resemblance. Those 
 writings were various, from volumes of travel in the brilliant 
 style, to articles on things in general, and pamphlets on politic- 
 al crises ; but to Daniel they were alike in having an unques- 
 tionable rightness by which other people's information could 
 be tested. 
 
 Who can not 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 eas- 
 ily 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 some time after this renewal of Daniel's agitation it ap-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 177 
 
 peared 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 arm-chair. "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 shoul- 
 der, looking at him affectionately. 
 
 " AMiat is it, my boy ? Have you heard any thing that has 
 put you out of spirits lately ?" 
 
 Daniel was determined not to let the tears come, but he 
 could not speak. 
 
 "All changes 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 to go to school?" 
 
 " Yes, I mean you to go to Eton. I wish you to have the 
 education of an English gentleman ; and for that it is necessary 
 that you should go to a public school in preparation for the 
 university : Cambridge I mean you to go to ; it was my own 
 university." 
 
 Daniel's color 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 no- 
 tion 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 sha'n't I come home and be 
 with you in the holidays ?" 
 
 " Oh yes, generally," said Sir Hugo. " But now I mean you 
 
 8*
 
 178 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 to go at once to a new tutor, to break the change for you be- 
 fore you 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 keen- 
 ness of the lad taught him to find comfort in his ignorance. 
 While he was busying his mind in the construction of possi- 
 bilities, 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 sung 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. It was his bent to think that every 
 stranger would be surprised at his ignorance. 
 
 " There are dunces to be found everywhere," said the judi- 
 cious Fraser. " You'll not be the biggest ; but you've not the 
 makings of a Porson in you, or a Leibnitz either." 
 
 " I don't want to be a Porson or a Leibnitz," said Daniel. 
 " I would rather be a greater leader, like Pericles or Washing- 
 ton." 
 
 " 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 in return. 
 Daniel immediately shrunk into reserve, and this experience re- 
 mained a check on his naturally strong bent toward the forma- 
 tion of intimate friendships. Every one, his tutor included, set 
 him down as a reserved boy, though he was so good-humored 
 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 favorable interpretation ; but in 
 this instance the beauty of the closed lips told no falsehood.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 179 
 
 A surprise that came to Mm before his first vacation strength- 
 ened the silent consciousness of a grief within, which might be 
 compared in some ways with Byron's susceptibihty about his 
 deformed foot. Sir Hugo wrote word that he was married to 
 Miss Raymond, a sweet lady whom Daniel must remember hav- 
 ing seen. The event would make no difference about his spend- 
 ing 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 agreeable 
 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 ac- 
 tion can be more f ally known. The mistakes in his behavior 
 to Deronda were due to that dullness toward what may be go- 
 ing on in other minds, especially the minds of children, which 
 is among the commonest deficiencies eveh in good-natured men 
 like him, when life has been generally easy to themselves, and 
 their energies have been quietly spent in feeling gTatified. Xo 
 one was better aware than he that Daniel was generally suspect- 
 ed 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 aspect of his circumstances. He 
 was as fond of him as 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 five-and-forty, 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 in 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 any body but himself. 
 
 By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady 
 Mallinger had already three daughters — charming babies, all 
 three, but whose sex was announced as a melancholy alterna-
 
 180 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 live, the offspring desired being a son : if Sir Hugo had no son, 
 the succession must go to his nephew, MalHnger Grandcourt. 
 Daniel no longer held a wavering opinion about his own birth. 
 His fuller knowledG:e had tended to convince him that Sir Huffo 
 was his father, and he conceived that the baronet, since he nev- 
 er 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 fast-coming lit- 
 tle 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 one who felt his own claim to be prior. But ha- 
 tred 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 toward 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 spiritu- 
 al yeast, and easily turns a self-centred, 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 early wakened susceptibility, charged at first with 
 ready indignation and resistant pride, had raised in him a pre- 
 mature 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 in the 
 library, and it was the fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called 
 him in to read a letter from a Cambrideje don who was to be
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 181 
 
 interested in him ; and since the baronet wore an air at once 
 business-like and leisurely, the moment seemed propitious for 
 entering on a grave subject which had never yet been thorough- 
 ly 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 — by-and-by, 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 see and hear, I should 
 think you can take up any thing you like. You are in deeper 
 water with your classics than I 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 yourseK 
 on the dry sand as much as you like. I floundered along like 
 a carp." 
 
 " I suppose money will make some difference, sir," said Dan- 
 iel, blushing. " I shall have to keep myself by-and-by." 
 
 " Not exactly. I recommend yoti not to be extravagant — 
 yes, yes, I know — you are not inclined to that ; but you need 
 not take up any thing 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 "wdth me." 
 
 Deronda looked embarrassed. 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 life- 
 interest in the estate by way of providing for his daughters ;
 
 182 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and as all this flashed through Daniel's mind it was momenta- 
 rily within his imagination that the provision for him might 
 come in some way from his mother. But such vaporous con- 
 jecture passed away as quickly as it came. 
 
 Sir Hugo appeared not to notice any thing peculiar in Dan- 
 iel's manner, and presently went on with his usual chatty live- 
 liness. 
 
 "I'm 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 for him 
 to make a Greek and Latin machine of himself, and be able to 
 spin you out pages 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 tends 
 to choke ordinary remark. One couldn't carry on life com- 
 fortably without a little blindness to the fact that every thing- 
 has been said better than we can put it ourselves. But talk- 
 ing of dons, I have seen dons make a capital figure in society ; 
 and occasionally he can shoot you down a cart-load 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 noth- 
 ing; ao-ainst 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 honors." 
 
 " 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 learn- 
 ing 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 evapo- 
 rated : if I had to construe a verse on a sudden, I should get 
 an apoplectic fit. But it formed my taste. I dare say my 
 English is the better for it." 
 
 On this point Daniel kept a respectful silence. The enthu-
 
 BOOK 11. MEETING STREAMS. 183 
 
 siastic belief in Sir Hugo's writings as a standard, and in the 
 Whigs as the chosen race among politicians, had gradually van- 
 ished along with the seraphic boy's face. He had not been the 
 hardest of workers at Eton. Though some kinds of study and 
 reading came as easily as boating to him, he was not of the 
 material that usually makes the first-rate Eton scholar. There 
 had sprung up in him a meditative yearning after wide knowl- 
 edge, which is likely always to abate ardor in the fight for prize 
 acquirement in narrow tracks. Happily he was modest, and 
 took any second-rateness in himself simply as a fact, not as a 
 marvel necessarily to be accounted for by a superiority. Still, 
 Mr. Eraser's high opinion of the lad had not been altogether 
 belied by the youth : Daniel had the stamp of rarity in a sub- 
 dued fervor of sympathy, an activity of imagination on behalf 
 of others, which did not show itself effusively, but was contin- 
 ually seen in acts of considerateness that struck his companions 
 as moral eccentricity. " Deronda would have been first-rate if 
 he had had more ambition," was a frequent remark about him. 
 But how could a fellow push his way properly when he object- 
 ed to swap for his own advantage, knocked under by choice 
 when he was within an inch of victory, and, unlike the great 
 Cli\'e, would rather be the calf than the butcher ? It was a mis- 
 take, 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 dishonor 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. Eor 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 low^er place, by-and-by 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 every thing 
 within it, Lady Mallinger and her little ones included, were
 
 184 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 consecrated for the youth as they had been for the boy — only 
 with a certain difference of liglit on the objects. The altar- 
 piece was no longer miraculously perfect, painted under infalli- 
 ble guidance, but the human hand discerned in the work was 
 appealing to a reverent tenderness safer from the gusts of dis- 
 covery. Certainly Deronda's ambition, even in his spring-time, 
 lay exceptionally aloof from conspicuous, vulgar triumph, and 
 from other ugly forms of 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 resisting what others pursue, and a boy who is fond of 
 somebody else's pencil-case may not be more energetic than 
 another who is fond of giving his own pencil-case 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 genius 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 neighbors' 
 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 instruc- 
 tion 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 his 
 freight and harness, when he should liave 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 mathemat- 
 ics, for which he had shown an early aptitude under Mr. Eraser, 
 and he had the delight of feeling his strength in a comparative-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 185 
 
 ly fresli exercise of thought. That delight, and the favorable 
 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, 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 toward comprehension 
 and thoroughness diverging more and more from the track 
 marked out by the standards of examination : he felt a height- 
 ening 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 under - graduateship occurred 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 ha\dng been at- 
 tracted by the conventional advantage of belonging to an En- 
 glish university, and was tempted toward the project of asking 
 Sir Hugo to let him quit Cambridge and pursue a more inde- 
 pendent line of study abroad. The germs of this 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 traveling students of the Middle 
 Ages. He longed now to have the sort of apprenticeship to 
 life which would not shape him too definitely, and rob him of 
 the choice that might come from a free growth. One sees 
 that Deronda's demerits were likely to be on the side of reflect- 
 ive hesitation, and this tendency was encouraged by his posi- 
 tion : there was no need for him to get an immediate income, 
 or to fit himself in haste for a profession ; and his sensibility to 
 the half-known 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 cer- 
 tain circumstances had not quickened it into action. 
 
 The circumstances arose out of an enthusiastic friendship
 
 186 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 which extended into his after -Hfe. 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 Hospital, and 
 had eccentricities enough for a Charles Lamb. Only to look 
 at his pinched features and blonde hair hanging over his collar 
 reminded one of pale quaint heads by early German painters ; 
 and when this faint coloring was lighted up by a joke, there came 
 sudden creases about the mouth and eyes which might have 
 been molded 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 aft- 
 er Holbein — felt himself the pillar, or rather the knotted and 
 twisted trunk, round which these feeble climbing plants must 
 cling. There was no want of ability or of honest, well-meaning 
 affection to make the prop trustworthy : the ease and quickness 
 with which he studied might serve him to win prizes at Cam- 
 bridge, as he had done among the Blue Coats, in spite of ir- 
 regularities. The only danger was, that the incalculable tend- 
 encies in him might be fatally timed, and that his good in- 
 tentions 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 inter- 
 vals he had fits of impish recklessness, and did things that 
 would have made the worst habits. 
 
 Hans in his right mind, however, 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 on 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 to fight it away for the sake of getting some 
 sort of plum that he might divide with liis 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, expansive 
 natures. Deronda was content, and gave Meyrick all the inter-
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 187 
 
 est 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, shel- 
 tering wings that delight in spreading, the other gets the warm 
 protection which is also a delight. Meyrick was going in for 
 a classical scholarship, and his success, in various ways mo- 
 mentous, 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 alternation between unnecessary expense and self-pri- 
 vation, he had given too much money for an old engraving 
 which fascinated him, and, to make up for it, had come from 
 London in a third-class carnage with his eyes exposed to a bit- 
 ter wind, and any irritating particles the wind might drive be- 
 fore it. The consequence was a severe inflammation of the 
 eyes, which for some time hung over him the threat of a last- 
 ing injury. This crushing trouble called out all Deronda's readi- 
 ness to devote himself, and he made every other occupation sec- 
 ondary 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 staid 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. AVith your mathe- 
 matical cram one may be like Moses or Mohammed or some- 
 body 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 really been beguiled into a little indifference by double 
 sympathy : he was very anxious that Hans should not miss the 
 much-needed scholarship, and he felt a 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
 
 188 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and recover his lost ground. He failed, however ; out 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 emp- 
 tiness of all things, from politics to pastimes, is never so strik- 
 ing 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 Cam- 
 bridge 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 uneasi- 
 ness. He believed in Deronda's alleged preference, but he felt 
 keenly that in serving him Daniel had placed himself at a dis- 
 advantage in Sir Hugo's opinion, and he said mournfully, " If 
 you had got the scholarship. Sir Hugo would have thought that 
 you asked to leave us with a better grace. You have spoiled 
 your luck for my sake, and I can do nothing to mend it." 
 
 " Yes, you can ; you are to be a first-rate fellow. I call that 
 a first-rate investment of my luck." 
 
 " Oh, confound it ! You save an ugly mongrel from drown- 
 ing, and expect him to cut a fine figure. The poets have made 
 tragedies enough about signing one's self over to wdckedness 
 for the sake of getting something plummy. I shall write a 
 tragedy 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 gen- 
 erous devotion he could hardly have failed to win the prize he 
 had been working for. 
 
 The two friends wxnt up to town together : Meyrick to re- 
 joice with his mother and the girls in their little home at Chel- 
 sea ; Deronda to carry out the less easy task of opening his 
 mind to Sir Hugo. He relied a little on the baronet's general
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 189 
 
 tolerance of eccentricities, but he expected more opposition tlian 
 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 
 abroad. Sir Hugo sat for some time in a silence which was rath- 
 er 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 merely English at- 
 titude in studies." 
 
 " I see ; you don't want to be turned out in the same mold 
 as every other youngster. And I have nothing to say against 
 your dofiBng 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 indiffer- 
 ent to bad tobacco ! And — my dear boy — it is good to be un- 
 selfish 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 
 tallow-trade; you must know where to find yourself. How- 
 ever, I shall put no veto on your going. Wait untU I can get 
 off committee, and I'll run over with you." 
 
 So Deronda went according to his will ; but not before 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, de- 
 clared by Hans to have been the salvation of him, a fellow like 
 nobody else, and, in fine, a brick. They so thoroughly 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 Prince Camaralzaman.
 
 190 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 *' This is truth the poet sings, 
 That a sorrow's crown of sorrow 
 Is remembering happier things." 
 
 Tennyson : Locksley Hall. 
 
 On a fine evening near tlie end of July, Deronda was rowing 
 liimself on the Thames. It was ah^eady 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 Sir 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 Mallin- 
 gers, because he could nowhere else get the same still seclusion 
 which the river gave him. He had a boat of his own at Put- 
 ney ; and 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 labor 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 spec- 
 tral illusions ; especially as Deronda set himself against author- 
 ship — a vocation which is understood to turn foolish thinking 
 into funds. 
 
 Rowing in his dark-blue shirt and skull-cap, his curls closely 
 clipped, his mouth beset with abundant soft waves of beard, he 
 bore only disguised traces of the seraphic boy " trailing clouds
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 191 
 
 of glory." Still, even one who had never seen him since his 
 boyhood might have looked at him with slow 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 sacrifice. Look at his hands: they are not 
 small and dimpled, Avith tapering fingers that seem to have only 
 a deprecating touch : they are long, flexible, firmly grasping 
 hands, such as Titian has painted in a picture w^here 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 pale-brown skin, the perpen- 
 dicular 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 us here and there among average condi- 
 tions ; in a workman, for example, whistling over a bit of meas- 
 urement and lifting his eyes to answer our question about the 
 road. And often the grand meanings of faces as well as of 
 written words may lie chiefly in the impressions of those who 
 look on them. But it is precisely such impressions that hap- 
 pen just now to be of importance in relation to Deronda, row- 
 ing on the Thames in a very ordinary equipment ior 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 appear- 
 ance was of a kind to draw attention ; and hints of this, intend- 
 ed to be complimentary, found an angry resonance in him, com- 
 ing 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 of some one whom he 
 must be like — one about whose character and lot he continual- 
 ly wondered, and never dared to ask.
 
 192 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 In the neighborhood of Kew Bridge, between six and seven 
 o'clock, the river was no solitude. Several persons were saun- 
 tering on the towing-path, and here and there a boat was ply- 
 ing. Beronda had been rowing fast to get over this spot, 
 when, becoming aware of a great barge advancing toward him, 
 he guided his boat aside, and rested on his oar within a couple 
 of yards of the river-brink. He was all the while unconscious- 
 ly continuing the low-toned chant which had haunted his throat 
 all the way up the river — the gondolier's song in the " Otello," 
 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 insect murmur amidst the 
 sum of current noises. Deronda, awaiting the barge, now 
 turned his head to the river-side, and saw at a few yards' dis- 
 tance from him a figure which might have been an impersona- 
 tion of the misery he was unconsciously giving voice to : a girl 
 hardly more than eighteen, of low, slim figure, with most deli- 
 cate little face, her dark curls pushed behind her ears under a 
 large black hat, a long woolen 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, statue-like despair. 
 This strong arrest of his attention made him cease singing : ap- 
 parently his voice had entered her inner world without her hav- 
 ing taken any note of whence it came, for when it suddenly 
 ceased she changed her attitude slightly, and, looking round 
 with a frightened glance, met Deronda's face. It was but a 
 couple of moments, but that seems a long while for two people 
 
 * Dante's words are best rendered by our own poet in the lines at the 
 head of the chapter.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 193 
 
 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 toward her ; but the next instant she had turned 
 and walked away to a neighboring bench under a tree. He 
 had no right to linger and watch her: poorly dressed, melan- 
 choly women are common sights ; it was only the delicate beau- 
 ty, the picturesque lines and color of the image that were ex- 
 ceptional, and these conditions made it the more markedly im- 
 possible that he should obtrude his interest upon her. He be- 
 gan 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 speculatino- 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 trao-ic 
 when it befell delicate, child-like 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 brown-black 
 drapery, the white face with small, small features and dark, 
 long -lashed eyes. His mind glanced over the girl -tragedies 
 that are going on in the world, hidden, unheeded, as if they 
 were but tragedies of the copse or hedge-row, where the help- 
 less drag wounded wings forsakenly, and streak the shadowed 
 moss with the red moment-hand of their own death. Deronda 
 of late, in his solitary excursions, had been occupied chiefly 
 with uncertainties about his own course ; but those uncertain- 
 ties being much at their leisure, were wont to have such wide- 
 sweeping connections with all life and history that the new 
 image of helpless soitow easily blent itself with what seemed 
 to him the strong array of reasons why he should shrink from 
 getting into that routine of the world which makes men apolo- 
 
 VoL. I.— 9
 
 194 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 gize for all its wrong-doing, and take opinions as mere profes- 
 sional equipment — why he should not draw strongly at any 
 thread in the hopelessly entangled 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 
 favorite 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 bead-roll which some Oriental poet describes as God's 
 call to the little stars, who each answer, " Here am I." He 
 chose a spot in the bend of the river just opposite Kew Gar- 
 dens, where he had a great breadth of water before him reflect- 
 ing 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 around him, but could not 
 be seen by any one at a few yards' distance ; and for a long 
 while he never turned his eyes from the view right in front of 
 him. He was forgetting every thing else in a half-speculative, 
 half-involuntary identification of himself with the objects he 
 was looking at, thinking how far it might be possible habitual- 
 ly 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 willow-bushes, made him turn his glance thitherward. 
 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
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 195 
 
 apparent solitude, hid her hat among the willows, and immedi- 
 ately took off her woolen 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 drowning-shroud ; 
 there was no longer time to hesitate about frightening her. 
 He rose and seized his oar to ply across : happily her position 
 lay a little below him. The poor thing, overcome with terror 
 at this sign of discovery from the opposite bank, sunk down 
 on the brink again, holding her cloak but half out of the wa- 
 ter. She crouched, and covered her face as if she kept a faint 
 hope that she had not been seen, and that the boatman was ac- 
 cidentally coming toward her. But soon he was within brief 
 space of her, steadying his boat against the bank, and speak- 
 ing, 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 toward the Hght, and she knew it again. But she did not 
 speak for a few moments, which were a renewal of their for- 
 mer gaze at each other. At last she said in a low, sweet voice, 
 with an accent so distinct that it suggested f oreignness, 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 hun- 
 ger. 
 
 "It was you, singing?" she went on, hesitatingly — "Nessun 
 maggior dolore." .... The mere words themselves uttered in 
 her sweet under-tones seemed to give the melody to Deronda's 
 ear. 
 
 "Ah, yes," he said, understanding now, " I am often singing 
 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 scare her. Even at his words, he fancied that 
 she shrunk and clutched the cloak more tenaciously. But her
 
 196 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 will 
 let 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 deli- 
 cate 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 escaped Deronda in a tone so low 
 and solemn that they seemed like a prayer become unconscious- 
 ly vocal. The agitating impression this forsaken girl was mak- 
 ing 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 low-toned words seemed to have some re-assurance 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 you 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 wer'e not in the near background. Still she hesitated, and 
 said, more timidly than ever, 
 
 *' 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 per- 
 fect 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."
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 197 
 
 She drew backward no more, but stepped in easily, as if 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 depreca- 
 tingly as she attempted to rise. " The boat is fixed." 
 
 He jumped out, found the hat, and lifted up the saturated 
 cloak, wrinoino: it and throwino; 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 garment than my coat to offer 
 you. But shall you mind throwing it over your shoulders while 
 w^e 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 toward 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 De- 
 ronda. 
 
 " No ; I can not 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 w^atching 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 giving their answer one after an- 
 other. The moon was rising, but was still entangled among 
 trees and buildings. The light was not such that he could dis- 
 tinctly 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 un- 
 mistakable, and gave a deeper color to every other suspicious
 
 198 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 sign. He longed to begin a conversation, but abstained, wish- 
 ing 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 can not bear you to speak of that. I hope you will never 
 be sorry that I came." 
 
 " I can not see how I shall be glad to live. The maggior 
 dolor e and the miseria have lasted longer than the iem'po feliceP 
 She paused, and then went on dreamily, ''^Dolore — miseria — 
 I think those words are alive." 
 
 Deronda was mute : to question her seemed an unwarrant- 
 able freedom. He shrunk from appearing to claim the authori- 
 ty of a benefactor, or to treat her with the less reverence be- 
 cause she was in distress. She went on, musingly, 
 
 " I thought it was not wicked. Death and life are one be- 
 fore the Eternal. I know our fathers slew their children and 
 then slew themselves, to keep their souls pure. I meant it so. 
 But now I am commanded to live. I can not see how I shall 
 live." 
 
 *'• You will find friends. I will find them for you." 
 
 She shook her head, and said, mournfully, " Not my mother 
 and brother. I can not find them." 
 
 " You are English ? You must be — speaking English so per- 
 fectly." 
 
 She did not answer immediately, but looked at Deronda 
 again, straining to see him in the doubtful light. Until now 
 she had been watching the oar. It seemed as if she were half 
 roused, and wondered which part of her impressions was dream- 
 ing 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 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.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 199 
 
 " I want to know notliing except what you like to tell me," 
 lie 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 English -born. 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 delicate- 
 faced Spanish girls might simply have guessed her to be Span- 
 ish. 
 
 " 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 can not tell you — I can not 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 on her 
 knees. He hoped that this passionate weeping might relieve 
 her excitement. Meanwhile he was inwardly picturing in much 
 embarrassment how he should present himself with her in Park 
 Lane — the course which he had at first unreflectingly deter- 
 mined on. No one kinder and more gentle than Lady Mallin- 
 ger ; but it was hardly probable that she would be at home ; 
 and he had a shuddering sense of a lackey staring at this deli- 
 cate, sorrowful image of womanhood — of glaring lights and 
 fine staircases, and perhaps chilling, suspicious manners from 
 lady's maid 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 ad- 
 venture which had brought on him a responsibility all the
 
 200 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 heavier for tlie strong and agitating impression this child-like 
 creature had made on him. But another resource came to 
 mind : he could venture to take her to Mrs. Meyrick's — to the 
 small home at Chelsea, where he had been often enough since 
 his return from abroad to feel sure that he could appeal there 
 to generous hearts, which had a romantic readiness to believe 
 in innocent need and to help it. Hans Meyrick was safe away 
 in Italy, and Deronda felt the comfort of presenting himself 
 with his charge at a house where he would be met by a moth- 
 erly figure of Quakerish neatness, and three girls who hardly 
 knew of any evil closer to them than what lay in history books 
 and dramas, and would at once associate a lovely Jewess with 
 Rebecca in " Ivanhoe," besides thinking that every thing they 
 did at Deronda's request would be done for their idol, Hans. 
 The vision of the Chelsea home once raised, Deronda no longer 
 hesitated. 
 
 The rumbling thither in the cab after the stillness of the wa- 
 ter seemed long. Happily his charge had been quiet since her 
 fit of weeping, and submitted like a tired child. When they 
 were in the cab, she laid down her hat, and tried to rest her 
 head, but the jolting movement would not let it rest : still she 
 dozed, and her sweet head hung helpless first on one side, then 
 on the other. 
 
 " They are too good to have any fear about taking her in," 
 thought Deronda. Her person, her voice, her exquisite utter- 
 ance, were one strong appeal to belief and tenderness. Yet 
 what had been the history which had brought her to this deso- 
 lation ? He was going on a strange errand — to ask shelter for 
 this waif. Then there occurred to him the beautiful story Plu- 
 tarch somewhere tells of the Delphic women : how when the 
 Maenads, outworn with their torch-lit wanderings, lay down to 
 sleep in the market-place, the matrons came and stood silently 
 round them to keep guard over their slumbers ; then, when 
 they waked, ministered to them tenderly and saw them safely 
 to their own borders. He could trust the women he was go- 
 ing to for having hearts as good. 
 
 Deronda felt himself growing older this evening, and enter- 
 ing on a new phase in finding a life to which his own had come 
 — perhaps as a rescue ; but how to make sure that snatching
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 201 
 
 from death was rescue ? The moment of finding a fellow-creat- 
 ure is often as full of mingled doubt and exultation as the mo- 
 ment of findinof an idea. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 *' Life is a various mother : now she dons 
 Her plumes and brilUants, climbs the marble stairs 
 With head aloft, nor ever turns her eyes 
 On lackeys who attend her ; now she dwells 
 Grim-clad up darksojne alleys, breathes hot gin, 
 And screams in pauper riot. 
 
 But to these 
 She came a frugal matron, neat and deft, 
 With cheerful morning thoughts, and quick device 
 To find the much in little." 
 
 Mrs. Meyrick's house was not noisy : the front parlor looked 
 on the river, and the back on gardens, so that though she was 
 reading aloud to her daughters, the window could be left open 
 to freshen the air of the small double room where a lamp and 
 two candles were burning. The candles were on a table apart 
 for Kate, who was drawing illustrations for a publisher; the 
 lamp was not only for the reader, but for Amy and Mab, who 
 were embroidering satin cushions for " the great world." 
 
