Daniel Deronda

Chapter 28

"My dear, let me congratulate you on having created a strong attachment,"

said the rector. "You look serious, and I don't wonder at it: a lifelong

union is a solemn thing. But from the way Mr. Grandcourt has acted and

spoken I think we may already see some good arising out of our adversity.

It has given you an opportunity of observing your future husband's

delicate liberality."

Mr. Gascoigne referred to Grandcourt's mode of implying that he would

provide for Mrs. Davilow--a part of the love-making which Gwendolen had

remembered to cite to her mother with perfect accuracy.

"But I have no doubt that Mr. Grandcourt would have behaved quite as