 Outside, the house looked very naiTow and shabby, the bright 
 light through the holland blind showing the heavy old-fashioned 
 window-frame ; but it is pleasant to know that many such grim- 
 walled slices of space in our foggy London have been, and still 
 are, the homes of a culture the more spotlessly free from vul- 
 garity because poverty has rendered every thing like display an 
 impersonal question, and all the grand shows of the world sim- 
 ply 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 
 
 9*
 
 202 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 hus- 
 band ; and the narrow spaces of wall held a world-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 parlors, with no furniture that a broker 
 would have cared to cheapen except the prints and piano, there 
 were space and apparatus for a wide-glancing, 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 fastidi- 
 ous in some points, and could not believe that the manners of 
 ladies in the fashionable world were so full of coarse selfish- 
 ness, petty quarreling, and slang as they are represented to be in 
 what are called literary photographs. The Meyricks had their 
 little oddities, streaks of eccentricity from the mother's blood 
 as well as the father's, their minds being like mediasval houses 
 with 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. Hans'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 by- 
 and-by oblige him to give up his fellowship. They could all 
 afford to laugh at his Gavarni caricatures, and to hold him blame- 
 less in following a natural bent which their unselfishness and 
 independence had left without obstacle. It was enough for 
 them to go on in their old way, only having a grand treat of 
 opera-going (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 a French book : slie was 
 a lively little woman, half French, half Scotch, with a pretty
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 203 
 
 articulateness of speech that seemed to make daylight in her 
 hearer's understanding. Though she was not yet fifty, her rip- 
 pUng hair, covered by a Quakerish net cap, was chiefly gray, 
 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 daugh- 
 ters were to match the mother, except that Mab had Hans's 
 light hair and complexion, with a bossy, irregular brow and oth- 
 er quaintnesses that reminded one of him. Every thing about 
 them was compact, from the firm coils of their hair, fastened 
 back a la Chinoise, to their gray skirts in Puritan non-conformi- 
 ty with the fashion, which at that time would have demanded 
 that four feminine circumferences should fill all the free space 
 in the front parlor. All four, if they had been wax -work, 
 might have been packed easily in a fashionable lady's traveling- 
 trunk. Their faces seemed full of speech, as if their minds had 
 been shelled, after the manner of horse-chestnuts, 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-Cha- 
 trian's " Histoire d'un Conscrit." She had just finished read- 
 ing it aloud, 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. 
 Every thing 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' faces : no, it is more than that — we can hear 
 every thing — 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 Revelation. It makes me want 
 to-do something good, something grand. It makes me so sor- 
 ry for every body. It makes me like Schiller — 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.
 
 204 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " Whenever you are in that mood, Mab, down goes your 
 work," said Amy. " It would be doing something good to fin- 
 ish your cushion without soiling it." 
 
 " Oh — oh — oh !" groaned Mab, as she stooped to pick up her 
 work and thimble. " I wish I had three wounded conscripts 
 to take care of." 
 
 " You would spill their beef-tea 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 pop- 
 
 py." 
 
 " 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 Avish something wonderful would happen. I feel 
 like the deluge. The waters of the great deep are broken up, 
 and the windows of heaven are opened. I must sit down and 
 play the scales." 
 
 Mab Avas 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 
 parlor door open. 
 
 " Mr. Deronda !" The girls could hear this exclamation from 
 their mamma. Mab clasped her hands, saying, in a loud whis- 
 per, " 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 parlor door. 
 
 " I know I am trusting to your goodness in a most extraor- 
 dinary way," Deronda went on, after giving his brief narrative, 
 " but you can imagine how helpless I feel with a young creat- 
 ure like this on my hands. I could not go with her among 
 strangers, and in lier 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 liave honored me by trusting me.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 205 
 
 I see your difficulty. Pray bring her in. I will go and pre- 
 pare the girls." 
 
 While Deronda went back to the cab, Mrs. Meyrick turned 
 into the parlor again and said, " Here is somebody to take care 
 of instead of your wounded conscripts, Mab : 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 has trusted us and brought her here. It seems she 
 is a 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 awe -stricken, as if this answer to her wish were some- 
 thing preternatural. 
 
 Meanwhile Deronda, going to the door of the cab where tlie 
 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 for- 
 getting her hat ; and when Deronda led her into the full light 
 of the parlor, where the four little women stood awaiting her, 
 she made a picture that would have stirred much duller sensi- 
 bilities than theirs. At first she was a little dazed by the sud- 
 den 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 dark-curled 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 tak- 
 ing 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 orood-will was beino^ reflected in hers, not
 
 206 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 in any smile, but in that indefinable 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 coUect- 
 edness in her sweet tones than he had heard before, 
 
 " I am a stranger. I am a 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 to-night ?" 
 
 " Oh, I should not fear. I should rest. I think these are 
 the ministering angels." 
 
 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 
 beino: received without a further account of herself : 
 
 " My name 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 ; where- 
 upon Hafiz, who 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 you allow me to come again and inquire — perhaps at 
 five to-morrow ?" he said to Mrs. Meyrick.
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 207 
 
 " Yes, pray. We shall have had time to make acquaintance 
 then." 
 
 " Good-bye," said Deronda, looking down at Mirah, and put- 
 ting out his hand. She rose as she took it, and the moment 
 brought back to them both strongly the other moment when 
 she had first taken that outstretched hand. She lifted her eyes 
 to his, and said, with reverential fervor, " 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 be- 
 fore 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 adieus to the Mey- 
 ricks, hurried away.
 
 BOOK III. 
 MAIDENS CHOOSING.
 
 BOOK III. 
 
 MAIDENS CHOOSING. 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 " I pity the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, ' 'Tis 
 all barren ; and so it is : and so is all the world to him who will not cul- 
 tivate the fruits it offers." — Sterne : Sentimental Journey. 
 
 To say that Deronda was romantic would be to misrepresent 
 him ; but under his calm and somewhat self-repressed exterior 
 there was a fervor which made him easily find poetry and ro- 
 mance among the events of every-day life. And perhaps poet- 
 ry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world except for 
 those phlegmatic natures who, I suspect, would in any 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 is the vacuum 
 in gentlemen and lady passengers. How should all the ap- 
 paratus of heaven and earth, from the farthest firmament to 
 the tender bosom of the mother who nourished us, make poet- 
 ry for a mind that has no movements of awe and tenderness, 
 no sense of fellowship which thrills from the near to the dis- 
 tant, and back again from the distant to the near ? 
 
 To Deronda this event of finding Mirah was as heart-stirring 
 as any thing that befell Orestes or Rinaldo. He sat up half 
 the night, living again through the moments since he had first 
 discerned Mirah on the river-brink, 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 net-work through which
 
 212 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 he saw and heard every thing 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 liis own experience caused Mirah's search after 
 her mother to lay hold with peculiar force on 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 
 finding them, as subtle as scientific experiment, the right ma- 
 chinery being set at work. But here the mixed feelings which 
 belonged to Deronda's kindred experience naturally transfused 
 themselves into his anxiety on behalf of Mirah. 
 
 The desire to know his own mother, or to know about her, 
 was constantly haunted with dread; and in imagining what 
 might befall Mirah, it quickly occurred 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 worsen- 
 ing. 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 toward existing 
 Jews, and the facts he knew about them, whether they walked 
 conspicuous in fine apparel or lurked in by-streets, were chiefly 
 of the sort most repugnant to him. Of learned and accom- 
 plished 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 indiscrimi- 
 nate 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 con- 
 nected with Christian tenets, and probably they could allege ex- 
 perimental grounds for this opinion. Deronda could not escape 
 (who can ?) knowing ugly stories of Jewish characteristics and 
 occupations ; and though one of his favorite protests was against
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 213 
 
 the severance of 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 long-oppressed race. But now that Mirah's 
 longing roused his mind to a closer survey of details, very disa- 
 greeable images urged themselves of what it might be to find out 
 this middle-aged Jewess and her son. To be sure, there was the 
 exquisite refinement and charm of the creature herself to make 
 a presumption in favor 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 giN'ing 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 door-way, and saw a hawk-eyed woman, rough-headed 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 favor 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 practice 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 was to be done with Mirah ? She needed shelter 
 and protection in the fullest sense, and all his chivalrous sen- 
 timent roused itself to insist that the sooner and the more 
 fully he could engage for her the interest of others besides
 
 214 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 himself, the better he should fulfill 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 produced 
 made him desire that she should understand herself to be en- 
 tirely 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 inter- 
 woven 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 advent- 
 ure 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 " It will hardly be denied that even in this frail and corrupted world, we 
 sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and aspect, as well as in 
 the Avhole 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 result 
 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 
 looked like one who was beginning to take comfort after the 
 long sorrow and watching which had paled her cheek and
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 215 
 
 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, mold- 
 ing 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 stooping toward Mirah's feet, as she entered the parlor. 
 " 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 all - recompensing Creator, support her; and I 
 wonder how they can sustain what is above them.* " 
 
 Mirah looked down at her own feet in a child-like 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 me to be cautious." She returned 
 Mirah's smile, and said, " I fear the feet have had to sustain 
 their burden a little too often lately. But to-day 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 a 
 sorrowful one, yet was needful to be told. 
 
 The small front parlor was as good as a temple that morn- 
 ing. 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 amidst her cherubic escort ; 
 grand Melancholia, with her solemn universe ; the Prophets and 
 Sibyls ; the school of Athens ; the Last Supper ; mystic groups 
 where far-off ages made one moment; grave Holbein and 
 Rembrandt heads; the Tragic Muse; last-century children at 
 their musings or their play; Italian poets — all were there, 
 through the medium of a little black and white. The neat
 
 216 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 mother who had weathered her troubles, and come out of them 
 with a face still cheerful, w^as sorting colored wools for her em- 
 broidery. Hafiz purred on the window-ledge, the clock on the 
 mantel-piece ticked without hurry, and the occasional sound of 
 wheels seemed to lie outside the more massive central quiet. 
 Mrs. Meyrick thought that this quiet might be the best invita- 
 tion to speech on the part of her companion, and chose not to 
 disturb it by remark. Mirah sat opposite in her former atti- 
 tude, her hands clasped on her lap, her ankles crossed, her eyes 
 at first traveling slowly over the objects around her, but final- 
 ly 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 any thing ; yet I 
 was not seven when I was taken away, and I am nineteen 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 round me, and she sung to me. One hymn 
 she sung so often, so often ; and then she taught me to sing it 
 with her — it was the first I ever sung. They were always He- 
 brew hymns she sung ; and because I never knew the meaning 
 of the words, they seemed full of nothing but our love and hap- 
 piness. 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 gray hair : ten years ago it was 
 bright brown. The days and the months pace over us like 
 restless little birds, and leave the marks of their feet backward 
 and forward ; 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.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 217 
 
 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 wdcked ; none help- 
 ed 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 over me — and I thought that death was the best 
 image of mercy, then goodness came to me living, and I felt 
 trust in the liWng. And — it is strange — but I began to hope 
 that she was living too. iVnd 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 grateful ! You have not thought e^^l of me — 
 you have not despised me," 
 
 Mirah spoke with low -toned fervor, 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 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 every thing. 
 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 comfort- 
 ed me, and told me I should go back to 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 kam 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 
 Vol. I.— 10
 
 218 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 did not go back. I remember my brother a little ; he carried 
 me once ; but he was not always at home. I believed my fa- 
 ther when he said that they were dead. I saw them under the 
 earth when he said they were there, with their eyes forever 
 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 comfort- 
 ed 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." 
 
 Mirali paused, with a sweet content in her face, as if she 
 were having her happy vision, while she looked out toward 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 pains to teach me. He was 
 an actor ; and I found out after that the ' Coburg ' 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 translated plays. An Italian lady, a sing- 
 er, 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, there were 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 shrunk away from all those things outside me into 
 companionship with thoughts that were not like them ; and I 
 gathered thoughts very fast, because I read many things — 
 plays and poetry, Shakspeare and Schiller, and learned evil and
 
 BOOK IlI.-^MAIDENS CHOOSING. 219 
 
 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 
 if I had been a musical box. 
 
 " Once, when I was ten years old, I played the pai-t of a little 
 girl who had been forsaken and did not know it, and sat sing- 
 ing 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 ; and 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 every thing about me : I chose 
 what seemed to me beautiful out of the plays and every thing, 
 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 some- 
 times noticed my shrinking ways; and Signora said one day, 
 when I had been rehearsing, ' She will never be an artist : she 
 has no notion of being any body but herself. That does very 
 well now, but by-and-by you will see — she will have no more 
 face and action than a singing-bird.' 
 
 " My father was angry, and they quarreled. 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 to time. Re- 
 bellious feelings grew stronger in me, and I wished to get 
 away from this life ; but I could not tell where to go, and I 
 dreaded the world. Besides, I felt it would be wrong to leave 
 my father : I dreaded doing wrong, for I thought I might get 
 wicked and hateful to myself, in the same way that many oth- 
 ers seemed hateful to me. For so long, so long, I had never 
 felt my outside world happy ; and if I got wicked I should 
 lose my world of happy thoughts where my mother lived with
 
 220 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 me. That was my childish notion all through those years. 
 Oh, how long they were !" 
 
 Mirah fell to musing again. 
 
 " Had you no teaching about what was your duty ?" said 
 Mrs. Meyrick. She did not like to say " religion " — finding her- 
 self, on inspection, rather dim as to what the Hebrew religion 
 mio;ht have turned into at this date. 
 
 " No ; only that I ought to do what my father wished. He 
 did not follow our religion at New York, and I think he want- 
 ed me not to know much about it. But because my mother 
 used to take me to the synagogue, and I remembered sitting 
 on her knee and looking through the railing and hearing the 
 chanting and singing, I longed to go. One day, when I was 
 quite small, I slipped out and tried to find the synagogue, but 
 I lost myself a long while, till a peddler questioned me and 
 took me home. My father, missing me, had been in much 
 fear, and was very angry. I, too, had been so frightened at 
 losing myself that it was long before I thought of venturing 
 out again. But, after Signora left us, we went to rooms where 
 our landlady was a Jewess and observed her religion. I asked 
 her to take me with her to the synagogue; and I read in her 
 prayer-books and Bible ; and when I had money enough, I ask- 
 ed her to buy me books of my own, for these books seemed a 
 closer companionship with my mother : I knew that she must 
 have looked at the very words and said them. In that way I 
 have come to know a little of our religion, and the history of 
 our people, besides piecing together what I read in plays and 
 other books about Jews and Jewesses ; because I was sure that 
 my mother obeyed her religion. I had left off asking my fa- 
 ther about her. It is very dreadful to say it, but I began to 
 disbelieve him. I had 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 go- 
 ing 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's taking me on his knee, and telling me that my 
 mother and brother were both dead, seemed to me now nothing
 
 BOOK *II. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 221 
 
 but a bit of acting, to set my mind at rest. Tlie cruelty of 
 that falsehood sunk into me, and I bated all untruth because 
 of it. I wrote to my mother secretly : I knew the street, Col- 
 man Street, where we lived, and that it was near Blackfriars 
 Bridge and the Coburg, and that our name was Cohen then, 
 though my father called us Lapidoth, because, he said, it was 
 a name of his forefathers in Poland. I sent my letter secret- 
 ly ; but no answer came, and I thought there was no hope for 
 me. Our life in America did not last much longer. My fa- 
 ther suddenly told me we were to pack up and go to Hamburg, 
 and I was rather glad. I hoped we might get among a difier- 
 ent sort of people, and I knew German quite well — some Ger- 
 man plays almost all by heart. My father spoke it better than 
 he spoke English. I was thirteen then, and I seemed to my- 
 self quite old — I knew so much, and yet so little. I think oth- 
 er children can not 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 sung 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 no- 
 body 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 un- 
 happiness in my life came from my being a Jewess, 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 of 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 chanfifed her tone in this last sentence, havinsr
 
 222 DANIEL DERONDA., 
 
 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." 
 
 "After that we lived in different towns — Hamburg and Vien- 
 na 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 sing- 
 ing, and he made me rehearse parts and act continually. He 
 looked forward to my coming out in the opera. But by-and- 
 by it seemed that my voice would never be strong enough — it 
 did not fulfill 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 hurt- 
 ing him ; but he always mistook what would please me and 
 give me happiness. It was his nature to take every thing 
 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 own people ; and 
 once, when he had been imitating their movements and their 
 tones in praying, only to make others laugh, I could not re- 
 strain myself — for 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. Vfould it not be bad if I mimicked you, that 
 they might mock you ?' But he only shrugged his shoulders, 
 and laughed and pinched my chin, and said, ' You couldn't do 
 it, my dear.' It was this way of turning off every thing 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
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 223 
 
 and all tlie life upon it only like a farce 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 af- 
 fectionateness, and the tenderest feeling I had toward 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 gayety went away suddenly, and he 
 w^ould 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. K I put my hand on his knee 
 and said, ' ^\Tiat is the matter, father V he would make no an- 
 swer, but would draw my arm round his necli and put his arm 
 round me, and go on crying. There never came any confi- 
 dence between us ; but oh, I was sorry for him ! At those mo- 
 ments 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 in Vi- 
 enna. He had nothing to do with the theatre then ; I did not 
 understand what he did, but I think he was continually at a 
 gambling-house, 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 worse 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
 
 224 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 
 rscldom. 
 
 " 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 recog- 
 nized him as a gentleman whom I had seen the other night for 
 the first time behind the scenes. That agitated me, for I re- 
 membered 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 toward 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 fa- 
 ther wanted me to look pleased. The count was neither very 
 young nor 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 w^hy he was so much 
 worse to me than other men. Some feelings are like our hear- 
 ing : they come as sounds do, before we know their reason. 
 My father talked to me about him Avhen 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 pris- 
 on. 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,
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 225 
 
 and called me ' petit ange' and such things, which I felt insult- 
 ing. 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 every 
 thing. 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 every thing, and he would explain ; if I did 
 not come out and act and fulfill 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 discour- 
 agingly of my acting, and say I could never go on singing in 
 public — I should lose my voice — I ought to think of my fu- 
 ture, 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 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 go to Prague. I was getting suspicious of every thing, 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. ^ felt as if it had been 
 
 10*
 
 226 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 a plan to take me to a mad-liouse. 1 once saw a picture of 
 a mad-house that I could never forget ; it seemed to me very 
 much like some of the life I had seen — the people strutting, 
 quarreling, 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 turned 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 
 lighted 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 I 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 lighted, it was difficult to dis- 
 tinguish faces as we drove along the street. My father chose 
 to sit outside — he was always smoking now — and I watched 
 every thing in spite of the darkness. I do believe I could see 
 better then than ever I did before : the strange clearness with- 
 in seemed to have 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 to 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. Some 
 one 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
 
 BOOK III. MAIDEXS CHOOSING. 227 
 
 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 on, 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 eat 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 Do- 
 ver, and I did walk a good deal of the way from Dover to Lon- 
 don. I knew I should look like a miserable beggar-girl. I 
 wanted not to look very miserable, because if I found my moth- 
 er, it would grieve her to see me so. But oh, how vain my hope 
 was that she would be there to see me come ! As soon as I set 
 foot in London, I began to ask for Lambeth 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 wide 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 ; every thing 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 Colman 
 Street, eh ?" meaning well, perhaps. But his tone was what I 
 could not bear ; and how could I tell him what 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
 
 228 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 where I could enter. I lost my trust. I thought I was for- 
 saken. 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. All 
 who saw me would think ill of me, and I must herd with beg- 
 gars. I stood on the bridge and looked along the river. Peo- 
 ple were going on to a steamboat. Many of them seemed poor, 
 and I felt as if it would be a refuge 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 eat, 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 must have 
 soon come to me, and when I awoke it was morning. The 
 -birds were 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 wlio made themselves glad with scorn- 
 ing, and laughed at another's shame. What could I do ? This 
 life seemed to be closing in upon me with a wall of fire — every- 
 where there was scorching that made mo shrink. The high
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 229 
 
 sunlight made me shrink. And I began to think that my de- 
 spair 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 cra- 
 elest, our fathers had sometimes slain their children and after- 
 ward 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 think, ' I will bear it.' But al- 
 ways before, I had some hope ; now it was gone. With these 
 thoughts I wandered and wandered, inwardly crying to the 
 Most High, from whom I should not flee in death more than in 
 life — thouo;h I had no stronor faith that He cared for me. The 
 strength seemed departing from my soul : 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 were 
 all I had to 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 ? 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 
 as^ainst Mirah's forehead.
 
 230 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " She's just a pearl ; the mud has only washed her," was the 
 fervid little woman's closing commentary when, tete-a-tete with 
 Deronda in the back parlor that evening, she had conveyed 
 Mirah's story to him with much vividness. 
 
 '' What is your feeling about a search for this mother ?" said 
 Deronda. " 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. Then, as to 
 advertising, if the name was Cohen, you might as well adver- 
 tise 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 every thing 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 feel with him that it would 
 be wiser to wait, before seeking a dubious, perhaps a deplora- 
 ble, result ; especially 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 gener- 
 ously 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 plan- 
 ning 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
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 231 
 
 sent to save lier 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 catch her feelinor lite 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 oc- 
 cupy herself as the other girls did, and make herself independ- 
 ent. 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. K 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 1 am doing something for you as well as 
 for Mirah." 
 
 " That is no make-believe. What should I have done with- 
 out you last night ? Every thing would have gone wrong. I 
 shall tell Hans that the best of having him for a friend is know- 
 ing 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 pastil 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 multipli- 
 cation-table in his name. We must all do something extra in 
 honor of him, now he has brought you to us." 
 
 " I suppose he is too great a person to want any thing," 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 
 related to grand people. I dare say 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 suspi- 
 cious of this sentiment, and on the watch for Jewish peculiari- 
 ties which had not appeared.
 
 232 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 : im- 
 possible to see a creature freer at once from embarrassment and 
 boldness. Her theatrical training had left no recognizable 
 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 definite mold of beauty. Deronda felt that he was 
 making acquaintance with something quite new to him in the 
 form of womanhood. For Mirah was not child -hke from ig- 
 norance : her experience of evil and trouble was deeper and 
 stranger than his own. He felt inclined to watch her and list- 
 en 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 af- 
 fect others, he shrunk 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 expres- 
 sion 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 wdtli 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 his farewell for the two months dur- 
 ing which he expected to be absent from London, and in a 
 few days he was on his way with Sir Hugo and Lady Mallin- 
 ger to Leubronn.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 233 
 
 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 apologet- 
 ically about herself as a woman who had produced nothing but 
 daughters in a case where sons were required, and hence re- 
 garded the apparent contradictions of the world as probably 
 due to the weakness of her own understanding. But when she 
 was much puzzled, it was her habit to say to herself, " I will 
 ask Daniel." Deronda was altogether a 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XXL 
 
 " 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 ; Igno- 
 rance, wanting its day's dinner, lights a fire with the record, and gives a 
 flavor to its one roast with the burned souls of many generations. Knowl- 
 edge, instructing the sense, refining and multiplying needs, transforms it- 
 self 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 there not be ' — and the many-colored creation is shriveled 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 look- 
 ing at life parcel-wise, in the growth of a single lot, who having a practiced 
 vision mav not see that ignorance of the true bond between events, and
 
 234 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 false conceit of means whereby sequences may be compelled — like that 
 falsity of eye-sight 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 half-past ten in the morning when Gwendolen Harleth, 
 after her gloomy journey from Leubronn, arrived at the sta- 
 tion from which she must drive to Offendene. No 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 pict- 
 urinsf 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 2^ 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 wa- 
 ter, 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, look- 
 ing toward 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-up offspring, and did not know what to do with 
 themselves. The railway official also seemed without re- 
 sources, and his innocent demeanor 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 be- 
 ing slowly prepared by an elderly laborer. Contemptible de- 
 tails 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 un- 
 til it gets the mass and momentum of a theory or a motive. 
 Even philosophy is not quite free from such determining in- 
 fluences; and to be dropped solitary at an ugly, irrelevant- 
 looking spot with a sense of no income on the mind, might
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 235 
 
 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 fastid- 
 ious taste, an Indian shawl over her arm, some ten cubic feet of 
 trunks by her side, and a mortal dislike to the new conscious- 
 ness of poverty which was stimulating her imagination of dis- 
 agreeables ? At any rate, they told heavily on poor Gwendolen, 
 and helped to quell her resistant spirit. AYhat 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 w^hich 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 \ision 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 would have literally 
 nothing. To go to a dull place abroad and live poorly was the 
 dismal future that threatened her : she had seen plenty of poor 
 English people abroad, and imagined herself plunged in the de- 
 spised dullness of their ill - plenished lives, with Alice, Bertha, 
 Fanny, and Isabel all growing up in tediousness around her, 
 while she advanced toward 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 un- 
 comfortable 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 be- 
 ing any thing 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.
 
 "236 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Gwendolen liad 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. 
 
 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 impor- 
 tance to any one else, but all of them feeling Gwendolen's pres- 
 ence to be somehow a relenting of misfortune. Where Gwen- 
 dolen was, something interesting would happen. Even her hur- 
 ried submission to their kisses, and " Now go away, girls," car- 
 ried 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 affection- 
 ately 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 upstairs and shut themselves in the 
 black-and-yellow bedroom. 
 
 " Never mind, mamma dear," said Gwendolen, tenderly press- 
 ing 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 com- 
 passionate tenderness stirred all her capability of generous res- 
 olution ; and the self-confident projects which had vaguely 
 glanced before her during her journey sprung instantaneous- 
 ly into new definiteness. Suddenly she seemed to perceive 
 how she could be " something." It was one of her best mo- 
 ments, and the fond mother, forgetting every thing below
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 237 
 
 that tide -mark, looked at her with a sort of adoration. She 
 said, 
 
 " Bless you, my good, good darling 1 I can be happy, if you 
 can!" 
 
 But later in the day there was an ebb ; the old slippery 
 rocks, the old weedy places, re-appeared. Xaturally, there was 
 a shrinkinor of couraQ-e as misfortune ceased to be a mere an- 
 nouncement, and began to disclose itself as a grievous, tyran- 
 nical inmate. At first — that ugly drive at an end — it was still 
 Offendene that Gwendolen had come home to, and all surround- 
 ings of immediate consequence to her were still ther|^ to secure 
 her personal ease : the roomy stillness of the large solid house 
 while she rested ; all the luxuries of her toilet cared for with- 
 out trouble to her ; and a little tray with her favorite 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 to- 
 gether." 
 
 Wlien 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 
 every thing, and began, in a tone of deliberate intention, 
 
 " ^Miat 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 every thing with him to the 
 best advantage for us : Bazley, you know ; not at all an ill-nat- 
 ured man." 
 
 " I can not help thinking that Lord Brackenshaw would let 
 you stay here rent-free, mamma," said Gwendolen, whose tal- 
 ents had not been applied to business so much as to discern- 
 ment of the admiration excited by her charms. 
 
 " My dear child, Lord Brackenshaw is in Scotland, and knows 
 nothing about us. Xeither your uncle nor I would choose to 
 apply to him. Besides, what could we do in this house with- 
 out servants, and without money to warm it ? The sooner we 
 are out, the better. We have nothing to caiTy but our clothes, 
 you know."
 
 238 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I suppose you mean to go abroad, then ?" said Gwendolen. 
 After all, this was what she had familiarized her mind with. 
 
 " Oh no, dear, no. IIow could we travel ? You never did 
 learn any thing about income and expenses," said Mrs. Davi- 
 low, 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 «11 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 haugh- 
 tiness, 
 
 "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 suf- 
 fering 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 sis- 
 ter give us. They have been as wise and active as possible, 
 and we must try to earn something. I and the girls are go- 
 ing 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 details timidly ; but how else 
 was she to bring the fact of their position home to this poor 
 child, who, alas ! must submit at present, whatever might be in 
 the background for her? And she herself had a superstition 
 that there must be somethino; better in the backo;round. 
 
 "But surely somewhere else than Sawyer's cottage might 
 have been found," Gwendolen persisted — taken hold of (as if
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 239 
 
 in a nightmare) by the image of this house where an excise- 
 man had Uved. 
 
 "No, indeed, dear. You know houses are scarce, and we 
 may be thankful to get any thing so private. It is not so very 
 bad. There are two Httle parlors 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 depreca- 
 tory words. 
 
 " I can not 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 I" said Gwendolen, coloring with fresh 
 anger. " If I had known, I could have brought home the mon- 
 ey I had won ; and for want of knowing, I staid 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, " Ev- 
 ery thing 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 " peo- 
 ple " 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. AVhat is the good of calling people's wickedness Provi- 
 dence ? You said in your letter it was Mr. Lassmann's fault 
 we had lost our money. Has he run away with it all T' 
 
 " No, dear, you don't understand. There were great specu- 
 lations : 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
 
 240 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 wTongs. 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 spilled upon the ground. Be- 
 sides, 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 : oth- 
 ers 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 
 any thing 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 conjec- 
 tures. 
 
 " There are two situations that offer themselves. One is in 
 a bishop's family, where there are three daughters, and the oth- 
 er is in quite a high class of school ; and in both, your 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, com- 
 mon way of living that we must go to — you would perhaps ac- 
 cept 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. Be- 
 sides, you know very well I hate teaching. Fancy me shut up
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 241 
 
 with three awkward girls something hke Alice I I would rath- 
 er emigrate than be a governess." 
 
 AMiat it 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 practi- 
 cal ignorance, continually exhibited, could not nullify the moth- 
 er'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 dare say 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 any thing she could, poor dear soul. I have 
 not told you yet — she wanted me to take 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 
 so long with us." 
 
 " Oh, recommend her for the bishop's daughters," said Gwen- 
 dolen, 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 dare say 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 still, and is Herr Klesmer there ? 
 But I dare say 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 Arrowpoint 
 left her card the other dav : I could not see her. But I don't 
 
 Vol. I.— 11
 
 242 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 know about HeiT Klesmer. Do you want to send before to- 
 morrow ?" 
 
 " Yes, as soon as possible. I Avill write a note," said Gwen- 
 dolen, rising. 
 
 " What can you be thinking of, Gwen ?" said Mrs. Davilow, 
 relieved in the midst of her wonderment by signs of alacrity 
 and better humor. 
 
 " Don't mind what, there's a dear good mamma," said Gwen- 
 dolen, 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 I — it is ten 
 years older in these three weeks. Now, now, now ! don't cry " 
 — Gwendolen, holding her mamma's head with both hands, 
 kissed the trembling eyelids. "But mind you don't contra- 
 dict me or put hinderances in my way. I must decide for my- 
 self. I can not 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 favor that he will 
 call upon her, if possible, to-morroAv. Her reason for presum- 
 ing so far on his kindness is of a very serious nature. Unfor- 
 tunate 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 
 dispatched ; but when she had been assured on this point, an- 
 other anxiety arose and kept her in a state of uneasy excite- 
 ment. 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 gone against her. A
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 243 
 
 splendid marriage which presented itself within reach had 
 shown a hideous flaw. The chances of roulette had not adjust- 
 ed 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 humili- 
 ation : for the first time the conditions of this world seemed to 
 her like a hurrying, 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 or the ultimate necessity of 
 " taking a situation," a phrase that summed up for her the dis- 
 agreeables most wounding to her pride, most irksome to her 
 tastes ; at least so far as her experience enabled 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 sat- 
 isfactory 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-exam- 
 ined as to whether they thought her remarkable, the first who 
 said " Xo " would have surprised her. 
 
 CHAPTER XXn. 
 
 " We please our fancy with ideal webs 
 Of innovation ; but our life meanwhile 
 Is in the loom, where busy passion plies 
 The shuttle to and fro, and gives our deeds 
 The accustom'd pattern," 
 
 Gwendolen's note, coming " pat betwixt too early and too 
 late," was put into Klesmer's hands just when he was leaving 
 Quetcham ; and, in order to meet her appeal to his kindness,
 
 244 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 confidently 
 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 she 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 favorite 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 Catherine. She would not accept the 
 view of her social duty which required her to marry a needy 
 nobleman or a commoner on the ladder toward 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 toward which 
 they have done every thing, and at the absence of an effect 
 toward which they have done nothing but desire it. Parents 
 are astonished at the ignorance of their sons, though they have 
 used the most time-honored and expensive means of securing 
 it ; husbands and wives are mutually astonished at the loss of 
 affection which they have taken no pains to keep ; and all of 
 us in our turn arc apt to be astonished that our neighbors do
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 245 
 
 not admire us. In this way it happens that the truth seems 
 highly improbable. The truth is something different from the 
 habitual lazy combinations begotten by our wishes. The Ar- 
 rowpoints' hour of astonishment was come. 
 
 When there is a passion between an heiress and a proud, 
 independent-spirited man, it is difficult for them to come to an 
 understanding; but the difficulties are likely to be overcome 
 unless the proud m.aa secures himself by a constant alihi. 
 Brief meetings after studied absence are potent in disclosure : 
 but more potent still is frequent companionship, with full sym- 
 pathy 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 than it had in the days of Abelard. 
 
 But this kind of comparison had not occurred to the Arrow- 
 points when they first engaged Klesmer to come down to 
 Quetcham. To have a first-rate musician in your house is a 
 privilege of wealth ; Catherine's musical talent demanded every 
 advantage ; and she particularly desired to use her 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 the exception of Lapland: and even with that 
 understanding it did not follow that he would make proposals 
 to an heiress. No musician of honor would do so. Still less 
 was it conceivable that Catherine would give him the slightest 
 pretext for such daring. The large check that Mr. Arrowpoint 
 was to draw in Klesmer's name seemed to make him as safe an 
 inmate as a footman, ^Miere marriage is inconceivable, a girl's 
 sentiments are safe. 
 
 Klesmer was eminently a man of honor ; but marriages rarely 
 begin with formal 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 per-
 
 246 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ception or fine judgment, with every unostentatious word or 
 smile that shows a heart awake to others; and no sweep of 
 garment 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 ob- 
 served in the wrong place ! what suffused adorableness in a hu- 
 man frame where there is a mind that can flash out compre- 
 hension and hands that can execute finely ! The more obvious 
 beauty, also adorable sometimes — one may say it without blas- 
 phemy — 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 passion- 
 ate attachment to Miss Arrowpoint, was no more a paradox 
 than any other triumph of a manifold sympathy over a mo- 
 notonous attraction. We object less to be taxed with the en- 
 slaving excess of our passions than with our deficiency in wider 
 passion ; but if the truth were known, our reputed intensity is 
 often the dullness of not knowing what else to do with our- 
 selves. Tannhauser, one suspects, was a knight of ill-furnished 
 imagination, hardly of larger discourse than a heavy Guards- 
 man ; 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 sim- 
 ilar circumstances that Calypso herself furthered liis departure. 
 There is, indeed, a report that he afterward left Penelope ; but 
 since she was habitually absorbed in worsted-work, and it was 
 probably from her that Telemachus got his mean, pettifogging 
 disposition, always anxious about the property and the daily 
 consumption of meat, no inference can be drawn from this al- 
 ready dubious scandal as to the relation between companion- 
 ship and constancy. 
 
 Klesmer was as versatile and fascinating 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 domi- 
 nant power using all the abundant rest, and, as in Mendelssohn, 
 finding expression for itself not only in the highest finish of 
 execution, but in that fervor of creative work and theoretic be- 
 lief which pierces the whole future of a life with the light of
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 247 
 
 congruous, devoted purpose. His foibles of arrogance and 
 vanity did not exceed such as may be found in tbe best En- 
 glish families ; and Catherine x\rrowpoint had no correspond- 
 ing restlessness to clash with his : notwithstanding her native 
 kindliness, she was, perhaps, too coolly firm and self -sustained. 
 But she was one of those satisfactory creatures w^hose inter- 
 course has the charm of discovery ; w^hose integrity of faculty 
 and expression begets a wish to know what they will say on 
 all subjects, or how they w^ill perform whatever they undertake ; 
 so that they end by raising not only a continual expectation, 
 but a continual sense of fulfillment — the systole and diastole 
 of blissful companionship. In such cases the outward present- 
 ment easily becomes what the image is to the worshiper. It 
 was not long before the two became aware that each w^as inter- 
 esting 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 ac- 
 customed to think of herself as likely to stir more than a friend- 
 ly regard, or to fear the expression of more from any man who 
 was not enamored of her fortune. Each w^as content to sutler 
 some unshared sense of denial for the sake of lo\dng 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 w^ell that if Miss Arrow- 
 point had been poor he would have made ardent love to her, 
 instead of sending a storm through the piano, 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 over- 
 flow as the half empty, always supposing no disturbance. Nat- 
 urally, silent feeling had not remained at the same point any 
 more than the stealthy dial -hand; and, in the present visit to 
 Queteham, 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
 
 24^ DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 party man who, rather neutral in private Hfe, had strong opin- 
 ions concerning the districts of the Niger, was much at home 
 also in the Brazils, spoke with decision of affairs in the South 
 Seas, was studious of his parliamentary and itinerant speeches, 
 and had the general solidity and suffusive pinkiness of a healthy 
 Briton on the central table-land of life. Catherine, aware of a 
 tacit understanding that he was an undeniable husband for an 
 heiress, had nothing to say against him but that he was thor- 
 oughly 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 con- 
 sequently a little amazed at an after - dinner outburst of Kles- 
 mer'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 gen- 
 erous feelings could rally : of course, the scoundrels rallied too, 
 but what then? they rally in equal force round your advertise- - 
 ment van of " Buy cheap, sell dear." On this theme Klesmers 
 eloquence, gesticulatory and other, went on for a little while 
 like stray fire -works accidentally ignited, and then sunk into 
 immovable silence. Mr. Bult was not surprised that Klesmer's 
 opinions should be flighty, 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 even- 
 ing in the drawing-room he for the first time went up to Kles- 
 mer at the piano. Miss Arrowpoint being near, and said, 
 " 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 stare 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."
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 249 
 
 " No ; my name is Elijah. I am the Wandering Jew," said 
 Klesmer, flashing a smile at Miss AiTOwpoint, and suddenly 
 making a mysterious, wind-like rush backward and forward 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 Arrow- 
 point, 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 too 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 pub- 
 lic 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." 
 
 With the last word Klesmer wheeled from the piano and 
 walked away. 
 
 Miss Arrowpoint colored, 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 gTcat 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 music-room to say, 
 " Wliy 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. 
 
 11*
 
 250 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 
 every thing he can't turn into political capital. You think his 
 monumental obtuseness suited to the dignity of the English gen- 
 tleman." 
 
 " I did not say that." 
 
 " You mean that I acted without dignity, and you are offend- 
 ed with me." 
 
 " Now you are slightly nearer the truth," said Catherine, 
 smiling. 
 
 " Then I had better put my burial-clothes in my portman- 
 teau 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 impa- 
 tience." 
 
 "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 blas- 
 phemed as well as myself insulted. But I beg pardon. It is 
 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 a 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 oper- 
 etta is on wheels — it will go of itself. And your Mr. Bult's 
 company 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
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOS'lNG. 251 
 
 give us so much of your time in the last year. There must be 
 treble the interest to you anywhere else. I have never thought 
 of your consenting to come here as any thing else than a sac- 
 rifice." 
 
 " 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 
 any thing, 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 colors I 
 carry between my heart and my armor." 
 
 Catherine's hands trembled so much that she could no 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 any thing upon it. That is out of the 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 murmur. 
 
 " 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 mar- 
 ry, you will believe him. That is an argument in favor of 
 some other man. But don't give yourself for a meal to a min- 
 otaur like Bult. I shall go now and pack. I shall make my 
 excuses to Mrs. Arrowpoint." Klesmer rose as he ended, and 
 walked quickly toward the door. 
 
 " You must take this heap of manuscript, then," said Cath-
 
 252 ' DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 erine, 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 ?" said Catherine. To her the effort was something like 
 the leap of a woman from the deck into the life-boat. 
 
 " 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 mesalli- 
 ance for you, and I^hould be liable to the worst accusations." 
 
 "Is it the accusations you are afraid of ? I am afraid of 
 nothing but that we should miss the passing of our lives to- 
 gether." 
 
 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. 
 
 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 grill- 
 ing the raw bone they offered him for breakfast with the prim- 
 itive convert of a flint ; or Saint Just, after fervidly denouncing 
 all recognition of pre-eminence, receiving a vote of thanks for 
 the unbroken mediocrity of his speech, which warranted the 
 dullest patriots in delivering themselves at equal length. Some- 
 thing of the same sort befell the authoress of "Tasso," when 
 what she had safely demanded of the dead Leonora was enact- 
 ed 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 hea\y dining. 
 Besides, it has long been understood that the proprieties of lit- 
 erature are not those of practical life. ISIrs. Arrowpoint natu- 
 rally wished for the best of every thing. 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 patronized musician, his peculiarities were 
 picturesque and acceptable ; but to sec him by a sudden flash
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 253 
 
 in the ligM of her son-in-law 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 every thing but her anger, 
 and snatched at any phrase that would serve as a weapon. 
 
 " If Klesmer has presumed to offer himself to you, your fa- 
 ther 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 Mrs. 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, Cath- 
 erine. Else you are mad." 
 
 " I am quite sane and serious, mamma, and Herr Klesmer is 
 not to blame. He never thought of my marrying him. I 
 found out that he loved me, and lo\dng him, I told him I would 
 marry him." 
 
 " Leave that unsaid, Catherine," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, bitter- 
 ly. " Every one else will say it for you. You will be a pub- 
 lic fable. Every one will say that you must have made the of- 
 fer 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, unll you sit by and hear this without 
 Bpeaking ?"
 
 254 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I ain a gentleman, Cath. Wc expect you to marry a gen- 
 tleman," 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 du- 
 ties. Where duty and inclination clash, she must follow duty." 
 
 " I don't deny that," said Catherine, getting colder in pro- 
 portion 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 happiness," said 
 Mrs. Arrowpoint, in her most raven-like tones. 
 
 " Well, what seems to me my happiness — before I give it up, 
 I must see some better reason than the wish that I should mar- 
 ry 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 can 
 not 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 es- 
 tates. 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 to-morrow, it would very likely pass into the 
 hands of some foreign merchant on 'Change. It is in every 
 body'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 parlia- 
 mentary question. We must do as other people do. We must 
 think of the nation and the public good." 
 
 " I can't see any public good concerned here, papa," said
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 265 
 
 Catherine. " VThj 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 mish-mash of su- 
 perannuated 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 can not understand the application of such words, mam- 
 ma." 
 
 " No, I dare say not," rejoined Mrs. ArroAvpoint, with signif- 
 icant 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. Arro^N-point, wishing to 
 substitute a better-humored reasoning for his wife's impetuosi- 
 ty. "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, im- 
 periously. " ^yhere is the man ? Let him be fetched." 
 
 " I can not fetch him to be insulted," said Catherine. 
 " Nothing will be achieved by that." 
 
 " I suppose that you would wish him to know that in marry- 
 ing 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 music-room, and said, " Come." 
 She felt no need to prepare Klesmer. 
 
 " Herr Klesmer," said Mrs. Arrowpoint, with a rather con- 
 temptuous stateliness, " it is unnecessary to repeat what has 
 passed between us and our daughter. Mr. Arrowpoint will 
 tell you our resolution." 
 
 "Your marrying is quite out of the question," said Mr. Ar- 
 rowpoint, rather too heavily weighted with his task, and stand- 
 ing in an embaiTassment unrelieved by a cigar. " It is a wild 
 scheme altogether. A man has been called out for less." 
 
 " You have taken a base advantage of our confidence," burst 
 in Mrs. Arrowpoint, unable to carry out her purpose and leave 
 the burden of speech to her husband.
 
 256 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Klesmer made a low bow in silent irony. 
 
 " The pretension is ridiculous. You had better give it 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 dis- 
 obeys us, we shall disinherit her. You will not marry her fort- 
 une. It is right you should know that." $ 
 
 " Madam, her fortune has been the only thing I have 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 Catherine, firmly. 
 
 " He had better not count on our relenting," said Mrs. Ar- 
 rowpoint, 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 re- 
 tort. But understand that I consider it out of the power either 
 of you or of your fortune to confer on me any thing 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 compan- 
 ionship." 
 
 " 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 Cathe- 
 rine. " I consider myself engaged to Herr Klesmer, and I in- 
 tend 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 prop- 
 erty ?" 
 
 " There is Harry Brendall. He can take the name,"
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 257 
 
 "Harry Brendall will get througli 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XXin. 
 
 "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 is a title without possession. To carry the map of an un- 
 gotten estate in your pocket is a poor sort of copy-hold. And in fancy to 
 cast his shoe over Edom is Uttle 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 self-satisfaction*-as it were a hidden seed of madness, a confidence 
 that they can move the world without precise notion of standing-place or 
 lever." 
 
 " Pray go 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, anx- 
 iously. 
 
 "Our affairs are too serious for us to think of such non- 
 sensical 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 staid at home, to give the house a look of 
 habitation by sitting at the dining-room windows. 
 
 It was a delicious Sunday morning. The melancholy wan- 
 ing sunshine of autumn rested on the leaf -strewed grass, and 
 came mildly through the windows in slanting bands of bright-
 
 258 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ness over the old furniture, and the glass panel that reflected 
 the furniture ; over the tapestried chairs with their faded flow- 
 er-wreaths, the dark enigmatic pictures, the superannuated or- 
 gan at which Gwendolen had pleased herself with acting Saint 
 Cecilia on her first joyous arrival, the crowd of pallid, dusty 
 knickknaclvs seen through the open doors of the antechamber 
 where she had achieved the wearing of her Greek dress as Her- 
 mione. 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 per- 
 son's opinion. There was a new fluttering of spirit within her, 
 a new element of deliberation in her self - estimate, which had 
 hitherto been a blissful gift of intuition. Still it was the re- 
 current burden of her inward soliloquy tliat Klesmer had seen 
 but little of her, and any unfavorable conclusion of his must 
 have too narrow a foundation. She really felt clever enough 
 for any thing. 
 
 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 toward it. Dressed in black, without 
 a single ornament, and with the warm whiteness of her skin 
 set off between her light-brown coronet of hair and her square- 
 cut bodice, she might have tempted an artist to try again the 
 Roman trick of a statue in black, white, and tawny marble. 
 Seeing her image slowly advancing, she thought, " I am beau- 
 tiful" — not exultingly, but with grave decision. Being beauti- 
 ful was, after all, the condition on which she most needed ex- 
 ternal testimony. If any one 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
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 259 
 
 sliglitly increased her inward flutter. In spite of her self-confi- 
 dence, she dreaded Klesmer as part of that unmanageable world 
 which was independent of her wishes— something vitriolic that 
 would not cease to bum 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 should take a particular man as a hus- 
 band. 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 door- 
 way of the antechamber — showing also the deference of the 
 finest gray cassimere trousers and perfect gloves (the " masters 
 of those who know " are happily altogether human). Gwen- 
 dolen 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 honor," 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 pi- 
 ano, and Klesmer took his stand at the other end of it, with 
 his back to the light and his terribly omniscient eyes upon her. 
 No affectation was of use, and she began without delay. 
 
 " I wish to consult you, Herr Klesmer. AYe have lost all our 
 fortune ; we have nothing. I must get my own bread, and I 
 desire to provide for my mamma, so as to save her from any 
 hardship. The only way I can think of — and I should like it 
 better than any thing — 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."
 
 260 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 act too, like Grisi, is a much higher position. Natu- 
 rally, I should wish to take as high a rank as I can. And I can 
 rely on your judgment. I am sure you wdll tell me the truth." 
 
 Gwendolen somehow had the conviction that, now she made 
 this serious appeal, the truth would be favorable. 
 
 Still Klesmer did not speak. He drew off his gloves quick- 
 ly, tossed them into his hat, rested his hands on his hips, and 
 walked to the other end of the room. lie was filled with com- 
 passion 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 any thing, I think, of artists and their lives ? 
 I mean of musicians, actors, artists of that kind ?" 
 
 " Oh no," said Gwendolen, not perturbed by a 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 conclusion on such a matter as this, 
 every thing must be taken into consideration — you are perhaps 
 twenty ?" 
 
 " I am twenty-one," 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 up- 
 ward in a manner totally enigmatic. 
 
 "Many persons begin later than others," said Gwendolen, 
 betrayed by her habitual consciousness of having valuable in- 
 formation to bestow. 
 
 Klesmer took no notice, but said, with more studied gentle- 
 ness than ever, " You have probably not thought of an artistic 
 career until now : you did not entertain the notion, the longing 
 — what shall I say ? — you did not wish yourself an actress, or 
 any thing of that sort, till the present trouble ?" 
 
 " Not exactly ; but I was fond of acting. I have acted ; you
 
 BOOK II. MEETING STREAMS. 2M 
 
 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 diflBcult 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 taking the 
 trouble to give me your advice, whatever it may be." 
 
 " Miss Harleth," said Klesmer, turning toward her, and speak- 
 ino* with a slio-ht increase of accent, " I will veil nothinor 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 
 Avrong road. And if I misled one who is so young, so beauti- 
 ful — who, I trust, will find her happiness along the right road, 
 I should regard myself as a — Bosewichty In the last word 
 Klesmer's 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 under- 
 stand 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 
 any thing but a charming young lady, whom it is an impolite- 
 ness 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 
 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."
 
 262 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 This tone of discouragement, which Klesmer half hoped 
 might suffice without any thing 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 honorable 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 Ilarleth, you could do nothing better — neither 
 man nor woman could do any thing 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 organizations — natures framed to love 
 perfection and to labor for it ; ready, like all true-lovers, to en- 
 dure, to wait, to say, ' I am not yet worthy, but she — Art, my 
 mistress — is worthy, and I will live to merit her.' An honor- 
 able life ? Yes. But the honor comes from the inward voca- 
 tion and the hard-won achievement : there is no honor in don- 
 ning 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, dif- 
 ficult course ; but it was his wont to be angry with the preten- 
 sions of incompetence, and he was in danger of getting chafed. 
 Conscious of this, he paused suddenly. But Gwendolen's chief 
 impression was that he had not yet denied her the power of 
 doing what would be good of its kind. Klesmer's fervor 
 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 hardships. 
 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 
 peeled off readily, but must come with blood and pain. She 
 said, in a tone of some insistance, 
 
 " I am quite prepared to bear hardships at first. Of course, 
 no one can become celebrated all at once. And it is not nee-
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 263 
 
 essary that every one should be first-rate — either actresses or 
 singers. If you would be so kind as to tell me what steps I 
 should take, I shall have the courage to take them. I don't 
 mind going uphill. 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 moth- 
 er. You must put yourself under training — musical, dramat- 
 ic, theatrical : whatever you desire to do, you have to learn — " 
 here Gwendolen looked as if she were going to speak, but Kles- 
 mer lifted up his hand and said, decisively, " I know. You 
 have exercised your talents — you recite — you sing — from the 
 drawing-room Standpunkt. My dear fraulein, you must un- 
 learn all that. You have not yet conceived what excellence is : 
 you must unlearn your mistaken admirations. You must know 
 what you have' to strive for, and then you must subdue your 
 mind and body to unbroken discipline. Your mind, I say. 
 For you must not be thinking of celebrity : put that 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 to 
 dismiss a triviality — " that could perhaps be found." 
 
 Gwendolen turned pink and pale during this speech. Her 
 pride had felt a terrible knife-edge, 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 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 self-denial? You would ask that. It is right that your
 
 264 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 eyes should be open to it. I will tell you 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 self-control. She compelled her- 
 self 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 em- 
 phatic " Yes ! The desire and the training should have begun 
 seven years ago — or a good deal earlier. 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 little more than 
 a great capacity for receiving discipline. Singing and acting, 
 like the fine dexterity of the juggler with his cups and balls, 
 require a shaping of the organs toward a finer and finer cer- 
 tainty of effect. Your muscles — your whole frame — must go 
 like a watch, true, true, true, to a hair. That is the work of 
 spring-time, 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 the right track some years ago and had worked well, you 
 might now 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 single-
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 265 
 
 minded, 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 definiteness 
 which he could not, if he would, have conveyed to her mind. 
 
 Gwendolen, however, was not convinced. Her self-opinion 
 rallied, and since the counselor whom she had called in gave 
 a decision of such severe peremptoriness, she was tempted to 
 think that his judgment was not only fallible, but biased. It 
 occurred 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 manager 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 a finished act- 
 ress 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 en- 
 gagement 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 drawing-room. No manager thinks that. 
 With all your grace and charm, if you were to present your- 
 self 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 stage, 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 consistently, 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 can not understand that," said Gwendolen, rather 
 
 Vol. L— 12
 
 266 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 all well, and who were quite 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 needle- 
 woman. 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' parts who were not at all ladies, and quite ugly. I sup- 
 pose I have no particular talent, but I must think it is an ad- 
 vantage 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 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 one-and-twenty years — great difficulties in 
 study : you would find mortifications in the treatment you 
 would get when you presented yourself on the footing 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 in- 
 significance : any success must be won by the 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 sight. If you deter-
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 267 
 
 mine to face these hardships and still try, you will have the dig- 
 nity of a high purpose, even though you may have chosen un- 
 fortunately. You will have some merit, though you may win 
 no prize. You have asked my judgment on your chances of 
 winning. 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 deep- 
 toned, long-drawn ''But^^ with which he resumed, had a start- 
 ling 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 be- 
 fore the public. She may rely on the unquestioned pow^r of 
 her beauty as a passport. She may desire to exhibit herself to 
 an admiration which dispenses wdth skill. This goes a certain 
 way on the stage : not in music : but on the stage, beauty is 
 taken w^hen 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 ex- 
 cepted, 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 be luxurious to begin with : 
 she can hardly earn her own poor bread independently 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 Kles- 
 mer's words. " That was my reason for asking whether I could 
 not get an immediate engagement. Of course, I can not 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 dis- 
 claimer. It was intolerable to her that Klesmer should imagine 
 her to have expected other help from him than advice.
 
 268 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 *' That is a hard saying for your friends," said Klesmer, recov- 
 ering the gentleness of tone with which he had begun the con- 
 versation. " 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 endeavoring 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 will ask leave to shake hands 
 with you on the strength of our freemasonry, where we are all 
 vowed to the service of Art, and to serve her by helping every 
 fellow-servant." 
 
 Gwendolen was silent, again looking at her hands. She felt 
 herself very far away from taking the resolve that would en- 
 force acceptance ; and after waiting an instant or 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 further- 
 ing your opportunities of instruction and residence in London 
 — under the care, that is, of your family — without need for anx- 
 iety on your part. If you resolve to take art as a bread-study, 
 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 mar- 
 riage with Miss Arrowpoint, which will more than double such 
 right as I have to be trusted by you as a friend. Your friend- 
 ship will have greatly risen in value for her by your having 
 adopted that generous labor." 
 
 Gwendolen's face had begun to burn. That Klesmer was 
 about to marry Miss Arrowpoint caused her no surprise, and at 
 another moment she would have amused herself in quickly im- 
 agining the scenes that must have occurred 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 unfolded. The suggestion of Miss Ar-
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 269 
 
 rowpoint as a patroness was only another detail added to its 
 repulsiveness : Klesmer's proposal to help her seemed an ad- 
 ditional irritation after the humiliating judgment he had passed 
 on her capabilities. His words had really bitten into her self- 
 confidence, and turned it 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 recognize 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 
 went to the piano and looked absently at leaves of music, 
 pinching up the corners. At last she turned toward 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't decide now. If I make the resolve you have spo- 
 ken 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 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 Avas going to make his 
 bow, Gwendolen's better self, conscious of an ingratitude which 
 the clear -seeing Klesmer must have penetrated, made a des- 
 perate effort to find its way above the stifling layers of egoistic 
 disappointment and irritation. Looking at him with a glance 
 of the old gayety, she put out her hand, and said, with a smile, 
 " If I take the wrong road, it will not be because of your flat- 
 tery." 
 
 " God forbid that you should take any road but one where 
 you will find and give happiness!" said Klesmer, fervently. 
 Then, in foreign fashion, he touched her fingers lightly with 
 his lips, and in another minute she heard the sound of his de- 
 parting wheels getting more distant on the gravel.
 
 270 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Gwendolen had never in her Ufe felt so miserable. No sob 
 came, no passion of tears, to relieve her. Her eyes were burn- 
 ing ; 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 re- 
 flection of herself in the glass — seemed no better than the 
 packed-up 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, elbowed, jostled — treat- 
 ed like a passenger with a third-class ticket, in spite of private 
 objections on her own part. She did not move about; the 
 prospects begotten by disappointment were too oppressively 
 preoccupying ; she threw 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 -contentment 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 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 used to have her conscious 
 superiority admitted ; and she had moved in a society where 
 every thing, 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 obliged to put up with. The self-confident 
 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 
 any thing more unfavorable that might have lain behind his
 
 BOOK III. MAIDEXS CHOOSING. 27l 
 
 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 any thing called " indignity " with herself roused a resentful 
 alarm. And alone 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 Lon- 
 don, 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 with her to the humiliation of being supported by 
 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 favors re- 
 ceived and never repaid would imbitter the miseries of dis- 
 appointment, Klesmer doubtless had magnificent ideas about 
 helping artists ; but how could he know the feelings of ladies 
 in such matters? It was all over: she had entertained a mis- 
 taken 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 sis- 
 ters coming in from church. She hurried to the piano and 
 began gathering together her pieces of music with assumed 
 diligence, w^hile the expression on her pale face and in her 
 burning eyes w^as 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 w^heel- marks 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.
 
 272 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 pas- 
 sionate 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 you," 
 said Mrs. Davilow, coming near the piano, and watching Gwen- 
 dolen'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 any thing now, Gwendolen ? Am I al- 
 ways to be in the dark ?" said Mrs. Davilow, too keenly sensi- 
 tive to her daughter's manner and expression not to fear that 
 something painful had occurred. 
 
 " There is really nothing to tell now, mamma," said Gwen- 
 dolen, in a still higher voice. " I had a mistaken idea 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 can 
 not bear it," said Mrs. Davilow, breaking down. She felt an 
 indefinable 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 under-tone, " Mamma, don't speak to me now\ It is 
 useless to cry and waste our strength over what can't be alter- 
 ed. You will live at Sawyer's cottage, and I am going to the 
 bishop's daughters. There is no more to be said. Things can 
 not 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.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 273 
 
 QHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 " 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 inter- 
 view 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 happen until the Monday, when Gwen- 
 dolen 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 unsoftened by 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 cabbage-stalks, and the yew arbor 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 cared 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 
 12*
 
 274 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 can not believe that my uncle will let you, go to such a place. 
 He ought to have taken some other steps." 
 
 "Don't be unreasonable, dear child. What could he have 
 done ?" 
 
 " That was for him to find out. It seems to me a very ex- 
 traordinary 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 en- 
 tirely new pressure of evils : she could have spoken more suit- 
 ably 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 re- 
 ceived her with a more affectionate kindness than they had 
 ever shown before. She could not but be struck by the digni- 
 fied cheerfulness with which they talked of the necessary econ- 
 omies in their way of living, and in the education of the boys. 
 Mr. Gascoigne's worth of character, a little obscured by worldly 
 opportunities — as the poetic beauty of women is obscured by 
 the demands of fashionable dressing — showed itself to great 
 advantage 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 all the boys under 
 himself, and to order the whole establishment on the sparest 
 footing possible. For all healthy people economy has its pleas- 
 ures; and the rector's spirit had spread through the house- 
 hold. Mrs. Gascoigne and Anna, who always made papa their 
 model, really did not miss any thing they cared about for 
 themselves, and in all sincerity felt that the saddest part of the 
 family losses was the change for Mrs. Davilow and her chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Anna for the first time could merge her resentment on be- 
 half of Rex in her sympathy with Gwendolen; and Mrs. Gas-
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 275 
 
 coigne 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 cot- 
 tage out of the household stores ; but with delicate feeling they 
 left 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 justi- 
 fication 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 every body else was obey- 
 ing, when her uncle began, in a voice of firm kindness, to talk 
 to her of the efforts he 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 good sense to be determined by it : uncertain- 
 ties of that kind must not now slacken 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 consider- 
 ation, 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 favorably ; but I can 
 not 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 dare say 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 Gwen- 
 dolen, 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
 
 270 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 can give. And a mother is naturally scrupulous about a com- 
 panion for her daughters. I have told her you are very young. 
 But she herself exercises a close supervision over her daughters* 
 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 de- 
 cided 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 fears, put her little hand into her cousin's, 
 and Mr. Gascoigne was too kind a man not to conceive some- 
 thing 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 sup- 
 posed 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 like- 
 ly 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 color 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. Indeed, he has created as lit- 
 tle 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 con- 
 troversy about the Bible Society." 
 
 The rector's words were too pregnant with satisfactory 
 meaning to himself for him to imagine the effect they pro- 
 duced in 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 poison-bags, and biting or stinging according to conven- 
 ience. To Gwendolen, already shrinking from the prospect 
 opened to her, such phrases came like the growing heat of a
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 277 
 
 burning-glass — not at all as the links of persuasive reflection 
 which they formed for the good uncle. She began desperate- 
 ly to seek an alternative. 
 
 " There was another situation, I think, mamma spoke of ?" 
 she said, with determined self-mastery. 
 
 " 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 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 en- 
 tertain any other proposal till she has seen you. She has en- 
 tered 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 conviction 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 I" 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 have 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 men- 
 tion Rex before Gwendolen,
 
 278 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 go- 
 ing, to be every thing that is most remarkable. The letter is 
 full of fun — just like him. He says, 'Tell mother she has 
 put out an advertisement for a jolly good hard-working son, 
 in time to hinder me from taking ship ; and I offer myself for 
 the place.' The letter came on Friday. I never saw my hus- 
 band so much moved by any thing 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 pinch- 
 ing her chin, as much as to say, " Nothing is wrong with you 
 now, is it ?" She had no gratuitously ill - natured feeling, or 
 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, Gwen- 
 dolen 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 keep- 
 ing 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 liis wife, 
 they were still to consider whether they would accept her ; it 
 was at her peril that she was to look, speak, or be silent. And 
 even when she had entered on her dismal task of self -constraint 
 in the society of three girls whom she was bound incessantly 
 to edify, the same process of inspection was to go on : there
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 2*79 
 
 was always to be Mrs. Mompert's supervision ; always some- 
 thing or other would be expected of her to which she had not 
 the slightest inclination ; and perhaps the bishop would exam- 
 ine her on serious topics. Gwendolen, lately used to the so- 
 cial successes of a handsome girl, whose lively venturesomeness 
 of talk has the effect of wit, and who six weeks before would 
 have pitied the dullness of the bishop rather than hav^e been 
 embarrassed by him, saw the life before her as an entrance into 
 a penitentiary. Wild thoughts of running away to be an act- 
 ress, in spite of 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 among 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 advent- 
 uress. The demand to be held a lady was in her very marrow ; 
 and w^hen she had dreamed that she might be the heroine of 
 the gaming-table, it was with the understanding that no one 
 should treat her with the less consideration, or presume to look 
 at her with irony, as Deronda had done. To be protected and 
 petted, and to have her susceptibilities consulted in every de- 
 tail, 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 pet- 
 ted 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 con- 
 curred in preparing for something quite different — was exag- 
 gerated 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 were patient a little while, things might get better — it
 
 280 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 would be stupid to entertain hopes for herself after all that 
 had happened. Her talents, it appeared, would never be rec- 
 ognized as any thing remarkable, and there was not a single 
 direction in which probability seemed to flatter her wishes. 
 Some beautiful girls who, like her, had read romances where 
 even plain governesses are centres of attraction and are sought 
 in marriage, might have solaced themselves a little by trans- 
 porting such pictures into their own future ; but even if Gwen- 
 dolen's experience had led her to dwell on love-making and 
 marriage as her elysium, her heart was too much oppressed by 
 what Avas near to her, in both the past and the future, for her 
 to project her anticipations very far off. She had a world- 
 nausea 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 
 people's disagreeable or wicked conduct ; and there was really 
 nothing pleasant to be counted on in the world : that was her 
 feeling. Every thing else she had heard said about trouble was 
 mere phrase - making, not attractive enough for her to have 
 caught it up and repeated it. As to the sweetness of labor 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 toward the common burden ; 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 appre- 
 hended 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 treat- 
 ed, at best, with a compassionate patronage. And poor Gwen- 
 dolen had never dissociated happiness from personal pre-emi- 
 nence and eclat. That where these threatened to forsake her, 
 she should take life to be hardly worth the having, can not 
 make her so unlike the rest of us, men or women, that we 
 should cast her out of our compassion, our moments of temp- 
 tation to a mean opinion of things in general being usually 
 dependent on some susceptibility about ourselves, and some 
 dullness to subjects which every one else would consider more 
 important. Surely a young creature is pitiable who has the
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 281 
 
 labyrinth of life before her and no clue ; to whom distrust in 
 herself and her good fortune has come as a sudden shock, hke 
 a rent across the path that she was treading carelessly. 
 
 In spite of her healthy frame, her irreconcilable repugnance 
 affected her even physically. She felt a sort of numbness, 
 and could set about nothing ; the least 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 could 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 Jo- 
 cosa liked that sort of thing. Her mother had to make ex- 
 cuses for her not appearing, even when Anna came to see her. 
 For that calm which Gwendolen had promised herself to main- 
 tain had changed into sick motivelessness. She thought, "I 
 suppose I shall begin to pretend by-and-by, 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 was thinking, and to wish that 
 every thing should give Avay 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 consider- 
 ing and arranging Gwendolen's articles of dress, she suddenly 
 roused herself to fetch the casket which contained her orna- 
 ments. 
 
 " 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
 
 282 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 tliem for you/' said Mrs. Davilow, seating herself beside Gwen- 
 dolen with a feeling of relief that she was beginning to talk 
 about something. The usual relation between them had be- 
 come reversed. It was now the mother who tried to cheer the 
 daughter. " Why, how came you to put that pocket-handker- 
 chief in here ?" 
 
 It was the handkerchief with the corner torn off which 
 Gwendolen had thrust in with the turquois 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 colored. She usually avoided any reference to 
 such facts about Gwendolen's step-father as that he had carried 
 off his wife's jewelry and disposed of it. After a moment's 
 pause she went on : 
 
 "And these things have not been reckoned on for any ex- 
 penses. Carry them with you." 
 
 " That would be quite useless, mamma," said Gwendolen, 
 coldly. "Governesses don't wear ornaments. You had better 
 get me a gray 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 ele- 
 gant." 
 
 " 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 any thing you would object to less — any thing 
 that could be done — instead of your going to the bishop's, do 
 say so, Gwendolen. Tell me what is in your heart. I will 
 try for any thing you wish," said the mother, beseechingly. 
 " Don't keep things away from me. Let us bear them to- 
 gether."
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 283 
 
 " Oh, mainina, there is nothing to tell. I can't do any thing 
 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 : 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 left 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 turquois 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't see any reason for expecting it, mamma," said 
 Gwendolen, in a hard tone ; and Mrs. DaWlow was silent, think- 
 ing, as she had often thought before, " AVhat did happen be- 
 tween her and Mr. Grandcourt ?" 
 
 " I will keep this necklace, 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 w hat any one else 
 felt." 
 
 She took out the torn handkerchief from her pocket again, 
 and wrapped 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
 
 284 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 the world outside her penitentiary, since she saw nothing very 
 pleasant in it that seemed attainable by her even if she were 
 free. Naturally her grievances did not seem to her smaller 
 than some of her male contemporaries held theirs to be when 
 they felt a profession too narrow for their powers, and had an 
 a priori conviction that it was not worth while to put forth 
 their latent abilities. Because her education had been less 
 expensive than theirs, 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 neck- 
 lace, 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 re- 
 turned to her, was more peculiar, and what would be called less 
 reasonable. It came from that 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 or 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 con- 
 fused 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 un- 
 mapped country within us which would have to be taken into 
 account in an explanation of our gusts and storms.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 285 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 *' How trace the why and wherefore in a mind reduced to the barrenness 
 of a fastidious egoism, iu 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 conspic- 
 uously rank amidst the general weediness ? 'Tis a condition apt to befall 
 a life too much at large, unmolded by the pressure of obligation. Xam 
 deteriores omnes summ licentice^ saith Terence ; or, as a more familiar 
 tongue might deliver it, ^As you like'' is a hadjinger-post.'''' 
 
 Potentates make known their intentions and affect the 
 funds at a small expense of words. So, when Grandcourt, after 
 learning that Gwendolen had left Leubronn, incidentally pro- 
 nounced that resort of fashion a beastly hole, worse than Baden, 
 the remark was conclusive to Mr. Lush that his patron intend- 
 ed straightway to return to Diplow. The execution was sure 
 to be 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 signs of raw vulgarity ; he lingered on the terrace, in the 
 gambling - rooms, in the reading-room, occupying himself in 
 being indifferent to every body and every thing 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 hap- 
 pened 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 expres- 
 sion. Lady Mallinger thought this worth telling to Sir Hugo, 
 who said, " Oh, my dear, he is not a fool. You must not sup-
 
 286 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 pose 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 objec- 
 tion 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 per- 
 fect civility. No reasoning as to the foundations of custom 
 could do away with the early-rooted 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 w^as 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 rancor 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 recognizing a disadv^antage 
 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 
 there is no guarding against interpretation. Grandcourt did 
 believe that Deronda, poor devil, 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 de- 
 ficiency, 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 jealous. Hence he was civil enough to 
 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."
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 287 
 
 Lush, not displeased with delay, amused himself very well, 
 partly in gossiping with Sir Hugo, and in answering his ques- 
 tions about Grandcourt's affairs so far as they might affect 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 pa- 
 tron behind his back. Sir Hugo willingly inclined his ear to 
 a little good-humored scandal, which he was fond of calling 
 traits de moeurs ; but he was strict in keeping such commu- 
 nications 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 
 pale-blooded 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 every body when he had no 
 reason to the contrary ; and the baronet always treated him 
 well, as one of those easy - handled personages who, frequent- 
 ing the society of gentlemen, without being exactly gentlemen 
 themselves, can be the more serviceable, like the second-best 
 articles of our wardrobe, which we use with a comfortable free- 
 dom from anxiety. 
 
 "AYell, you will let me know the turn of events," said Sir 
 Hugo, " if this marriage seems likely to come off after all, or if 
 any thing else happens to make the want of money more press- 
 ing. My plan would be much better for him than burdening 
 Ry elands." 
 
 " 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've 
 given up every thing else for the sake of keeping by him, and 
 it has lasted a good fifteen years now. He would 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 a constant disposition, and I've been 
 a sort of guardian to him since he was twenty. An uncom-
 
 288 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 monly 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 sympathy 
 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 procrastination 
 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't know you meant to start," said Lush, not exactly 
 taken by surprise. 
 
 " You might have known," said Grandcourt, looking at the 
 burned 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 every thing, 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 every thing was right, 
 while Grandcourt and the valet remained behind; and it was 
 not until several days later that Lush received the telegram or- 
 dering 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 in learn- 
 ing all he could of Gwendolen, and how things were going on 
 at Offendene. "What was the probable effect that the news of 
 the family misfortunes would have on Grandcourt's fitful ob- 
 stinacy he felt to be quite incalculable. So far as the girl's 
 poverty miglit be an argument that she would accept an offer 
 from him now in spite of any previous coyness, it might re- 
 move that bitter objection to risk a repulse which Lush divined
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 289 
 
 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 ob- 
 servation 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 hap- 
 pen that he would behave with an apparent magnanimity, like 
 the hero of a modern French drama, whose sudden start into 
 moral splendor, after much lying and meanness, leaves you lit- 
 tle confidence as to any part of his career that may follow the 
 fall of the curtain. Indeed, what attitude would have been 
 more honorable for a final scene than that of declining to seek 
 an heiress for her money, and determining to marry the attract- 
 ive girl who had none ? But Lush had some general certain- 
 ties about Grandcourt, and one was, that of all inward move- 
 ments 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 thith- 
 er in a net-work of possible paths ? Thus Lush was much at 
 fault as to the probable issue between Grandcourt and Gwendo- 
 len, when what he desired was a perfect confidence that they 
 would never be married. He would have consented willingly 
 that Grandcourt should marry an heiress, or that he should mar- 
 ry Mrs. Glasher. In the one match there would have been the 
 immediate abundance that prospective heirship could not sup- 
 ply ; in the other 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. Grandcourt should not be so- 
 cially 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 ut- 
 most to hinder a marriage with a girl who was likely to bring 
 nothing but trouble to her husband — not to speak of annoy- 
 ance, if not ultimate injury to her husband's old companion, 
 whose future Mr. Lush earnestly wished to make as easy as 
 possible, considering that he had well deserved such compensa- 
 tion for leading a dog's life, though that of a dog who enjoyed 
 Vol. L— 13
 
 290 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 many tastes undisturbed, and who profited by a large establish- 
 ment, lie 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 easiest-humored amateur of 
 luxury and music, the toad-eater the least liable to nausea, must 
 be expected to have his susceptibilities. And Mr. Lush was ac- 
 customed to be treated by the world in general as an apt, agree- 
 able 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, among other things, he 
 ordered a groom to put a side-saddle on Criterion and let him 
 review the horse's paces. This marked indication of 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 a humor 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 an- 
 swer to a question even about his own convenience no fish 
 could have maintained a more unwinking silence. After he 
 had read his letters, he gave various orders to be executed or 
 transmitted by Lush, and then thrust his shoulders toward that 
 useful person, who accordingly rose to leave the room. But 
 before he was out of the door, 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 Of- 
 f endene ?" He was quite certain that Lush had made it his 
 business to inquire about her, and had some pleasure in think- 
 ing that Lush did not want him to inquire.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 291 
 
 " 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 laborer'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 hira — 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 — Bazely, Brackenshaw's man, for one. He is getting a 
 new tenant for Offendene." 
 
 " I don't mean that. Is Miss Harleth there, or is 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 situ- 
 ation 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 ofE his tongue without strict 
 intention. 
 
 "Send Hutchins to inquire whether she will be there to- 
 morrow." 
 
 Lush did not move. Like many persons who have thought 
 over beforehand what they shall say in given cases, he was im- 
 pelled by an unexpected irritation to say some of those pre- 
 arranged 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 toward it without re- 
 monstrance. 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 well 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 every thing or 
 nothing. You must make up your mind whether you wish to 
 be accepted ; and, more than that, how you would like being
 
 292 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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. 
 
 " Every thing has a more serious look now than it had be- 
 fore. There is her family to be provided for. You could not 
 let your wife's mother live in beggary. It will be a confound- 
 edly 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 elbow-room. 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 twelve- 
 month. I should be sorry to see you making a mess of your 
 life in that way. If there were any thing 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 dangler 
 of forgetting that he was merely gambling in argument. When 
 he left off, Grandcourt took his cigar out of his mouth, and, 
 looking steadily at the moist end while he adjusted the leaf 
 with his delicate finger-tips, said, 
 
 " I knew before that you had an objection to my marrying 
 Miss Harleth." Here he made a little pause, before he contin- 
 ued, " 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."
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 293 
 
 "Perfectly," said Grandcoui-t, looking round at Lusli and 
 fixing him with narrow eyes; "I don't intend that there 
 should be. I dare say it's disagreeable to you. But if you 
 suppose I care a d — n for that, you are most stupendously mis- 
 taken." 
 
 " 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 I — 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 re- 
 strained 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. 
 
 " 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 had 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 ex- 
 pected that Grandcourt would tax him with having contrived 
 the affair, since Mrs. 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
 
 294 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 toward him, look- 
 ed 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 toward the table, said, as 
 quietly as if nothing had occurred, " 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." 
 
 He scrawled with ease, and the brief note was quickly ad- 
 dressed. " 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, Of- 
 fendene. 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 oth- 
 er he was intended to pay. It was also clear to him that the 
 immediate effect of his revelation had been to harden Grand- 
 court's previous determination. But as to the particular move- 
 ments which made this process in his baffling mind. Lush could 
 only toss up his chin in despair of a theory.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 295 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 *' He brings white asses laden with the freight 
 Of Tyrian vessels, purple, gold, and balm, 
 To bribe my will : I'll bid them chase him forth, 
 Nor let him breathe the tamt 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 OSendene with what he 
 felt to be the satisfactory news that Mrs. Mompert had fixed 
 Tuesday in the following week for her interview with Gwen- 
 dolen at Wancester. He said nothing of his ha\dng incidental- 
 ly heard that Mr. Grandcourt had returned to Diplow ; know- 
 ing no more than she did that Leubronn had been the goal of 
 her admirer's journeying, and feeling that 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 encouracre her resolutelv to face the chano-e 
 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."
 
 296 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I can not pretend to believe that I shall like it," said Gwen- 
 dolen, 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 differ- 
 ent prospect. 
 
 "And your good sense will teach you to behave suitably un- 
 der it," said Mr. Gascoigne, with a shade 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 a 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 slow^ly 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 with the world — nay, with herself, 
 since it appeared that she was not made for easy pre-eminence 
 — only intensified her sense of forlornness: it Avas a visibly 
 sterile distance inclosing 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 disap- 
 pointment 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 self-inclosed unreason- 
 ableness and impiety. What passion seems more absurd, w^hen 
 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 
 afterward made themselves a willing fence before the breast of 
 another, and have carried their own heart-wound in heroic si-
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 297 
 
 lence — some "wlio have made their latter deeds great, neverthe- 
 less began with this 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 hap- 
 pened to other girls ? The one point she had been all her life 
 learning to care for was, that it had happened to her : it was 
 what she felt under Klesmers demonstration that she was not 
 remarkable enough to command fortune by force of will and 
 merit ; it was what she would feel under the rigors 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 down-stepping. Imagine one who had been 
 made to believe in his own divinity finding all homage with- 
 drawn, and himself unable to perform a miracle that would re- 
 call the homao-e and restore his own confidence. Somethinor 
 akin to this illusion and this helplessness had befallen the poor 
 spoiled child with the lovely lips and eyes and the majestic 
 figure, 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 dare say 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 
 
 13*
 
 298 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 first time she sobbed, not in anger, but witli a sort of tender 
 misery. 
 
 Her face was toward 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 Gwen- 
 dolen, with whom weeping had always been a painful mani- 
 festation, to be resisted if possible, again pressed her handker- 
 chief against her eyes, and with a deep breath drew her head 
 backward and looked at her mother, who was pale and trem- 
 ulous. 
 
 " It was nothing, mamma," said Gwendolen, thinking that 
 her mother had been moved in this way simply by finding her 
 in distress. " It is all over now," 
 
 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 any thing," said Gwendolen, rather 
 impatiently, as if a bruise were being pressed. 
 
 " It is addressed 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 moth- 
 er was not surprised to see her blush deeply; but, watching 
 her as she read, and wondering much what was the purport of 
 the letter, she saw the color die out. Gwendolen's lips even 
 were pale as she turned the open note toward her mother. The 
 words were few and formal.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 299 
 
 " Mr. Grandcourt presents his compliments to Miss Harleth, 
 and begs to know whether he may be permitted to call at Of- 
 fendene to-morrow after two, and to see her alone. Mr. Grand- 
 court has just returned from Leubronn, where he had hoped to 
 find Miss Harleth." 
 
 Mrs. Davilow read, and then looked at her daughter inquir- 
 ingly, 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 sunk on the settee, clasped her hands, and looked 
 straight before her, not at her mother. She had the expression 
 of one who had been startled by a sound and was listening to 
 know what would come of it. The sadden change of the sit- 
 uation was bewildering. A few minutes before she was look- 
 ing along an inescapable path of repulsive monotony, with 
 hopeless inward rebellion against the imperious lot which left 
 her no choice ; and, lo ! now a 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 tastino; the bitterness of insioTiifi- 
 cance: 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 \dvidly, 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 inci- 
 sive face of the dark-eyed 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 dis- 
 closure had become a symbol. That unalterable -experience 
 made a vision, at which in the first agitated moment, before tem- 
 pering reflections could suggest themselves, her native terror 
 shrunk. 
 
 AMiere was the good of choice coming again? What did 
 she wish? Any thing different? No! and yet in the dark 
 seed-growths of consciousness a new wish was forming itself — 
 " I wish I had never known it !" Something, any thing she
 
 300 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 wished for, that Avoiild have saved her from the dread to let 
 Grandcourt come. 
 
 It was no long while — yet it seemed long to Mrs. Davilow 
 before she thought it well to say, gently, 
 
 " 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 toward something 
 that would be an event — toward an opportunity in which she 
 could look and speak with the former effectiveness. The in- 
 terest of the morrow was no longer at a dead-lock. 
 
 " There is really no reason on earth why you should be so 
 alarmed at the man's waiting a few minutes, mamma," said 
 Gwendolen, remonstrantly, as Mrs. Davilow, having prepared 
 the writing materials, looked toward her expectantly. " Serv- 
 ants 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 needle- 
 work 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, 
 sympathizingly. 
 
 " I must decide," said Gwendolen, walking to the writing- 
 table and seating herself. All the while there was a busy un- 
 der-current in her, like the thought of a man who keeps up a 
 dialogue while he is considering how he can slip away. Why
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 301 
 
 should she not let him come ? It bound her to nothing. He 
 had been to Leubronn after her : of course he meant a direct 
 unmistakable renewal of the suit which before had been only 
 implied. ^Miat then? She could reject him. Why w^as 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 w^heth- 
 er he has 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 al- 
 most, 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 taxed by a 
 wife's family. If Mr. Grandcourt did know, I think it a strong 
 proof of his attachment to you." 
 
 Mrs. Davilow spoke with unusual emphasis. It was the first 
 time she had ventured to say any thing about Grandcourt 
 which would necessarily seem intended as an argument in fa- 
 vor 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, Gwendo- 
 len, did — what she was not going to do. She was so moved 
 by a new rush of ideas, that, like one conscious of being ur- 
 gently called away, she felt that the immediate task must be 
 hastened : the letter must be written, else 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 to-mor- 
 row." 
 
 Before addressing the note she said, "Pray ring the bell,
 
 302 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 home," answeted Gwendolen, 
 rather loftily; then, after a pause, "You must not expect, be- 
 cause Mr. Grandcourt is coming, that any thing is going to 
 happen, mamma." 
 
 " I don't allow myself to expect any thing, 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 any thing 
 pleasant to tell, you may be sure I will tell you." 
 
 " 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 im- 
 plied her wish not to be questioned further by saying, 
 
 " Put down that detestable needle-work, and let us walk in 
 the avenue. I am stifled." 
 
 CHAPTER XXVH. 
 
 " Desire has trimmed the sails, and Circumstance 
 Brings but the 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 light-brown 
 hair which she had been carefully brushing.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 303 
 
 " Only gather it up easily and make a coil, mamma," said 
 Gwendolen. 
 
 " Let me bring you some ear-rings, Gwen," said Mrs. Davi- 
 low, when the hair was adjusted, and they were both looking 
 at the reflection in the glass. It was impossible for them not 
 to notice that the eyes looked brighter than they had done of 
 late, that there seemed to be a shadow lifted from the face, 
 leaving all the lines once more in their placid youthfulness. 
 The mother drew some inferences that made her voice rather 
 cheerful. " You do want your ear-rings ?" 
 
 " No, mamma ; I shall not wear any ornaments, and I shall 
 put on my black silk. Black is the only wear when one is go- 
 ing to refuse an offer," said Gwendolen, with one of her old 
 smiles at her mother, while she rose to throw off her dressing- 
 gown. 
 
 " Suppose the offer is not made, after all," said Mrs. Davilow, 
 not without a sly intention. 
 
 "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 down-stairs 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 ar- 
 guments for and against the possibility of her marrying Grand- 
 court, that the conclusion which she had determined on before- 
 hand ceased to have any hold on her consciousness : the al- 
 ternate dip of counterbalancing thoughts begotten of counter- 
 balancing desires had brought her into a state in which no con- 
 clusion 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 mo-
 
 304 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 raent of receiving liis letter she had meant to refuse him ; still, 
 that could not but prompt her to look the unwelcome reasons 
 full in the face until she had a little less awe of them — 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 inter- 
 view at the AVhispering 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 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 re- 
 gion of what was called disgraceful, wrong, guilty, she shrunk 
 with mingled pride and terror ; and, even apart from shame, her 
 feeling would have made her place any deliberate injury of an- 
 other 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 Grand- 
 court be in fact the decisive obstacle to her wishes, or be doing 
 her and her boy any real injury ? 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
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 305 
 
 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 any 
 body would say ; or what they would say to Mr. Grandcourt's 
 marrying some one else and having other children !" To con- 
 sider what " any body " would say was to be released from the 
 difficulty of judging where every thing was obscure to her 
 when feeling had ceased to be decisive. She had only to col- 
 lect her memories, which proved to her that "any body" re- 
 garded illegitimate children as more rightfully to be looked shy 
 on and deprived of social advantages than illegitimate fathers. 
 The verdict of " any body " seemed to be that she had no rea- 
 son 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 strong- 
 ly 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 scarcely at all in relation to Grand- 
 court. The desirability of marriage for her had always seemed 
 due to other feelings than love ; and to be enamored was the 
 part of the man, on whom the advances depended. Gwendo- 
 len had found no objection to Grandcourt's way of being en- 
 amored before she had had that glimpse of his past, which she 
 resented as if it had been a deliberate offense 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 indignation had sunk deep;
 
 30G DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and tliougli otlier 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 understand- 
 ing 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 any 
 thing 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 ; 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 ex- 
 ercise her power. 
 
 Was this what made her heart palpitate annoyingly when 
 she heard the horse's footsteps on the gravel ? — when Miss Mer- 
 ry, who had 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 
 afterward when they were both of them seated on two of the 
 wreath-painted chairs — Gwendolen upright with downcast eye- 
 lids, 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 — any one seeing them as a picture would have 
 concluded that they were in some stage of love-making sus- 
 pense. And certainly the love-making had begun : she already 
 felt herself being wooed by this silent man seated at an agree- 
 able distance, with the subtlest atmosphere of attar of roses and 
 an attention bent wholly on her. And he also considered him- 
 self to be wooing : he was not a man to suppose that his pres- 
 ence carried no consequences; and he was exactly the man to
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 307 
 
 feel the utmost piquancy in a girl whom he had not found 
 quite calculable. 
 
 " I was disappointed not to find you at Leubronn," he be- 
 gan, his usual broken drawl having just a shade of amorous 
 languor 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 Gwen- 
 dolen, turning her eyes on him with some recovered sense of 
 mischief. " With myself I liked it w^ell enough to have staid 
 longer if I could. But I was obliged to come home on ac- 
 count of family troubles." 
 
 " It was very cruel of you to go to Leubronn," said Grand- 
 court, taking no notice of the troubles, on w^hich Gwendolen — 
 she hardly knew why — wished that there should be a clear un- 
 derstanding at once. " You must have known that it would 
 spoil every thing; you knew you w^ere the heart and soul of 
 every thing 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 
 a new phase, and believed that she was showing her inclination. 
 But he was determined that she should show it more de- 
 cidedly. 
 
 "Perhaps there is some deeper interest? Some attraction — 
 some engagement — which it would have been only fair to make 
 me aw^are of ? Is there any man who stands between us ?" 
 
 Inwardly the answer framed itself, " No ; but there is a wom- 
 an." Yet how could she utter this? Even if she had not 
 promised that woman to be silent, it would have been impos- 
 sible for her to enter on the subject with Grandcourt. But 
 how could she arrest this wooing by beginning to make a for- 
 mal speech-—" I perceive your intention — it is most flattering, 
 etc." 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 net-work, would she have dared at 
 once to say any thing 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,
 
 308 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 "Am I to understand that some one else is preferred?" 
 
 Gwendolen, now impatient of her own embarrassment, deter- 
 mined 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 youy There was nothing that 
 Grandcourt could not understand which he perceived likely to 
 affect his amour propre. 
 
 " The last thing I would do is to importune you. I should 
 not hope to win you by making myself a bore. If there were 
 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 background. 
 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, ac- 
 cording to obvious fixed marks. The word of all work. Love, 
 will no more express the myriad modes of mutual attraction 
 than the word Thought can inform you what is passing through 
 your neighbor'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 mas- 
 ter 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, 
 piteous equality in the need to dominate ! — she was overcome.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 309 
 
 like the thirsty one who is drawn toward 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. 
 
 All the while they were looking at each other ; and Grand- 
 court said, slowly and languidly, as if it were of no importance, 
 other things having been settled, 
 
 " You will tell me now, I hope, that Mrs. Davilow's loss of 
 fortune wdll not trouble you further. You will trust to me to 
 prevent it from w^eighing 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 through 
 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 gen- 
 eral 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. Repugnance, 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 of 
 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 
 keenness of interest such as he had not known for years. 
 None the less because he attributed her hesitation entirely to
 
 310 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 her knowledge about Mrs. Glaslier. In that attitude of prepa- 
 ration, he said, 
 
 "Do you command me to go?" No familiar spirit could 
 have suggested to him more effective words. 
 
 " No," said Gwendolen. She could not let him go : that 
 negative was a clutch. She seemed to herself to be, after all, 
 only drifted toward the tremendous decision : but drifting de- 
 pends 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 oth- 
 er movement. Their eyes, meeting in that way, seemed to al- 
 low 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 atti- 
 tude. Was there ever before such a way of accepting the 
 bliss-giving " Yes ?" Grandcourt liked better to be at that dis- 
 tance from her, and to feel under a ceremony imposed by an 
 indefinable prohibition that breathed 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 behavior 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 favorite atti- 
 tude, having his left forefinger 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 any thing else to say to me ?" said Gwendolen, 
 playfully.
 
 BOOK III. MAIDENS CHOOSING. 311 
 
 " Yes. I know having things said to you is a great bore," 
 said Grandcourt, rather sympathetically. 
 
 " Not when they are things I like to hear." 
 
 "Will it bother you to be asked how soon we can be mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 " I think it will, to - day," said Gwendolen, putting up her 
 chin saucily. 
 
 " Xot 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*! 
 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 world, things are always turning up that one doesn't 
 like. I can't always hinder your being bored. K 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 yester- 
 day. 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 through Gwendolen. They were the 53^1- 
 bols of command and luxury, in delightful contrast with the 
 ugliness of poverty and humiliation at which she had lately 
 been looking close. 
 
 " Will you ride Criterion to-morrow ?" said Grandcourt. " If 
 you will, every thing shall be arranged." 
 
 " I should like it of all things," said Gwendolen. " I want
 
 312 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 to lose myself in a gallop again. But now I must go and fetch 
 mamma." 
 
 " 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 man- 
 ners 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 ut- 
 ter 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 dilettante. '''' 
 
 Gwendolen laughed. All that seemed kind and natural 
 enouo;h: 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 husbands. 
 
 Mrs. Davilow was waiting anxiously in her bedroom when 
 Gwendolen entered, stepped toward 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 Avith a quick- 
 ness which implied that it was needless to ask questions. 
 "Every thing is settled. You are not going to Sawyer's cot- 
 tage, I am not going to be inspected by Mrs. Mompert, and 
 every thing is to be as I like. So come down with me im- 
 mediately."
 
 BOOK IV. 
 GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 
 
 Vol. L— 14
 
 BOOK IV. 
 
 GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 " II est plus aise de connoitre I'homme en general que de connoitre un 
 homme en particulier." — La Rochefoucauld. 
 
 An hour after Grande ourt 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 congi-atulate you on having created a 
 strong attachment," said the rector. " You look serious, and I 
 don't -wonder at it : a life-long 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 hus- 
 band'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 moth- 
 er with perfect accuracy. 
 
 " But I have no doubt that Mr. Grandcourt w^ould have be- 
 haved quite as handsomely if you had not gone away to Ger- 
 many, 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 oc- 
 casion. " But now there is no more room for caprice ; indeed, 
 I trust you have no inclination to any. A w^oman has a great 
 debt of gratitude to a man who perseveres in making her such 
 an offer. But no doubt you feel properly."
 
 316 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I am not at all sure that I do, aunt," said Gwendolen, with 
 saucy gravity. " I don't know every thing it is proper to feel 
 on being engaged." 
 
 The rector patted her shoulder and smiled as at a bit of in- 
 nocent naughtiness, and his wife took his behavior as an indi- 
 cation that she was not to be displeased. As for Anna, she 
 kissed Gwendolen, and said, " I do hope you will be happy," 
 but then sunk into the background and tried to keep the tears 
 back too. In the late days she had been imagining a little ro- 
 mance 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 sis- 
 ter, 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 w^his- 
 perers ; and Isabel, the listener — were all present on this family 
 occasion, when every thing seemed appropriately turning to the 
 honor and glory of Gwendolen, and real life was as interest- 
 ing 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. 
 Every thing 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. Gas- 
 coigne ; " 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 paint- 
 ed in the Italian style. The estate is said to be worth twelve 
 thousand a year ; and there arc two livings, one a rectory, in ^^ 
 the gift of the Grandcourts. There may be some burdens on 
 the land. Still, Mr. Grandcourt was an only child." 
 
 " It would be most remarkable," said Mrs. Gascoigne, " if he 
 were to become Lord Stannery, in addition to every thing else. 
 Only think : there is the Grandcourt estate, the Mallinger es-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 31 7 
 
 tate, and the baronetcy, and the peerage " — she was marking 
 off tlie 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 re- 
 garded as a remote chance. There are two cousins between 
 the present peer and Mr. Grandcourt. It is certainly a serious 
 reflection how death and other causes do sometimes concentrate 
 inheritances on one man. But an excess of that kind is to be 
 deprecated. To be Sir Mallinger Grandcourt Mallinger — I sup- 
 pose 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 sleep at all in her little white bed. It was a rarity in 
 her strong youth to be wakeful; and perhaps a still greater 
 rarity for her to be careful that her mother should not know 
 of her restlessness. But her state of mind was altogether new. 
 She who had been used to feel sure of herself, and ready to 
 manage others, had just taken a decisive step which she had 
 beforehand thought that she would not take — nay, perhaps, 
 was bound not to take. She could not go backward now ; she 
 liked a great deal of what lay before her ; and there was noth- 
 ing for her to like if she went back. But her resolution was 
 dogged by the shadow of that previous resolve which had at 
 first come as the undoubting movement of her whole being. 
 "While she lay on her pillow with wide-open eyes, " looking on 
 darkness which the blind do see," she was appalled by the idea 
 that she was going to do what she had once started away from 
 with repugnance. It was new to her that a question of right
 
 318 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 nevv^ consciousness was awaked. She seem- 
 ed on the edge of adopting deliberately, as a notion for all the 
 rest of her life, what she had rashly said in her bitterness, 
 when her discovery had driven her away to Leubronn — that it 
 did not signify what she did ; she had only to amuse herself as 
 best she could. That lawlessness, that casting-away of all care 
 for justification, suddenly frightened her : it came to her with 
 the shadowy array of possible calamity behind it — calamity 
 which had ceased to be a mere name for her ; and all the in- 
 filtrated influences of disregarded religious teaching, as well as 
 the deeper impressions of something awful and inexorable en- 
 veloping her, seemed to concentrate themselves in the vague 
 conception of avenging power. The brilliant position she had 
 longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for herself 
 in marriage, the deliverance from the dull insignificance of her 
 girlhood — all 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 de- 
 cision. That unhappy-faced woman and her children — Grand- 
 court 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 con- 
 sciousness that she had taken those scenes into her life. Her 
 long wakefulness seemed a delirium ; a faint, faint light pen- 
 etrated besi(^ 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 lighted-up ball-room, she open- 
 ed her eyes on her mother, standing by the bedside with a 
 small packet in her hand. 
 
 " I am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought it better to
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 319 
 
 give you this at once. The groom lias 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 enameled casket, and inside was a splendid dia- 
 mond ring, with a letter which contained a folded bit of colored 
 paper and these words : 
 
 "Pray wear this ring when I come at twelve, in sign of 
 our betrothal. I inclose a check drawn in the name of Mr. 
 Gascoigne, for immediate expenses. Of course, Mrs. Davilow 
 will remain at Offendene, at least for some time. I hope, when 
 I come, you will have granted me an early day, when you may 
 begin to command me at a shorter distance. Yours devotedly, 
 
 " H. M. Grandcourt." 
 
 The check was for five hundred pounds, and Gwendolen 
 turned it toward her mother, with the letter. 
 
 " How very kind and delicate !" said Mrs. Davilow, with 
 much feeling. " But I really should like better not to be de- 
 pendent 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 maiTy 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 irri- 
 tation was the consciousness that she was not going to marry 
 solely for her mamma's sake — that she was drawn toward the 
 marriage in ways against which stronger reasons than her moth- 
 er's renunciation were yet not strong enough to hinder her. 
 She had waked up to the signs that she was irrevocably en- 
 gaged, and all the ugly visions, the alarms, the arguments of 
 the night, must be met by daylight, in which, probably, they 
 would show themselves weak. 
 
 " What I long for is your happiness, dear," continued Mrs. 
 Davilow, pleadingly. "I will not say any thing to vex you. 
 Will you not put on the ring ?"
 
 320 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 For a few moments Gwendolen did not answer, but her 
 thoughts were active. At last she raised herself with a deter- 
 mination to do as she would do if she had started on horse- 
 back, and go on with spirit, whatever ideas might be running 
 in her head. 
 
 " I thought the lover always put on the betrothal ring him- 
 self," she said, laughingly, slipping the ring on her finger, and 
 lookins^ at it with a charminor 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 disgust- 
 ing." 
 
 " That is very moderate praise, Gwen." 
 
 " No, it is not, for a man," said Gwendolen, gayly. " 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. Grand- 
 court behaves perfectly, now, does he not ?" 
 
 " Certainly he does," said Mrs. Davilow, encouraged, and per- 
 suaded 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 so- 
 ciety : it is difiicult 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 determina- 
 tion that when she was Grandcourt's wife, she would urge him 
 to the most liberal conduct toward Mrs. Glasher's children. 
 
 *' Of what use would it be to her that I should not marry 
 him ? He could have married her if he had liked ; but he did
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 321 
 
 not like. Perhaps she is to blame for that. There must be 
 a great deal about her that I know nothing of. And he must 
 have been good to her in many ways, else she would not have 
 wanted to marry him." 
 
 But that last argument at once began to appear doubtful. 
 Mrs. Glasher naturally wished to exclude other children who 
 would stand between Grandcourt and her own ; and Gwendo- 
 len'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 de- 
 manding that her boy should be sole heir; and the double 
 property was a security that Grandcourt's marriage would do 
 her no wrong, when the wife was Gwendolen Harleth with all 
 her proud resolution not to be fairly accused. This maiden 
 had been accustomed to think herself blameless : other persons 
 only were faulty. 
 
 It was striking, that in the hold which this argument of her 
 doing no wrong to Mrs. Glasher had taken on her mind, her 
 repugnance to the idea of Grandcourt's past had sunk into a 
 subordinate feeling. The terror she had felt in the night- 
 watches at overstepping the border of wickedness by doing 
 what she had at first felt to be wrong, had dulled any emotions 
 about his conduct. She was thinking of him, whatever he 
 might be, as a man over whom she was going to have indefi- 
 nite 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 manage- 
 ment, in which she would know how to act. In relation to 
 Grandcourt's past she encouraged new doubts whether he were 
 likely to have differed much from other men ; and she de- 
 vised little schemes for learning what was expected of men in 
 general. 
 
 But whatever else might be true in the world, her hair was 
 14*
 
 322 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 dressed suitably for riding, and slie went down in her riding- 
 habit, to avoid delay before getting on horseback. She wanted 
 to have her blood stirred once more with the intoxication of 
 youth, and to recover the daring with which she had been used 
 to think of her course in life. Already a load was lifted off 
 her ; for in daylight and activity it was less oppressive to have 
 doubts about her choice than to feel that she had no choice 
 but to endure insignificance and servitude. 
 
 " Go back and make yourself look like a duchess, mamma," 
 she said, turning suddenly as she was going down-stairs. " Put 
 your point-lace over your head. I must have you look like a 
 duchess. You must not take things humbly." 
 
 Wlien Grandcourt raised her left hand gently and looked at 
 the ring, she said, gravely, " It was very good of you to think 
 of every thing and send me that packet." 
 
 " You will tell me if there is any thing I forget ?" he said, 
 keeping the hand softly within his own. " I will do any thing 
 you wish." 
 
 " But I am very unreasonable in my wishes," said Gwendolen, 
 smiling. 
 
 " Yes, I expect that. Women ah^ays are." 
 
 " Then I will not be unreasonable," said Gwendolen, taking 
 away her hand, and tossing her head saucily. " I will not be 
 told that I am what women always are." 
 
 " I did not say that," said Grandcourt, looking at her with 
 his usual gravity. " You are what no other woman is." 
 
 "And what is that, pray?" said Gwendolen, moving to a 
 distance with a little air of menace. 
 
 Grandcourt made his pause before he answered. " You are 
 the woman I love." 
 
 " Oh, what nice speeches !" said Gwendolen, laughing. The 
 sense of that love which he must once have given to another 
 woman under strange circumstances was getting familiar. 
 
 " Give me a nice speech in return. Say when we are to be 
 married." 
 
 " Not yet. Not till we have had a gallop over the downs. 
 I am so thirsty for that I can think of nothing else. I wish 
 the hunting had begun. Sunday the 20th, 2'7th, Monday, Tues- 
 day." Gwendolen was counting on her fingers with the pret-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 323 
 
 tiest nod while she looked at Grandcourt, and at last swept one 
 palm over the other while she said, triumphantly, " It will be- 
 gin in ten days !" 
 
 "Let us be married in ten days, then," said Grandcourt, 
 " and we shall not be bored about the stables." 
 
 " What do women always say in answer to that ?" said Gwen- 
 dolen, mischievously. 
 
 " They agree to it," said the lover, rather oS 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 spoil- 
 ed all by stupid attempts at caresses, utterly destructive of 
 drama. Grandcourt preferred the drama ; and Gwendolen, 
 left at ease, found her spirits rising continually as she played 
 at reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had seen more of her in this 
 unconscious kind of acting, instead of when she was trying to 
 be theatrical, he might have rated her chance higher. 
 
 When they had had a glorious gallop, however, she was in a 
 state of exhilaration that disposed her to think well of hasten- 
 ing 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, not- 
 withstanding the diflBculty 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 in- 
 cluded any opposition — which he did not love for its own sake. 
 He might easily cause Grandcourt a gi-eat deal of annoyance, 
 but it would be to his own injury, and to create annoyance was 
 not a motive with him. Miss Gwendolen he would certainly 
 not have been sorry to frustrate a little ; but, after all, there 
 was no knowing what would come. It was nothing new that
 
 324 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Grandcourt should show a perverse willfulness ; yet in his freak 
 about this girl he struck Lush rather newly as something like 
 a man who was fey — led on by an ominous fatality ; and that 
 one born to his fortune should make a worse business of his 
 life than was necessary, seemed really pitiable. Having protest- 
 ed against the marriage, Lush had a second-sight for its evil 
 consequences. Grandcourt had been taking the pains to write 
 letters and give orders himself instead of employing Lush ; and 
 appeared to be ignoring his usefulness, even choosing, against 
 the habit of years, to breakfast alone in his dressing-room. 
 But a tete-a-tete was not to be avoided in a house empty of 
 guests ; and Lush hastened to use an opportunity of saying — 
 it was one day after dinner, for there were difficulties in Grand- 
 court'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 be- 
 hold. 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 10th." 
 
 " 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 fre- 
 quent with Grandcourt when he meant to continue speaking, 
 and Lush waited for something more. Nothing came, and he 
 was going to put another question, when the inarticulate sound 
 began again and introduced the mildly uttered suggestion, 
 
 " You had better make some new arrangement for yourself." 
 
 " What ! I am to cut and run V said Lush, prepared to be 
 good-tempered on the occasion.
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 325 
 
 " Somethiug of tliat kind." 
 
 " The bride objects to me. I hope she will make up to you 
 for the want of my services." 
 
 " I can't help your being so damnably disagreeable to wom- 
 en," said Grandcourt, in soothing apology. 
 
 " To one woman, if you please." 
 
 " It makes no difference, since she is the one in question." 
 
 " I suppose I am not to be turned adrift, after fifteen years, 
 without some provision." 
 
 " You must have saved something out of me." 
 
 " Deuced little. I have often saved something for you." 
 
 " You can have three hundred a year. But you must live in 
 town and be ready to look after things 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 pos- 
 sible," 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 Gads- 
 mere ?" 
 
 " No. I am going myself." 
 
 "About your being rather hard up. Have you thought of 
 that plan — " 
 
 " Just leave me alone, will you ?" said Grandcourt, in his 
 lowest audible tone, tossing his cigar into the fire, and rising to 
 walk away. 
 
 He spent the evening in the solitude of the smaller drawing- 
 room, 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 philosopher might have done) in 
 sitting meditatively on a sofa and abstaining from literature — 
 political, comic, cynical, or romantic. In this way hours may 
 pass surprisingly soon, without the arduous invisible chase of
 
 32G DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 pliilosopliy ; not from love of tliouglit, but from hatred of ef- 
 fort — from a state of the inward world, something like prema- 
 ture 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 fulfillment. That is a condition which often comes 
 with whitening hair ; and sometimes, too, an intense obstinacy 
 and tenacity of rule, like the main tmnk of an exorbitant ego- 
 ism, conspicuous in proportion as the varied susceptibilities of 
 younger years are stripped away. 
 
 But Grandcourt's hair, though he had not much of it, was of 
 a fine sunny blonde, and his moods were not entirely to be ex- 
 plained as ebbing energy. We mortals have a strange spirit- 
 ual chemistry going on within us, so that a lazy stagnation or 
 even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows not 
 what biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from 
 sleep and without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out 
 of his still sleeping comrade, is understood to lack the trained 
 motive which makes a character fairly calculable in its actions ; 
 but by a roundabout course even a gentleman may make of 
 himself a chancy personage, raising an uncertainty as to what 
 he may do next, which sadly spoils companionship. 
 
 Grandcourt's thoughts this evening were like the circlets one 
 sees in a dark pool, continually dying out and continually start- 
 ed again by some impulse from below the surface. The deep- 
 er central impulse came from the image of Gwendolen ; but the 
 thoughts it stirred would be imperfectly illustrated by a refer- 
 ence to the amatory poets of all ages. It was characteristic 
 that he got none of his satisfaction from the belief that Gwen- 
 dolen 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 excep- 
 tional in the fact that, in spite of his assiduous attention to 
 her, she was not in love with him ; and it seemed to him very 
 likely that, if it -had not been for the sudden poverty which 
 had come over her family, she would not have accepted him. 
 From the very first there had been an exasperating fascination 
 in the tricksiness with which she had — not met his advances, 
 but wheeled away from them. She had been brought to ac-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 327 
 
 cept him in spite of every thing — brought to kneel down like 
 a horse under training for the arena, though she might have an 
 objection to it all the while. On the whole, Grandcourt got 
 more pleasure out of this notion than he could have done out 
 of winning a girl of whom he was sure that she had a strong 
 inclination for him personally. And yet, this pleasure in mas- 
 tering reluctance flourished along with the habitual persuasion 
 that no woman whom he favored could be quite indifferent to 
 his personal influence ; and it seemed to him not unlikely that 
 by-and-by Gwendolen might be more enamored of him than he 
 of her. In any case, she would have to submit ; and he enjoy- 
 ed thinking of her as his future wife, whose pride and spirit 
 were suited to command every one but himself. He had no 
 taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of peti- 
 tioning solicitude and willing obedience. He meant to be mas- 
 ter 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 obliga- 
 tion, not feeling at all secure against the future need of such a 
 place. He wrote the following letter, and addressed it to Park 
 Lane, whither he knew the family had returned from Leubronn : 
 
 "My dear Sir Hugo, — Since we came home the marriage 
 has been absolutely decided on, and is to take place in less than 
 three weeks. It is so far the worse for him that her mother 
 has lately lost all her fortune, and he will have to find supplies. 
 Grandcourt, I know, is feeling the want of cash ; and unless 
 some other plan is resorted to, he will be raising money in a 
 foolish way. I am going to leave Diplow immediately, and I 
 shall not be able to start the topic. AMiat I should advise is, 
 that Mr. Deronda, who, I know, has your confidence, should pro- 
 pose 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 pos- 
 sible extent of your offer. Then, that he should introduce the
 
 328 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 dis- 
 taste for the neighborhood, and there will be the notion of the 
 money sticking by him without being urged. I would bet on 
 your ultimate success. As I am not to be exiled to Siberia, 
 but am to be within call, it is possible that, by-and-by, I may 
 be of more service to you. But at present I can think of no 
 medium so good as Mr. Deronda. Nothing puts Grandcourt in 
 worse humor than having the lawyers thrust their paper under 
 his nose uninvited. 
 
 "Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has put you in ex- 
 cellent 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 some- 
 how hardly ever in them. Sir Hugo not being contented with- 
 out him. The chatty baronet would have liked a young com- 
 panion, even if there had been no peculiar reasons for attach- 
 ment between them — one with a fine, harmonious, unspoiled 
 face, fitted to keep up a cheerful view of posterity and inher- 
 itance generally, notwithstanding particular disappointments — 
 and his affection for Deronda was not diminished by the deep- 
 lying though not obtrusive differeijpe in their notions and 
 tastes. Perhaps it was all the stronger; acting as the same 
 sort of difference does between a man and a woman in giving 
 a piquancy to the attachment which subsists in spite of it. Sir 
 Hugo did not think unapprovingly of himself; but he looked 
 at men and society from a liberal-menagerie point of view, and 
 he had a certain pride in Deronda's differing from him, which, 
 if it had found voice, might have said : " You see this fine
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 829 
 
 young fellow — not sucli as you see every day, is lie ? — he be- 
 longs to me in a sort of way ; I brought him up from a child. 
 But you would not ticket him off easily. He has notions of 
 his own, and he's as far as the poles asunder from what I was 
 at his age." This state of feeling was kept up by the mental 
 balance in Deronda, who was moved by an affectionateness 
 such as we are apt to call feminine, disposing him to yield in 
 ordinary details, while he had a certain inflexibility of judg- 
 ment, an independence of opinion, held to be rightfully mas- 
 culine. 
 
 When he had read the letter, he returned it without speak- 
 ing, inwardly wincing under Lush's mode of attributing a neu- 
 tral usefulness to him in the family affairs. 
 
 " WTiat 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 im- 
 portance to your object," said Deronda, still with that aloof- 
 ness of manner which implied some suppression. He knew 
 that the baronet had set his heart on the affair. 
 
 " AMiy, you will see the fair gambler, the Leubronn Diana, I 
 shouldn't wonder," said Sir Hugo, gayly. " We shall have to 
 invite her to the Abbey, when they are married, Louisa," he 
 added, turning to Lady Mallinger, as if she too had read the 
 letter. 
 
 " I can not 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,
 
 330 DANIEL DEROXDA. 
 
 let it bo said that slie had reddish-blonde hair (the hair of the 
 period), a small Roman nose, rather prominent blue eyes and 
 delicate eyelids, with a figure which her thinner friends called 
 fat, her hands showing curves and dimples like a magnified 
 baby's. 
 
 " I mean that Grandcourt is going to marry the girl you saw 
 at Leubronn — don't you remember her? — the Miss Harleth 
 who used to play at roulette." 
 
 " Dear me ! Is that a good match for him f 
 
 " That depends on the sort of goodness he wants," said Sir 
 Hugo, smiling. " However, she and her friends have nothing, 
 and she will bring him expenses. It's a good match for my 
 purposes, because if I am willing to fork out a sum of money, 
 he may be willing to give up his chance of Diplow, so that 
 we shall have it out and out, and when I die you will have 
 the consolation of going to the place you would like to go to, 
 wherever I may go." 
 
 "I wish you would not talk of dying in that light way, 
 dear." 
 
 " It's rather a heavy way, Lou, for I shall have to pay a 
 heavy sum — forty thousand, at least." 
 
 " But why are we to invite them to the Abbey ?" said Lady 
 Mallinger. "I do not like women who gamble, like Lady 
 Cragstone." 
 
 " Oh, you will not mind her for a week. Besides, she is 
 not like Lady Cragstone because she gambled a little, any more 
 than I am like a broker because I'm a Whig. I want to keep 
 Grandcourt in good humor, and to let him see plenty of this 
 place, that he may think the less of Diplow. I don't know 
 yet whether I shall get him to meet me in this matter. And 
 if Dan were to go over on a visit there, he might hold out th(f 
 bait to him. It would be doing me a great service." This 
 was meant for Deronda. 
 
 "Daniel is not fond of Mr. Grandcourt, I think, is he ?" said 
 Lady Mallinger, looking at Deronda inquiringly. 
 
 " There is no avoiding every body one doesn't happen to be 
 fond of," said Deronda. " I will go to Diplow — I don't know 
 that I have any thing better to do — since Sir Hugo wishes it." 
 
 "That's a trump!" said Sir Hugo, well pleased. "And if
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 331 
 
 you don't find it very pleasant, it's so much experience. Noth- 
 ing 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 man- 
 ners too," said Deronda. 
 
 "Not nice manners, I think," said Lady MaUinger. 
 
 " "Well, you see they succeed with your sex," said Sir Hugo, 
 provoMngly. "And he was an uncommonly good-looking fel- 
 low 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 disincli- 
 nation 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 accept- 
 ance where she must in some way have felt repulsion. All 
 this implied a nature liable to difficulty and struggle — elements 
 of life which had a predominant attraction for his sympathy, 
 due, perhaps, to his early pain in dwelling on the conjectured 
 story of his own existence. Persons attracted him, as Hans 
 Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defend- 
 ing them, rescuing them, telling upon their lives with some sort 
 of redeeming influence ; and he had to resist an inclination, easi- 
 ly accounted for, to withdraw coldly from the fortunate. 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 fervor — some- 
 thing 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
 
 332 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 im- 
 agination was much occupied with two women, to neither of 
 whom would he have held it possible that he should ever make 
 love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something 
 of the knight - errant in his disposition; and he would have 
 found his proof if he had known what was just now going on 
 in Deronda's mind about Mirah and Gwendolen. 
 
 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. Grand- 
 court thought it probable that the visit was prompted by Sir 
 Hugo's desire to court him for a purpose which he did not 
 make up his mind to resist ; and it was not a disagreeable idea 
 to him that this fine fellow, whom he believed to be his cousin 
 under the rose, would witness, perhaps with some jealousy, 
 Henleigh Mallinger Grandcourt play the commanding part of 
 betrothed lover to a splendid girl whom the cousin had already 
 looked at with admiration. 
 
 Grandcourt himself was not jealous of any thing unless it 
 threatened his mastery — which he did not think himself likely 
 to lose. 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 " Surely whoever speaks to me in the right voice, 
 him or her I shall follow, 
 As the water follows the moon, silently, 
 
 with fluid steps anywhere around the globe." 
 
 Walt Whitman. 
 
 " 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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GET3 HER CHOICE. 333 
 
 other hand thrust between his crossed knees — in the attitude 
 of a man who is much interested in watching the person next 
 to him. Gwendolen, who had always disliked needle-work, had 
 taken to it with apparent zeal 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 con- 
 stantly 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. Then Grandcourt's behavior as a lover had hard- 
 ly at all passed the limit of an amorous homage which was in- 
 obtrusive as a wafted odor 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 ?" " Oh, it was nothing," said Gwendolen, rather 
 afraid of herself ; " only I can not 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 flout 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,
 
 334 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " 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 sus- 
 pected 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 Avhat 
 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 Gwen- 
 dolen, 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 
 careless assent. Her concentration in other feelings had real- 
 ly 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." 
 
 "^re you ?" said Gwendolen, in a tone of inquiry, looking at 
 him more naively than usual. She longed to believe this com- 
 monplace badinage as the serious truth about her lover: in 
 that case, she, too, was justified. If she knew every thing, 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 Grand- 
 court, looking into her eyes with his narrow gaze. 
 
 Gwendolen felt herself stricken. She was conscious of hav- 
 ing received so much, that her sense of command was checked, 
 and sunk away in the perception that, look around her as she
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 335 
 
 might, she could not turn back : it was as if slie 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, con- 
 tented to pay a large price for this new kind of love-making, 
 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 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 consciousness, 
 
 " Apropos," she said, taking up her work again, " is there 
 any one besides Captain and Mrs, Torrington at Diplow? — or 
 do you leave them tete-a-tete? I suppose he converses in ci- 
 gars, and she answers with her chignon." 
 
 " She has a sister with her," said Grandcourt, with his shad- 
 ow 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 — young Deronda — a young fel- 
 low with the Mallingers," 
 
 Gwendolen felt as if her heart were making a sudden gam- 
 bol, and her fingers, which tried to keep a firm hold on her 
 wca'k, got cold.
 
 336 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " I never spoke to him," she said, dreading any discernible 
 change in herself. " Is he not disagreeable ?" 
 
 " JSTo, 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 hi& name the evening before I 
 came away. That was all. What is he ?" 
 
 "A sort of ward 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 sar- 
 casm. " I wonder if it has 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, a& she had done on that former day 
 when she returned with her mother in the carriage. She al- 
 ways felt the more daring for being in her riding-dress ; be- 
 sides having the agreeable belief that she looked as well as pos- 
 sible in it — a sustaining consciousness in any meeting which 
 seems formidable. Her anger toward Deronda had changed 
 into a superstitious dread — due, perhaps, to the coercion he 
 had exercised over her thought — 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 in- 
 tense feeling about ourselves which makes the evening star 
 shine at us with a threat, and the blessing of a beggar encour- 
 age us. And superstitions carry consequences which often ver- 
 ify their hope or their foreboding. 
 
 The time before luncheon was taken up for Gwendolen by 
 going over the rooms with Mrs. Torrington and Mrs. 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 her pride. From the first moment of their be- 
 ing in the room together, she seemed to herself to be doing 
 nothing but noticing him : every thing else was automatic per- 
 formance of an habitual part. 
 
 When he took his place at lunch, Grandcourt had said, " De-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 337 
 
 ronda, Miss Harleth tells me you were not introduced to her at 
 Leubronn ?■ ' 
 
 " Miss Harleth hardly remembers me, I imagine," said De- 
 ronda, 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 be- 
 ing the person who redeemed her necklace ? 
 
 " On the contrary. I remember you very well," said Gwen- 
 dolen, feeling rather nervous, but governing herself and look- 
 ing at him in return with new examination. " You did not ap- 
 prove 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. 
 
 "/ 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 saw his 
 eyes fixed on her with a look so gravely penetrating that it 
 had a keener edge for her than his ironical smile at her losses 
 — a keener edge than Klesmer's judgment. She wheeled her 
 neck round as if she wanted to listen to Avhat 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 it by speech or action ?) His voice, 
 heard now 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 broken discourse of poultry and other 
 lazy gentry in the afternoon sunshine. Grandcoui-t, she in- 
 wardly conjectured, was perhaps right in saying that Deronda 
 thought too much of himself — a favorite 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 
 
 Vol. I.— 15
 
 338 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Baptist Caliban ; Deronda said lie 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 Barbados, 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 cor- 
 rected her by saying that the blacks would be manageable 
 enough if it were not for the half-breeds; and Deronda re- 
 marked that the whites had to thank themselves for the half- 
 breeds. 
 
 "While this polite pea -shooting 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 w^onder what he thinks of me really ? He must have 
 felt interested in me, else he would not have sent me my neck- 
 lace. I wonder what he thinks of my marriage ? What no- 
 tions 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 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 no time to find the reason — she was too much engaged 
 in caring. In the drawing-room, when something had called 
 Grandcourt away, she went quite unpremeditatedly up to De- 
 ronda, who was standing at a table 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 any thing you choose to do." 
 
 " You thought you had a right to object to my gambling," 
 persisted Gwendolen. 
 
 " I was sorry for it. I am not aware that I told you of my
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 339 
 
 objection," said Deronda, with his usual directness of gaze — a 
 large-eyed gravity, 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 make 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 af- 
 fair 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 said 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 going on within her 
 since that time at Leubronn : the struggle of mind attending a 
 conscious error had wakened something like a new soul, which 
 had better, but also worse, possibilities than her former poise 
 of crude self-confidence. 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 be- 
 gan 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, with- 
 out being told, 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."
 
 340 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 "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 es- 
 tates, he would have 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 hav- 
 ing 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 crayon 
 portrait at Diplow. A dark-eyed, beautiful woman, no longer 
 young, 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 mar- 
 ried?" 
 
 " 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, be- 
 cause 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 any thing about his birth. You 
 see, he is very well received."
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOIOE. 341 
 
 " 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 reproach- 
 ing her mother for that second marriage of hers — what she 
 chiefly felt now was, that she had been led on to a condemna- 
 tion 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 mar- 
 riage — reasons which pressed upon her newly, now that they 
 were unexpectedly mirrored in the story of a man whose slight 
 relations with her had, by some hidden affinity, bitten them- 
 selves into the most permanent layers of feeling. It was char- 
 acteristic 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 diffi- 
 culties of life are apt to force themselves on us in our crudity. 
 And to judge wisely, I suppose, we must know how things ap- 
 pear 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 scruples about propriety had 
 threatened to hinder her, until it was found that Mrs. Torring- 
 ton was horsewoman 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 in- 
 terest 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 con- 
 sequence ? And with only a little difference in events he might
 
 342 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 un- 
 questioning 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 oth- 
 ers. 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 she felt herself in an attitude 
 of apology — she who had hitherto been surrounded by a group 
 that in her opinion had need 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 
 despise her; but he could have no such knowledge. Would 
 he, without that, despise her for marrying Grandcourt? His 
 possible judgment of her actions was telling on her as impor- 
 tunately as Klesmer's judgment of her powers ; but she found 
 larger room for resistance to a disapproval of her marriage, be- 
 cause it is easier to make our conduct seem justifiable to our- 
 selves than to make our ability strike others. " How can I 
 help it ?" is not our favorite 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 recur- 
 rence. She could dare any thing 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 de- 
 lightful 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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 343 
 
 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 any thing to him. Indeed, the hunt would be too absorb- 
 ing. 
 
 And so it was for a long while. Deronda was there, and 
 within her sight very often ; but this only added to the stim- 
 ulus of a pleasure which Gwendolen had only once before 
 tasted, and which seemed likely always to give a delight inde- 
 pendent of any crosses, except such as took away the chance 
 of riding. No accident happened to throw them together ; the 
 run took them within convenient reach of home, and in the 
 agreeable sombreness of the gray November afternoon, with a 
 long stratum of yellow light in the west, Gwendolen was re- 
 turning 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 disap- 
 pointed that she had had no opportunity of speaking to Deron- 
 da, 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 
 quite certain. She wanted to speak to him. Grandcourt was 
 by her side ; Mrs. Torrington, her husband, and another gentle- 
 man 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 every thing. 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 twilight 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, waWng 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 slow- 
 ly, and she waited till Deronda came up. He looked at her
 
 344 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 with tacit inquiry, and she said at once, letting her horse go 
 along-side 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. Ap- 
 parently 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 to 
 turn into a disease. And, besides, there is something revolt- 
 ing 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." De- 
 ronda's voice had gathered some indignation while he was 
 speakin2,'. 
 
 " But you do admit that we can't help things," said Gwen- 
 dolen, w^ith a drop in her tone. The answer had not been any 
 thing like what she had expected. "I mean that things are so 
 in spite of us ; we can't always help it that our gain is anoth- 
 er'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 wom- 
 an ?" 
 
 "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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 345 
 
 put her horse forward and joined Grandcourt, wlio made no 
 observation. 
 
 " Don't jou 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. 
 
 " I wdsh 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." K Gwendolen imagined 
 that Grandcourt cared about her speaking to Deronda, he wish- 
 ed 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 
 toward Diplow, while her lover attended her to Offendene, 
 where he was to bid farewell before a whole day's absence on 
 the unspecified journey. Grandcourt had spoken truth in call- 
 ing the journey a bore : he was going by train to Gadsmere. 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 " Xo 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 
 gray 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 side, backward some 
 
 15*
 
 346 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Scotch firs on a broken bank where 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 
 little prisons. Outside the gate the country, once entirely rural 
 and lovely, now black with coal-mines, was chiefly peopled by 
 men and brethren w^ith candles stuck in their hats, and with a 
 diabolic complexion which laid them peculiarly open to sus- 
 picion in the eyes 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 Gadsmere 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 ponies with 
 a wagonet 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, for the curate's wife and the curate 
 himself were either ignorant of any thing to her disadvantage, 
 or ignored it. To them she was simply a widow lady, the ten- 
 ant of Gadsmere ; and the name of Grandcourt was of little in- 
 terest in that district compared with the names of Fletcher and 
 Gawcome, the lessees of the collieries. 
 
 It was fully 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 wonder- 
 ed 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 young Grand- 
 court. 
 
 That he should have disentangled himself from that connec- 
 tion seemed only natural and desirable. As to her, it was
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 347 
 
 tlionglit that a woman wlio was understood to have forsaken 
 her child along with her husband had 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 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 people talked of the victim in 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 harbor with his colors flying, regis- 
 tered as sea-worthy 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 as 
 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 tho understanding often expressed be- 
 tween them during the days of his first ardor. 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 comparative- 
 ly 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 conversation en suite, of the kind to be expect- 
 ed in young men of fortune who have seen every thing. She 
 was an impassioned, vivacious woman, fond of adoration, exas- 
 perated by five years of marital rudeness ; and the sense of re- 
 lease 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 honors 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 afterward, and whose
 
 348 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 first tones, saying " Mamma," retained a difference from those 
 of the children that came after. But now the years had 
 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 direction. 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 lo>e and pride — including her 
 pride for herself in the presence of her children. For the sake 
 of that result she was prepared even with a tragic firmness to 
 endure any thing quietly in marriage ; and she had had acute- 
 ness enough to cherish Grandcourt's flickering purpose nega- 
 tively, by not molesting him with passionate appeals and with 
 scene-making. In her, as in every one else who wanted any 
 thing of him, his incalculable turns, and his tendency to harden 
 under beseeching, liad created a reasonable dread — a slow dis- 
 covery, of which no presentiment had been given in the bear- 
 ing 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 on the helpless and injured — 
 which has not an ugly obverse : the withheld sting was gath- 
 ering venom. She was absolutely dependent on Grandcourt; 
 for, though he had been always liberal in expenses for her, he 
 had kept every thing voluntary on his part ; and with the goal 
 of marriage before her, she would ask for nothing less. He 
 had said that he would never settle any thing except by will ; 
 and when she was thinking of alternatives for the future, it 
 often occurred to her that, even if she did not become Grand-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 349 
 
 court's wife, lie miglit never have a son who would Lave a le- 
 gitimate claim on bim, 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 phy- 
 sique. But her becoming Grandcourt's wife was so far from 
 being an extravagant notion of possibility, that even Lush had 
 entertained it, and had 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 Arrow- 
 point, 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 Gwendo- 
 len's appearance on the scene ; and it was natural enough for 
 Mrs. Glasher to enter with eagerness into Lush's plan of hinder- 
 ing 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 mth 
 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 depart- 
 ure, 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 diflSculty 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 diamonds, and 
 made them look as if they were worth some of the money 
 given for them. These particular diamonds were not mount-
 
 350 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ains 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 keep- 
 ing again, simply on the ground that they would be safer and 
 ought to be deposited at the bank, she had quietly but abso- 
 lutely refused, declaring that they were quite safe ; and at last 
 liad 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 to- 
 ward her: there was the surviving though metamorphosed ef- 
 fect of the power she had had over him, and it was this ef- 
 fect, the fitful dull lapse toward 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 urged him to make the most of it. 
 
 Mrs. Glasher was seated in the pleasant room where she ha- 
 bitually passed her mornings with her children round her. It 
 had a square projecting window, and looked on broad gravel 
 and grass, sloping toward 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 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 nostrils and eyebrows singularly finished, as if they 
 were tiny women, the eldest being barely nine. The boy was
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 351 
 
 seated on the carpet at some distance, bending his blonde head 
 over the animals from a Xoah's ark, admonishing them sepa- 
 rately in a voice of threatening command, and occasionally lick- 
 ing the spotted ones to see if the colors would hold. Joseph- 
 ine, the eldest, was having her French lesson ; and the oth- 
 ers, with their dolls on their laps, sat demurely enough for im- 
 ages of the Madonna. Mrs. Glasher's toilet had been made 
 very carefully — each day now she said to herself that Grand- 
 court might come in. Her head, which, spite of emaciation, 
 had an ineffaceable beauty in the fine profile, crisp curves of 
 hair, and clearly marked eyebrows, rose impressively above her 
 bronze-colored silk and velvet, and the gold necklace which 
 Grandcourt had first clasped round her neck years ago. Xot 
 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 faces 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 Joseph- 
 ine'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, re- 
 peated 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 them any par- 
 ticular 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 submitted 
 bashfully to be patted under the chin and kissed ; but, on the
 
 352 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 op- 
 posite 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 rail- 
 way 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 cross- 
 ed 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 toward hope or dread. 
 But he was really occupied with their interview and what it 
 was likely to include. Imagine the difference in rate of emo- 
 tion 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 ob- 
 stinacy. 
 
 "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, in- 
 cisive 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." 
 
 "Oh yes," said Mrs. Glasher, curtly, tingling with impa- 
 tience. 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 
 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 lier.
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 353 
 
 " 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 ?" 
 
 "^SAe 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-screw and the iron boot were being placed by creep- 
 ing hands within sight of the expectant victim. 
 
 " Good God ! say at once that you are going to marry her," 
 she burst out passionately, her knees 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 under-toned words of Grandcourt's she felt as 
 absolute a resistance as if her thin fingers had been pushing at 
 a f.ast-shut iron door. She knew her helplessness, and shrunk 
 from testing it by any appeal — shrunk 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 mo- 
 ments a horrible sensation. At last she rose with a spasmodic 
 effort, and, unconscious of every thing 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, sunk back in the nearest chair. 
 
 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.
 
 354 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 He was leaning against the corner of tlie fire-place. 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 deucedly disagreeable to me to see you making 
 yourself miserable. I've taken this journey to tell you what 
 you must make up your mind to — 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 in- 
 tense eager look had had the iron of the mother's anguish in 
 her soul, and it had made her sometimes capable of a repres- 
 sion 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 be- 
 sides 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 noth- 
 ing for you to complain of then. Whatever happens, you will 
 feel secure. Nothing could be done beforehand. Every thing 
 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 il- 
 liberal. 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 re- 
 plied, 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 beg- 
 gary?" In spite of herself, the one outlet of venom had 
 brought the other. 
 
 "There is no question about leaving the children in beg-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 355 
 
 gary," 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 ob- 
 ject of his visit, which, like a second surgical operation, seemed 
 to require an interv^al. The hours had to go by ; there was 
 eating to be done ; the children came in again — all this mech- 
 anism of life had to be gone through with the dreary sense of 
 constraint which is often felt in domestic quarrels of a com- 
 moner kind. To Lydia it was some slight rehef 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 indif- 
 ference to her and them — a secret darting of venom which was 
 strongly imaginative. He acquitted himself with all the ad- 
 vantage of a man whose grace of bearing has long been mold- 
 ed on an experience of boredom — nursed the little Antonia, 
 who sat with her hands crossed and eyes upturned to his bald 
 head, which stnick her as worthy of observation — and propiti- 
 ated Henleigh by promising him a beautiful saddle and bridle. 
 It was only the two eldest girls who had known him as a con- 
 tinual 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 occasional- 
 ly, in the presence of the servants, made a conventional remark ; 
 otherwise they never spoke ; and the stagnant thought in
 
 356 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Grandcourt's mind all the while was of his own infatuation in 
 havin^y 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 proper- 
 ty he liked to be lordly ; also he had a consciousness of indig- 
 nity to himself in having to ask for any thing in the world. 
 But however he might assert his independence of Mrs. Glasher's 
 past, he had made a past for himself which was a stronger 
 yoke than any he could impose. He must ask for the dia- 
 monds, 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 re- 
 solve, 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 suppose ?" 
 
 " 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 per- 
 son you intended them for. / will make the arrangement." 
 
 " 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 under-toned disgust. 
 It was too irritating that his indulgence of Lydia had given 
 her a sort of mastery over him, in spite of her dependent con- 
 dition.
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 357 
 
 She did not speak. He also rose now, but stood leaning 
 against the mantel-piece with his side-face toward her. 
 
 "The diamonds must be delivered to me before my mar- 
 riage," he began again. 
 
 " AVhat is your wedding-day ?" 
 
 " The 10th. There is no tune to be lost." 
 
 "And where do you go after the maniage?" 
 
 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 commis- 
 sion ; it's a great nuisance. Mention a day." 
 
 "No; I shall not do that. They shall be delivered to her 
 safely. I shall keep my word." 
 
 " Do you mean to say," said Grandcourt, just audibly, turn- 
 ing to face her, " that you will not do as I tell you ?" 
 
 " Yes, I mean that," was the answer that leaped out, while 
 her eyes flashed close to him. The poor creature was imme- 
 diately 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 shrunk from the 
 only sort of threat that would frighten her — if she believed it. 
 And in general, there was nothing he hated more than to be 
 forced into any thing like violence even in words: his will 
 must impose itself without trouble. After looking at her for 
 a moment, he turned his side-face toward her again, leaning as 
 before, and said, 
 
 " Infernal idiots that women are !" 
 
 "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 shrinking 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."
 
 358 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 He was in a state of disgust and imbitterment 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 into 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 possibilities 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 colored 
 tendencies, and there was one often-experienced effect which he 
 thought he could count upon now. As Sir Hugh 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. 
 Then 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 — herself left behind in lonely uncer- 
 tainty — hearing nothing from him — not knowing whether she 
 had done her children 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 w^ould willingly have sacri- 
 ficed herself to her revenge — to what she felt to be the justice 
 of hindering another from getting happiness by willingly giv- 
 ing her over to misery. The two dominant passions were at 
 struggle. She must satisfy them both. 
 
 "Don't let us part in anger, Henleigh," she began, without 
 chaivging her place or attitude. " It is a very little thing I ask. 
 If I were refusing to give any thing 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 scan- 
 dal. Without scandal," she repeated, entreatingly. 
 
 " Such preposterous whims make a woman odious," said
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 359 
 
 Grandcourt, not giving way in look or movement. " AMiat is 
 the use of talking to mad people ?" 
 
 " Yes, I am foolish — loneliness has made me foolish — in- 
 dulge 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 hysterical 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 tight- 
 en 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 al- 
 Avays 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 follows sob- 
 bing, " 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 re- 
 proach you — I only ask you to let me give them up in my own 
 way. Have I not borne it well ? Every thing is to be taken 
 away from me, and when I ask 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, " AYe are going to 
 Ryelands, then." 
 
 " They shall be delivered to her there," said Lydia, with de- 
 cision. 
 
 " Yery well, I am going." He felt no inclination even to
 
 360 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 take her hand: she had annoyed him too sorely. But, now 
 that she had gained her point, she was prepared to humble her- 
 self that she might propitiate him. 
 
 " Forgive me ; I will never vex you again," she said, with be- 
 seeching looks. Her inward voice said distinctly, " It is only I 
 who have to forgive." 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, appar- 
 ently 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. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 "A wild dedication of yourselves 
 To unpath'd waters, undream'd shores." 
 
 Shakspeare. 
 
 On the day when Gwendolen Harleth was married and be- 
 came 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 proces- 
 sion. Only two faces, it was remarked, showed signs of sad-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 361 
 
 ness— Mrs. Davilow's and Anna's. The mother's deHcale eye- 
 lids 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 brides-maid's dress. Every one else seemed to reflect the 
 brilliancy 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 him- 
 self not being fresh-colored — being indeed, as the miller'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 never cast 
 it up to her that she had been going out to service as a govern- 
 ess, 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 be- 
 haved 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 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. Grand- 
 court has wonderful little tongue. Every thing 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 
 together !" 
 
 " What wonderful long corners she's got to her eyes I" said the 
 tailor. " She makes you feel comical when she looks at you." 
 
 Vol. L— 16
 
 362 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Gwendolen, in fact, never showed more elasticity in her bear- 
 ing, more lustre in her long brown glance. She had the brill- 
 iancy 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 enjoy- 
 ment 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 im- 
 mediate 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 which united her with this lover, and which she 
 had hitherto held by the hand, was now being flung over her 
 neck — all this yeasty mingling of dimly understood facts with 
 vague but deep impressions, and with images half real, half fan- 
 tastic, had been disturbing her during the weeks of her engage- 
 ment. Was that agitating experience nullified this morning? 
 No : it was surmounted and thrust down with a sort of exult- 
 ing defiance as she felt herself standing at the game of life 
 with many eyes upon her, daring every thing to win much — or 
 if to lose, still with eclat 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 circumstances — 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 newly fed strength of the old 
 fumes. She did not in the least present the ideal of the tear-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 363 
 
 ful, tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, wliom some had judged 
 much too forward and instructed in the world's ways I — with 
 her erect head and elastic footstep she was walking amidst il- 
 lusions ; and yet, too, there was an under-consciousness in her 
 that she was a little intoxicated. 
 
 " Thank God you bear it so well, my darling I" said Mrs. 
 Davilow, when she had helped Gwendolen to doff her bridal 
 white and put on her traveling-dress. All the trembling had 
 been done by the poor mother, and her agitation urged Gwen- 
 dolen 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 mammal" 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 exhibit herself. " Here am I — Mrs. Grand- 
 court ! 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." 
 
 " Hush, hush, my child, for Heaven's sake !" said Mrs. Da\d- 
 low, almost in a whisper. " How can I help feeling it when I 
 am parting from you ? But I can bear any thing gladly if you 
 are happy." 
 
 " Not gladly, mamma, 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 on the other be- 
 tween her words, she said, gayly, "And you shall sorrow over 
 my having every thing at my beck — and enjoying every thing 
 gloriously — splendid houses — and horses — and diamonds, I 
 shall have diamonds — and going to court — and being Lady 
 Certainly — and Lady Perhaps — and grand here — and tantivy 
 there — and always loving you better than anv body 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 chin with a pretty gri- 
 mace, saying, " Rather a ridiculous expectation. However, I 
 don't mean to treat him ill, unless he deserves it."
 
 364. DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Then the two fell into a clinging 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 suit- 
 ed 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." 
 
 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 park-gates ; but still Gwen- 
 dolen, looking out of the carriage-window as they drove rapid- 
 ly along, could see the grand outlines and the nearer beauties 
 of the scene — the long winding drive bordered with evergreens 
 backed by huge gray 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 could be seen, with a 
 hanging wood for a background, and the rising and sinking 
 balustrade of a terrace in front. 
 
 Gwendolen had been at her liveliest during the journey, chat- 
 ting 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 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 fulfill- 
 ment about to be given to her girlish dreams of being " some- 
 body " — walking through her own furlong of corridors and un- 
 der her own ceilings of an out-of -sight loftiness, where her own
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 365 
 
 painted Spring was shedding painted flowers, and her own fore- 
 shortened Zephyrs were blowing their trumpets over her ; while 
 her own servants, lackeys in clothing, but men in bulk and 
 shape, were as naught in her presence, and revered the proprie- 
 ty of her insolence to them — being, in short, the heroine of an 
 admired play without the pains of art. ? Was it alone the close- 
 ness of this fulfillment which made her heart flutter ? or was it 
 some dim forecast, the insistent penetration of suppressed ex- 
 perience, 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 de- 
 clare itself. 
 
 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 hardly knew 
 of it : it was no more than the passive acceptance of a greet- 
 ing in the midst of an absorbing show. Was not all her hur- 
 rying life of the last three months a show, in which her con- 
 sciousness was a wondering spectator? After the half -willful 
 excitement of the day, a numbness had come over her person- 
 ality. 
 
 But there was a brilliant light in the hall — warmth, matting, 
 carpets, full-length portraits, Olympian statues, assiduous serv- 
 ants. 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 un> 
 der guidance by the housekeeper. Gwendolen felt herself be- 
 ing led by Grandcourt along a subtly scented corridor, then 
 into an anteroom where she saw an open door-way sending out 
 a rich glow of light and color. 
 
 " These are our dens," said Grandcourt. " You will like to 
 be quiet here till dinner. We shall dine early." 
 
 He pressed her hand 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 boudoir from the adjoin- 
 ing dressing-room, and seemed disposed to linger, Gwendolen
 
 366 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 tliouglit, in order to look at tlie 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 every 
 thing ? I shall 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. Ex- 
 cuse me, .madam ; I felt it right to obey orders." 
 
 Gwendolen took the packet, and let it lie on her lap till 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 her own diamonds to try on. 
 
 Within all the sealed paper coverings was a box, but within 
 the box there ivas a jewel-case ; and now she felt no doubt that 
 she had the diamonds. But on opening the case, in the same 
 instant 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 seem- 
 ed 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 possess what was hers. Per- 
 haps you think of being happy, as she once was, and of hav- 
 ing beautiful children such as hers, who will thrust hers aside. 
 God is too just for that. The man you have married has 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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 367 
 
 word. You will have your punishment. I desire it with all 
 my soul. 
 
 "Will you give him this letter, to set him against me and 
 ruin us more — me and my children ? Shall you like to stand 
 before your husband with these diamonds on you, and these 
 words of mine in his thoughts and yours ? Will he think you 
 have any right to complain when he has made you miserable ? 
 You took him with your eyes open. The willing wrong you 
 have done me will be your curse." 
 
 It seemed at first as if Gwendolen's eyes were spell-bound in 
 reading the horrible words of the letter over and over again as 
 a doom of penance ; but suddenly a new spasm of terror made 
 her lean forward gpd stretch out the paper toward the fire, lest 
 accusation and proof at once should meet all eyes. It flew like 
 a feather 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 many 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 Grand- 
 court 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 pallid, shriek- 
 ing as it 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.
 
 368 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 " In all ages it hath been a favorite text that a potent love hath the nat- 
 ure 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 
 philtre-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 Ptolemy had made little difference to his discourse under 
 the balcony. Yet all love is not such, even though potent. Nay, this pas- 
 sion 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 hght 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 understand- 
 ing that he could get fifty thousand pounds by giving up a 
 prospect which was probably distant, and not absolutely cer- 
 tain ; but he had no further sign of Grandcourt's disposition 
 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, mean- 
 ing 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 you can
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 369 
 
 get up a duel, and manage to shoot Grandcourt, which, might 
 be worth a Httle 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 in- 
 stead 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 knowl- 
 edge 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 be- 
 havior at Mrs. Meyrick's, where he was about to pay his first 
 visit since his arrival from Leubronn. For Mirah was certain- 
 ly a creature in whom it was diflicult 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 well-being in her family. " We are getting fonder of 
 her every day," she had written. " At breakfast-time we all 
 look toward the door with expectation to see her come in ; and 
 we watch her 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 
 bread of idleness, but to work, like my girls. Mab says our 
 life has 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 loud 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." 
 
 But Mrs. Meyrick did not enter into particulars which would 
 16*
 
 370 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 have required her to say that Amy and Mab, who had accom- 
 panied Mirah to the synagogue, found the Jewish faith less rec- 
 oncilable 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 w^omen should sit behind rails in a gallery apart V 
 
 " Yes, I never thought of any thing 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. 
 
 " Oh 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 any thing else in the world." 
 
 After this, any criticism, whether of doctrine or of practice, 
 would have seemed to these generous little people an inhospita- 
 ble 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 
 her, and she would pass into Christianity like the rest of the 
 world, if she got 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 hide- 
 ous Christian. How can an ugly Christian, 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 can 
 not 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 
 Mirah is cut out after the pattern of her mother. 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 daugh- 
 ters), " and a dead mother is worth more than a living one ?"
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 371 
 
 " 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, but Deronda himself, with all his mascu- 
 line instruction, had been roused by this apparition of Mirah to 
 the consciousness of knowing hardly any thing about modem 
 Judaism or the inner Jewish history. The Chosen People have 
 been commonly treated as a people chosen for the sake of some- 
 body else ; and their thinking as something (no matter exactly 
 what) that ought to have been entirely otherwise ; and Deron- 
 da, like his neighbors, had regarded Judaism as a sort of eccen- 
 tric fossilized 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 oth- 
 er, had flashed on him the hitherto neglected reality that Juda- 
 ism 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 afterward set out 
 with Sir Hugo, he began to look for the outsides of syna- 
 gogues, and the titles of books about the Jews. This waken- 
 ing of a 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 ig- 
 norance — is an effectual remedy for ennui, which unhappily 
 can not be secured on a physician's prescription ; but Deronda 
 had carried it with him, and endured his weeks of lounging all 
 the better. It was on this journey that he first entered a Jew- 
 ish synagogue — at Frankfort — where his party rested on a Fri- 
 day. 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 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 man- 
 ners, the education of a gentleman, and a present income, it is 
 not customary to feel a prying curiosity about his way of
 
 372 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 thinking, or liis 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 portly, his peculiarities are more distinctly 
 discerned, and it is taken as a mercy if they are not highly ob- 
 jectionable. But any one wishing to understand the effect of 
 after-events on Deronda should know a little more of what he 
 was at five -and -twenty than was evident in ordinary inter- 
 course. 
 
 It happened that the very vividness of his impressions had 
 often made him the more enigmatic to his friends, and had 
 contributed to an apparent indefiniteness 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 antag- 
 onism, though only in thought, he seemed to himself 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 things 
 as 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 end- 
 ed by falling into one current with that reflective analysis 
 which tends to neutralize sympathy. Few men were able to 
 keep themselves clearer of vices than he ; yet he hated vices 
 mildly, 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 dem- 
 ocratic in his feeling for the multitude, and yet, through his af- 
 fections 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 mem- 
 ories 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, hav- 
 ing a strong repugnance to taking up that clue of success 
 which the order of the world often forces upon us and makes
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 373 
 
 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 apologized for the heirs of privilege ; he shrunk 
 with dislike from the loser's bitterness and the denunciatory- 
 tone of the unaccepted innovator. A too reflective and diffu- 
 sive sympathy was in danger of paralyzing in him that indig- 
 nation against wrong and that selectness of fellowship which 
 are the conditions of moral force ; and in the last few years 
 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 ceas- 
 ing to care for knowledge — he had no ambition for practice — 
 unless they could both be gathered up into one current with 
 his emotions ; and he dreaded, as if it were a dwelling-place of 
 lost souls, that dead anatomy of culture which turns the uni- 
 verse into a mere ceaseless answer to queries, and knows, not 
 every thing, but every thing else about every thing — 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 the needed event to come ? — the influence that 
 would justify partiality, and make 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 hab- 
 itation to render fellowship real ? To make a little difference 
 for the better was what he was not contented to live without ; 
 but how make 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 de- 
 mands on him and given him no fixed relationship except one 
 of a doubtful kind ; but he did not attempt to hide from him- 
 self that he had fallen into a meditative numbness, and was 
 gliding farther and farther from that life of practically ener- 
 getic sentiment which he would have proclaimed (if he had 
 been inclined to proclaim any thing) 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 savors of life — substantial and strong, in the face of
 
 374 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 a reflectiveness that threatened to nullify all differences. To 
 pound the objects of sentiment into small dust, yet keep senti- 
 ment alive and active, was something- like the famous recipe 
 for making cannon — to first take a round hole and then inclose 
 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 ex- 
 pensive cult of enshrined putrefactions ? 
 
 Something like this was the common under-current in Do- 
 ronda's mind, while he was reading law, or imperfectly attend- 
 ing 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 fervor 
 which made him easily feel the presence of poetry in every-day 
 events ; and the forms of 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 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 sorrowing memory. 
 
 This imaginative stirring, as he turned out of the Juden- 
 gasse, and continued to saunter in the warm evening air, mean- 
 ing to find his way to the synagogue, neutralized 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 syn- 
 agogue, 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 
 more amenity, in his charge for a book quite out of request as 
 one " nicht so leicht zu bekommen." Meanwhile, at the oppo-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 3/5 
 
 site counter a deaf and grisly tradesman was casting a flinty 
 look at certain cards, apparently combining advantages of busi- 
 ness with religion, and shoutingly proposed to him in Jew dia- 
 lect 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 Israelites 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 per- 
 sonal alarm. But a little comparison will often diminish our 
 surprise and disgust at the aberrations of Jews and other dis- 
 sidents whose lives do not offer a consistent or lovely pattern 
 of their creed ; and this eveninof Deronda, becominoj more con- 
 scious that he was falling into unfairness and ridiculous exag- 
 geration, began to use that corrective comparison. He paid his 
 thaler too much, without prejudice to his interest in the He- 
 brew destiny, or his wish to find the Rahhinische 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 man 
 from whom he was distant enough to glance at him more than 
 once as rather a noticeable figure — his ordinary clothes, as well 
 as the talith, or white blue-fringed kind of blanket, which is the 
 garment of prayer, being much worn ; 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 De- 
 ronda's notice till at last their eyes met : an undesirable chance 
 with unknown persons, and a reason to Deronda for not look- 
 ing again ; but he immediately found an open prayer - book 
 pushed toward him and had to bow his thanks. However, the 
 white taliths had mustered, the reader had mounted to the al- 
 memor, 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
 
 3V6 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 com- 
 munion 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 choir ; the de- 
 votional swaying of men's bodies backward and forward ; 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 molded the splendid forms of that world's 
 religion, was finding a remote, obscure echo — all were blent for 
 him as one expression of a binding history, tragic and yet glo- 
 rious. 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 in- 
 terpret. The whole scene was a coherent strain, its burden a 
 passionate regret, which, if he had known the liturgy for the 
 Day of Reconciliation, he might have clad in its antithetic bur- 
 den : " 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 per- 
 son in the congregation for whom the service was more than a 
 dull routine. There was just time for this chilling thought be-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 377 
 
 fore lie had bowed to liis civil neiglibor and was moving away 
 with the rest — when he felt a hand on his ann, 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 neighbor, 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 or 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 differently. How could he say that he did not 
 know the name of his mother's family to that total stranger? 
 who, indeed, had taken an unwarrantable liberty in the abrupt- 
 ness of his question, dictated probably by some fancy of like- 
 ness such as often occurs without real significance. The in- 
 cident, he said to himself, was trivial ; but whatever import it 
 mio-ht 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 
 any thing that the baronet would have been likely to call Quix- 
 otic 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 differ- 
 ence between him and Deronda, who rarely eat 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 outward-
 
 378 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 ]y shaken it off as trivial, would have seemed a threat rather 
 than a promise of revelation, had re-enforced his anxiety as to 
 the effect of finding Mirah's relatives and his resolve to pro- 
 ceed 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 com- 
 pany 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 good -will 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 imme- 
 diately on their greeting said, 
 
 " 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 Mi- 
 rah, 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 were a 
 mother and sisters who took to it so that every thing came 
 naturally, as if it had been always there. I hardly thought be- 
 fore 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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 379 
 
 meet my father. It seems dreadful that I should be afraid of 
 meeting him. That is my only sorrow," said Mirah, plaint- 
 ively. 
 
 " 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 gi'eat 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 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 real- 
 ly 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 fa- 
 ther laugh at the strictness of the Jews about their food and 
 all customs, and their not liking Christians. I think my moth- 
 er was strict ; but she could never want me not to like those 
 who are better to me than any of my own people 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 has 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 Ave are 
 now, so that I could tell what would comfort her, I should be
 
 380 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 SO full of blessedness, my soul would know no want but to love 
 her!" 
 
 " God bless you, child !" said Mrs. Meyrick, the words escap- 
 ing involuntarily from her motherly heart. But, to relieve the 
 strain of feeling, she looked at Deronda, and said, " It is curi- 
 ous that Mirah, who remembers her mother so well (it is as if 
 she saw her), can not 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 remem- 
 ber 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 al- 
 ways 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 
 any thing 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 De- 
 ronda, 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 
 had made her think of every thing she did as work demanded
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 381 
 
 from her, in wliicli 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 somcAvhat 
 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 sung ; 
 and she took every thing 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 — 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 -grass- 
 es. 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 nos- 
 trils defined enough to be ready for sensitive movements, the 
 finished ear, the firm curv^es of the chin and neck entering into 
 the expression of a refinement which was not feebleness. 
 
 She sung Beethoven's " Per pieta, non dirmi addio," with a 
 subdued but searching pathos, which had that essential of per- 
 fect 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 look- 
 ing at her, but felt himself presently covering his eyes with his 
 hand, wanting to seclude the melody in darkness ; then he re- 
 frained from what might seem oddity, and was ready to meet 
 the look of mute appeal which she turned toward 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 gTcat pain to me, because it 
 failed in what it was wanted for. But now we think I can
 
 382 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 two lessons." 
 
 " I think I know some ladies who would find you many pu- 
 pils 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 learn of me, that is difficult." Mirah smiled with a 
 touch of merriment he had not seen in her before. "I dare 
 say I should find her poor — I mean my mother. I should 
 want to get money for her. And I can not 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 had 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 sing- 
 ing 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 di- 
 rected to some invisible face bent over her, while she sung a 
 little hymn of quaint melancholy intervals, with syllables that 
 really seemed childish lisping to her audience ; but the voice in
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 383 
 
 whicli she gave it fortli had gathered even a sweeter, more coo- 
 inor tenderness than was heard in her other sono-s. 
 
 " 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 some- 
 thing like a lisp in her children's talk to the very last. Their 
 words are not just what every body else says, though they may 
 be spelled 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, 
 smilino^. " We must not let mothers be too arro2:ant." 
 
 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 val- 
 ley, 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 separation — 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 — just as their poetry, though in one sense pecul- 
 iar, has a great deal in common with the poetry of other na- 
 tions. Still it is to be expected that a Jew would feel the 
 forms of his people's religion more than one of another race ;
 
 384 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 and yet " — here Deronda hesitated in his turn — " that is per- 
 haps 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 
 Avhat is nearest to them," said Deronda, apologetically. 
 
 " But you are not like that," said Mirah, looking at him with 
 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 awk- 
 ward 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 forever 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 honor one's 
 parents without following their notions exactly, any more than 
 the exact cut of their clothing. My father was a Scotch Cal- 
 vinist, and my mother was a French Calvinist. I am neither 
 quite Scotch nor quite French, nor two Calvinists rolled into 
 one, yet I honor 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 chang- 
 ing 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 consumma- 
 tion 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,
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 385 
 
 * This is not ray father V 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 Mirali had gone on speaking she had become possessed 
 with a sorrowful passion — fervent, not violent. 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 any 
 thing 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 overwise. Forgive me, come ! We 
 will not try to take you from any body you feel has more right 
 to you." 
 
 " I would do any thing else for you. I owe you my life," 
 said Mirah, not yet quite calm. 
 
 " Hush, hush, now," said Mrs. Meyrick. " I have been pun- 
 ished enough for wagging my tongue foolishly — making an al- 
 manac for the Millennium, as my husband used to say." 
 
 " But every thing 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 threatened to become severe if Mirah 
 Avere to be too much indulged in this inconvenient susceptibil- 
 ity 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 every thing 
 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 ; 
 
 Vol. L— 17
 
 386 DANIEL DBRONDA. 
 
 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 any thing 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 ?" 
 
 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, 
 her face lighting up. " How very good and thoughtful of you ! 
 You mentioned Mirah, then ?" 
 
 " Yes, I referred to her. I concluded he knew every thing 
 from you." 
 
 " I must confess my folly. I have not yet written a w^ord 
 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 re-enforced a certain anxiety 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 
 fervor 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 strong- 
 ly set against imitating them. 
 
 " I have my hands on the reins now," he thought, " and I 
 will not drop them. 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 showe(i 
 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 Avould lead up to that issue. Mirah's was not a 
 nature that would bear dividing against itself ; and even if love
 
 BOOK IV. — GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 387 
 
 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 
 rescued this child acquainted with sorrow, and to think of hav- 
 ing placed her little feet in protected paths. The creature we 
 help to save, though 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 out 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 had friends like the 
 Meyricks to place her with — generous, dehcate 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 every thing 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 Hans'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 win- 
 ning time for Mirah's position to become more confirmed and 
 independent, was impracticable. Having no other resource, De- 
 ronda tried to believe that both he and Mrs. Meyrick were fool- 
 ishly troubHng 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 Hans's 
 inclination, he gave him a very energetic warning — suddenly
 
 388 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 checked, however, by the suspicion of personal feeling that his 
 warmth might be creating in Hans. He could come to no re- 
 sult but that the position was peculiar, and that he could make 
 no further provision against dangers until they came nearer. 
 To save an unhappy Jewess 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. De- 
 ronda would not let himself for a moment dwell on any sup- 
 position 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 de- 
 votedness 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 in his 
 not attempting to learn the truth about his own mother. In 
 both cases he felt that there might be an unfulfilled duty to a 
 parent; but in both cases there was an overpowering repug- 
 nance 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 sup- 
 ply us with a term before which it is hardly worth while to set 
 about any thing we are disinclined to.
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 389 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 " ' N'o man,' says a rabbi, by way of 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 such 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 to a less fashionable form of ex- 
 ercise than ridino; in Rotten Row. He went often ramblinor in 
 those parts of London which are most inhabited by common 
 Jews ; he walked to the synagogues at times of service, he look- 
 ed 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, not- 
 withstanding all his sense of poetry in common things, Deronda, 
 where a keen personal interest was aroused, could not, more 
 than the rest of us, continually escape suffering from the press- 
 ure of that hard, unaccommodating Actual, which has never 
 consulted our taste and is entirely unselect. Enthusiasm, we 
 know, dwells at ease among ideas, tolerates garlic breathed in 
 the Middle Ages, and sees no shabbiness in the oflScial trap- 
 pings 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, imag- 
 ining 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 Axe and Whitechapel were imaginatively 
 transported to the borders of the Rhine at the end of the elev- 
 enth century, when in the ears listening for the signals of the
 
 390 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 Messiah, tlic Hep ! hep ! hep ! of the Crusaders came like the 
 bay of blood -hounds; and, in the presence of those devilish 
 missionaries with sword and fire-brand, the crouching figure of 
 the reviled Jew turned round, erect, heroic, flashing with sub- 
 lime constancy in the face of torture and death — what would 
 the dingy shops and unbeautiful faces signify to the thrill of 
 contemplative emotion? But the fervor of sympathy with 
 which we contemplate a grandiose martyrdom is feeble com- 
 pared with the enthusiasm that keeps unslacked where there is 
 no danger, no challenge — nothing but impartial midday falling 
 on commonplace, perhaps half-repulsive, objects which are real- 
 ly 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-pict- 
 ures. 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 corn - fields ; and it might well happen to 
 most of us dainty people that we were in the thick of the bat- 
 tle of Armageddon without being aware of any thing 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, 
 fastidious sympathy which shrinks from the broad life of man- 
 kind ; but now, with Mirah before him as a living reality Avhose 
 experience he had to care for, he saw every common Jew and 
 Jewess in the light of comparison with her, and had a presenti- 
 ment 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 Phil- 
 istines in their sports; but since there was no likelihood of 
 Mirah's friends being found among that class, their habits did 
 not immediately affect him. In this mood he rambled, without 
 expectation of a more pregnant result than a little preparation 
 of his own mind, perhaps for future theorizing as well as prac- 
 tice — very much as if, Mirah being related to Welsh miners^ he
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN- GETS HER CHOICE. 391 
 
 had gone to look more closely at tiie 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 any body 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 an-anged 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 suf- 
 ficient security for all kinds of fulfillment. AYho 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 hansom 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 Catho- 
 lic spoils, might like to have these missal-clasps turned into a 
 bracelet ; then his eyes traveled over the other contents of the 
 window, and he saw that the shop was that kind of pawn- 
 broker's where the lead is given to jewelry, lace, and all equiv- 
 ocal objects introduced as hric-a-brac. A placard in one corner 
 announced, "Watches and Jewelry exchanged and repaired." 
 But his survey had been noticed from within, and a figure ap- 
 peared 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 that the face, unmistakably Jewish, 
 belonged to a young man about thirty ; and, wincing from the 
 shop-keeper's persuasiveness that would probafely follow, he had 
 no sooner returned the " good-day " than he passed to the oth- 
 er side of the street and beckoned to the cabman to draw up 
 there. From that station he saw the name over the shop-win- 
 dow — Ezra Cohen. 
 
 There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered above shop-
 
 392 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 windows, but Deronda had not seen them. Probably the young 
 man interested in a possible customer was Ezra himself ; and 
 lie 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 endeavor, as he drove homeward, 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 — De- 
 ronda's — duty to make known the discovery to Mirah. In in- 
 convenient disturbance of this conclusion 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 com- 
 plaint 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 du- 
 ties? 
 
 The immediate relief from this inward debate was the re- 
 flection 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 conven- 
 iently, 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 for- 
 age 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 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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 393 
 
 would throw you more and 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 grat- 
 ify me." 
 
 " I am sorry not to do what would gratify you, sir," said 
 Deronda; "but I can not 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 every body 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 De- 
 ronda; "especially out of borrowed opinions. Not that I 
 mean to blame other men. I dare say many better fellows 
 than I don't mind getting on to a platform to praise themselves, 
 and giving their word of honor for a party." 
 
 "I'll tell you what, Dan," said Sir Hugo, "a man who sets 
 his face against every sort of humbug is simply a three-corner- 
 ed, impracticable fellow. There's a bad style of humbug, but 
 there is also a good style — one that oils the wheels 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 shal- 
 lowness. There is no action possible without a little acting." 
 
 " One may be obliged to give way to an occasional neces- 
 sity," said Deronda. " But it is one thing to say, ' In this par- 
 ticular case I am forced to put on this fool's cap and grin,' and 
 another to buy a pocket fool's cap and practice myself in grin- 
 ning. 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, Avhich was rather jarring to him, 
 that Deronda set out on his meditated second visit to Ezra
 
 394 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 thorough- 
 fare. It might soon become an immediate practical question 
 with him how far he could call it a wise expediency to conceal 
 the fact of close kindred. Such questions turning up constant- 
 ly 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 gentle- 
 man to look into, half inclined to decide that he would not in- 
 crease his knowledge about that modern Ezra, who was certain- 
 ly 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 rea- 
 soning 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 sec- 
 ond-hand book-shop, where, on a narrow table outside, the lit- 
 erature of the ages was represented in judicious mixture, from 
 the immortal verse of Homer to the mortal prose of the rail- 
 way novel. That the mixture was judicious was apparent from 
 Deronda's finding in it something that 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
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 395 
 
 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 book-seller 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 mo- 
 rose 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 thread- 
 bare clothing, whose age was difficult to guess — from the dead 
 yellowish flatness of the flesh, something like an old ivory carv- 
 ing — was seated on a stool against some book-shelves that pro- 
 jected beyond the short counter, doing nothing more remarka- 
 ble 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 proph- 
 et of the Exile, or in some new Hebrew poet of the mediaeval 
 time. It was a finely typical Jewish face, wrought into inten- 
 sity 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 ab- 
 sence 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 hand- 
 some 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 one's 
 self coming upon it in some past prison of the Inquisition, 
 which a mob had suddenly burst open ; while the look fixed on 
 an incidental customer seemed eager and questioning enough 
 to have been turned on one who might have been a messenger 
 either of delivery or of death. The figure was probably famil- 
 iar and unexciting enough to the inhabitants of this street ; but 
 to Deronda's mind it brought so strano-e a blendins^ of the un- 
 
 O C3 c? 
 
 wonted with the common, that there was a perceptible interval 
 of mutual observation before he asked his question : " What 
 is the price of this book ?" 
 
 After taking the book and examining the fly-leaves without
 
 396 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 rising, the supposed book-seller said, " There is no mark, and 
 Mr. Ram is not in now. I am keeping the shop while he is 
 gone to dinner. What are you disposed to give for it ?" He 
 held the book closed on his lap with his hand on it, and looked 
 examiningly at Deronda, over whom there came the disagree- 
 able idea, that possibly this striking personage wanted to see 
 how much could be got out of a customer's ignorance of prices. 
 But without further reflection he said, " Don't you know how 
 much it is worth ?" 
 
 " Not its market price. May I ask, have you read it ?" 
 
 " No. I have read an account of it, which makes me want 
 to buy it." 
 
 "You are a man of learning — you are interested in Jewish 
 history ?" This was said in a deepened tone of eager inquiry. 
 
 " I am certainly interested in Jewish history," said Deronda, 
 quietly, curiosity overcoming his dislike to the sort of inspec- 
 tion as well as questioning he was under. 
 
 But immediately the strange Jew rose from his sitting post- 
 ure, and Deronda felt a thin hand pressing his arm tightly, 
 while a hoarse, excited voice, not much above a loud whisper, 
 said, 
 
 " You are, perhaps, of our race ?" 
 
 Deronda colored deeply, not liking the grasp, and then an- 
 swered with a slight shake of the head, " No." The grasp was 
 relaxed, the hand withdrawn, the eagerness of the face collapsed 
 into uninterested melancholy, as if some possessing spirit which 
 had leaped into the eyes and gestures had sunk back again to 
 the inmost recesses of the frame ; and moving farther oil 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 on Deronda — he afterward 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 
 Lcbensgeschichte " with a mere " Good-morning." 
 
 He felt some vexation at the sudden arrest of the interview, 
 and the apparent prohibition that he should know more of this
 
 BOOK IV. — GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 397 
 
 man, who was certainly sometliing 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 some one on the other 
 side of the partition, concerning two plated stoppers and three 
 tea-spoons, which lay spread before him. Seeing Deronda en- 
 ter, he called out " Mother ! mother !" and then, with a familiar 
 nod and smile, said, " Coming, sir — coming directly." 
 
 Deronda could not help looking toward 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 any thing very repulsive about her. The 
 worst that could be said was that she had that look of having 
 made her toilet with little w^ater, and by twilight, which is com- 
 mon to unyouthful people of her class, and of having presum- 
 ably slept in her large ear-rings, if not in her rings and neck- 
 lace. 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 elementary expressions of the 
 face. He was sorry to see no absolute negative to his fears. 
 Just as it was conceivable that this Ezra, brought up to trade, 
 might resemble the scape-grace father in every thing 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 vexa- 
 tious 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-humor of the glance remained and shone out in a moth- 
 erly way at Deronda, as she said, in a mild, guttural tone, 
 
 " 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 sta-
 
 398 DANIEL DERONDA, 
 
 tion, and the son, seeing this, called out, " I'll reach 'em, mother ; 
 I'll reach 'em," running forward with alacrity, and then hand- 
 ing the clasps to Deronda with the smiling remark, 
 . " Mother's too proud. She wants to do every thing 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 stretch- 
 ing." 
 
 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 pleas- 
 ing her, though he also wished to convey an apology to his dis- 
 tinguished 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, encour- 
 agingly." 
 
 " First-rate workmanship, sir — worth twice the money ; only 
 I got 'em a bargain from Cologne," said the son, parenthetical- 
 ly, from a distance. 
 
 Meanwhile two new customers entered, and the repeated call, 
 " Addy !" brought from the back of the shop a group that De- 
 ronda turned frankly to stare at, feeling 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 with black eyes and black-ring- 
 ed 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 ear-rings, her hair set up in a huge 
 bush — looked as complacently lively and unrefined as her hus- 
 band ; 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 moth-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 399 
 
 er of Mirali. 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, look- 
 ed at him with a precocious air of survey. Perhaps it was 
 chiefly with a diplomatic design to linger and ingratiate him- 
 self that Deronda patted the boy's head, saying, 
 
 " "\Miat 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 corkscrew with much quickness. 
 
 " Is not that a dangerous plaything ?" said Deronda, turning 
 to the grandmother. 
 
 "^e'll never hurt himself, bless you !" said she, contemplating 
 her grandson with placid rapture. 
 
 " 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. 
 
 JacQb seized it immediately and retreated a little, holding 
 the two knives in his palms and bending over them in medita- 
 tive comparison. By this time the other clients were gone, 
 and the whole family had gathered to the spot, centring their 
 attention on the marvelous 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 el- 
 bow 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 exchange and 
 had rejected it. 
 
 Father and mother laughed aloud with delight.
 
 400 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 " You won't find Jacob choosing tlie 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 communi- 
 cative 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 Deron- 
 da 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 first-rate gentleman in the City, sir, 
 if I may be allowed to guess." 
 
 " No," said Deronda, with a preoccupied air, " I have noth- 
 ing to do with the City." 
 
 "That's a bad job. I thought you might be the young 
 principal of a first-rate firm," said Mr. Cohen, 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 cer- 
 tainly more like acting than any thing he had been aware of 
 in his own conduct before. But the bare possibility that more 
 knowledge might nullify the evidence now overpowered the in- 
 clination to rest in uncertainty. 
 
 " To tell you the truth," he went on, " my errand is not so 
 much to buy as to borrow. I dare say 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 honorable, nor more
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 401 
 
 charitable, nor more necessary for all classes, from the good 
 lady who wants a little of the ready for the baker, to a gentle- 
 man 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 rev- 
 enue — 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 yow, sir ?" 
 
 If an amiable self-satisfaction 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 excel- 
 lent 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 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 prosper- 
 ous pink-and-white huckster of the purest English lineage. It 
 is naturally a Christian feeling that a Jew ought not to be con- 
 ceited. However, this was no reason for not persevering in his 
 project, and he answered at once in adventurous 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 gentle- 
 man," 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 anyways pressed, why, I'll look at 
 your diamond. You're perhaps from the West End — a long- 
 ish drive ?" 
 
 "Yes; and your Sabbath begins early at this season. I
 
 402 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 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 fam- 
 ily character, and might even be able to put some decisive 
 question. 
 
 Cohen assented ; but here the marvelous Jacob, whose phy- 
 sique supported a precocity that would have shattered a Gen- 
 tile 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 and a hook — and a white handle like 
 that ?" said Jacob, pointing to the waistcoat-pocket. 
 
 " I dare say it has." 
 
 "Do you like a corkscrew?" said Jacob, exhibiting that ar- 
 ticle in his own knife again, and looking up with serious in- 
 quiry. 
 
 " Yes," said Deronda, experimentally. 
 
 " Bring your knife, then, and we'll shwop," said Jacob, re- 
 turning the knife to his pocket, and stamping about with the 
 sense that he had concluded a good transaction. 
 
 The grandmother had now recovered her usual manners, and 
 the whole family watched Deronda radiantly when he caress- 
 ingly 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 ear-rings, 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 Adelaide Rebekah. 
 
 " Her Sabbath frock, she means," said the father, in expla- 
 nation. " She'll have her Sabbath frock on this evening." 
 
 "And will you let me see you in it, Adelaide?" said Deron- 
 da, 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 apprecia- 
 ted remarkable children. 
 
 "And will you give me a kiss this evening?" said Deronda, 
 with a hand on each of her little brown shoulders.
 
 BOOK IV. — GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 403 
 
 Adelaide Rebekah (her miniature crinoline and monumental 
 features corresponded with the combination of her names) im- 
 mediately put up her lips to pay the kiss in advance ; where- 
 upon 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 favorable 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 these were really Mirah's relatives, he could not im- 
 agine that even her fervid filial piety could give the reunion 
 with them any sweetness beyond such as could be found in the 
 strict fulfillment of a painful duty. What did this vaunting 
 brother need? And with the most favorable supposition about 
 the hypothetic mother, Deronda shrunk 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 Josiali 
 Smith under like circumstances ; and as to the coincidence 
 about the daughter, it would probably turn out to be a differ- 
 ence. If, however, further knowledge confirmed the more un- 
 desirable conclusion, what would be wise expediency ? — 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 ?
 
 404 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIY. 
 
 " Er ist geheissen 
 Israel. Ihn hat verwandelt 
 Hexenspruch in einen Hund. 
 ****** 
 Aber jeden Freitag Abend, 
 In der Damm'rungstunde, plotzlich 
 Weicht der Zauber, und der Hund 
 Wird aufs Neu' ein menschlich Wesen." 
 
 Heine : Prinzessinn Sabbath. 
 
 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, 
 and rather extensive at the back. Probably the large room he 
 entered was gloomy by daylight, but now it was agreeably light- 
 ed by a fine old brass lamp with seven oil-lights hanging above 
 the snow-white cloth spread on the central table. The ceil- 
 ing and walls were smoky, and all the surroundings were dark 
 enough to throw into relief the human figures, which had a 
 Venetian glow of coloring. The grandmother was arrayed in 
 yellowish brown, with a large gold chain in lieu of the neck- 
 lace ; and by this light her yellow face, with its darkly marked 
 eyebrows and framing rouleau of gray hair, looked as handsome 
 as was necessary for picturesque effect. Young Mrs. Cohen was 
 clad in red and black, with a string of large artificial pearls 
 wound round and round her neck ; the baby lay asleep in the 
 cradle under a scarlet counterpane ; Adelaide Rebekah was in 
 braided amber ; and Jacob Alexander was in black velveteen 
 with scarlet stockings. As the four pairs of black eyes all 
 glistened a welcome at Deronda, he was almost ashamed of the 
 supercilious dislike these happy-looking creatures had raised in 
 him by daylight. Nothing could be more cordial than the 
 greeting he received, and both mother and grandmother seem-
 
 BOOK IV. — GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 405 
 
 ed to gather more dignity from being seen on tlie private 
 hearth, showing hospitality. He looked round with some won- 
 der at the old furniture : the oaken bureau and high side table 
 must surely be mere matters of chance and economy, and not 
 due to the family taste. A large dish of blue-and-yellow ware 
 was set up on the side-table, and flanking it were two old silver 
 vessels: in front of them a large volume in darkened vellum, 
 with a deep-ribbed back. In the corner, at the farther end, was 
 an open door into an inner room, where there was also a light. 
 
 Deronda took in these details by parenthetic glances while 
 he met Jacob's pressing solicitude about the knife. He had 
 taken the pains to buy one wdth the requisites of the hook and 
 white handle, and produced it on demand, saying, 
 
 " Is that the sort of thing you want, Jacob ?" 
 
 It was subjected to a severe scrutiny, the hook and blades 
 were opened, and the article of barter wdth the corkscrew was 
 drawn forth for comparison. 
 
 " Why do you like a hook better than a corkscrew ?" said 
 Deronda. 
 
 " 'Caush I can get hold of things with a hook. A corkscrew 
 won't go into any thing but corks. But it's better for you, 
 you can draw corks." 
 
 " You agree to change, then ?" said Deronda, observing that 
 the grandmother was listening with delight. 
 
 " What else have you got in your pockets ?" said Jacob, with 
 deliberative seriousness. 
 
 " Hush, hush, Jacob, love," said the grandmother. And De- 
 ronda, mindful of discipline, answered, 
 
 " I think I must not tell you that. Our business w^as with 
 the knives." 
 
 Jacob looked up into his face scanningly for a moment or 
 two, and, apparently arriving at his conclusions, said, gravely, 
 
 " I'll shwop," handing the corkscrew knife to Deronda, who 
 pocketed it with corresponding gra\ity. 
 
 Immediately the small son of Shem ran off into the next 
 room, whence his voice was heard in rapid chat ; and then ran 
 back again — when, seeing his father enter, he seized a little vel- 
 veteen hat which lay on a chair and put it on to approach him. 
 Cohen kept on his own hat, and took no notice of the visitor,
 
 406 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 but stood still wliile tlie two cliildren went up to liim and clasp- 
 ed his knees ; then he laid his hands on each in turn and utter- 
 ed his Hebrew benediction ; whereupon the wife, who had late- 
 ly taken baby from the cradle, brought it up to her husband 
 and held it under his outstretched hands, to be blessed in its 
 sleep. For the moment Deronda thought that this pawnbroker, 
 proud of his vocation, was not utterly prosaic. 
 
 " Well, sir, you found your welcome in my family, I think," 
 said Cohen, putting down his hat, and becoming his former 
 self. "And you've been punctual. Nothing like a little stress 
 here," he added, tapping his side-pocket, as he sat down. " It's 
 good for us all in our turn. I've felt it when I've had to make 
 up payments. I began early — had to turn myself about and 
 put myself into shapes to fit every sort of box. It's bracing to 
 the mind. Now, then ! let us see, let us see." 
 
 " That is the ring I spoke of," said Deronda, taking it from 
 his finger. *' I believe it cost a hundred pounds. It will be a 
 sufficient pledge to you for fifty, I think. I shall probably re- 
 deem it in a month or so." 
 
 Cohen's glistening eyes seemed to get a little nearer together 
 as he met the ingenuous look of this crude young 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 '11 feel honored, and so will mother ; won't you, 
 mother?" 
 
 The invitation was doubly echoed, and Deronda gladly ac- 
 cepted 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 Deron- 
 da, not knowing what might be expected of the ancient hero. 
 But he heard a " Yes " from the next room, which made him 
 look toward the open door ; and there, to his astonishment, he 
 saw the figure of the enigmatic Jew whom he had this morn- 
 ing met with in the book-shop. Their eyes met, and Mordecai
 
 U I U l\ Iv IV I 
 
 iirivriisiTvnr 11 
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 407 
 
 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 disappoint- 
 ment of the morning remained a disagreeable association with 
 this new acquaintance. 
 
 Cohen now washed his hands, pronouncing Hebrew words 
 the while ; afterward, he took off the napkin covering the dish 
 and disclosed the two long 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-colored 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 seat- 
 ed themselves, and the meal went on without any peculiarity 
 that interested Deronda. He was not very conscious of what 
 dishes he eat from, being preoccupied with a desire to turn the 
 conversation in a way that would enable him to ask some lead- 
 ing 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 paletot 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 proph- 
 et Ezekiel — also probably not modish in the eyes of contem- 
 poraries. It was noticeable that the thin tails of the fried fish 
 were given to Mordecai; and in general the sort of share as- 
 signed to a poor relation — no doubt a " sundval " of prehistor- 
 ic practice, not yet generally admitted to be superstitious. 
 
 Mr. Cohen kept up the conversation with much liveliness, in- 
 troducing 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
 
 408 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 accurate memory of distinguished birthdays ; and the elder as- 
 sisted her son in informing the guest of what occurred when 
 the emperor and empress were in England and visited the 
 City, ten years before. 
 
 " I dare say 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 a trio. 
 
 " Our baby is named JSugeniQ Esther," said young Mrs. Co- 
 hen, 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 couldn'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 hundred mothers I'd never take one of 'em to 
 see the emperor and empress at the Crystal Palace again; 
 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 affectionately, and chuckled a lit- 
 tle at his own humor. 
 
 " Your mother has 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 sharp 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 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 Mor-
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE. 409 
 
 decai's mouth as an invitation to bite, saying meanwhile, " I 
 sha'n'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. Deron- 
 da, however, felt with some vexation that he had taken little by 
 his question. 
 
 " I fancy that is the right quarter for learning," said he, car- 
 rying on the subject, that he might have an excuse for address- 
 ing 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 en- 
 gaged in book-selling ?" 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 seemed a revival of his original interest : 
 it seemed as if the face had some attractive indication for him 
 which now neutralized 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, look- 
 ing at his hands, which lay crossed before him, and said no 
 more. Deronda had now noticed more decisively than in their 
 foi-mer interview a difiBculty 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 use- 
 ful things. I know stones well " — here he pointed to Deron- 
 da'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 care- 
 lessly. 
 
 Cohen paused a little, thrust his hands into his pockets, fixed 
 on Deronda a pair of glistening eyes that suggested a miracu- 
 lous guinea-pig, and said, " Couldn't do you that. Happy to 
 
 Vol. I.— 18
 
 410 DANIEL DERONDA. 
 
 oblige, but couldn't go that lengths. 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 make 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, Mordecai, 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 slight- 
 ly uplifted 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 
 could 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, shop-keeping 
 types of a man who, in an emaciated, threadbare condition, im- 
 posed a certain awe on Deronda, and an embarrassment at not 
 lueeting 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 Cohen, 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 amuse- 
 ment. 
 
 " No, no," said Cohen. " Charity ! charity ! He worked 
 for me, and when he got weaker and weaker I took him in. 
 He's an incumbrance ; but he brings a blessing down, and ho 
 teaches the boy. Besides, he does the repairing at the watches 
 and jewelry."
 
 BOOK IV. GWENDOLEN GETS HER CHOICE, 411 
 
 Deronda hardly abstained from smiling at this mixture of 
 kindliness and the desire to justify it in the light of a calcula- 
 tion ; 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 
 subject 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 dia- 
 mond ring. Deronda, feeling that it would be hardly delicate 
 to protract his visit beyond the settlement of the business 
 which was its pretext, had to take his leave, with no more de- 
 cided result than the advance of forty pounds and the pawn- 
 ticket in his breast-pocket, to make a reason for returning 
 when he came up to town after Christmas. He was resolved 
 that he would then endeavor 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 exam- 
 ple, the reason why it was forbidden to ask Mrs. Cohen the 
 elder whether she had a daughter. 
 
 END OF TOL. L
 
 
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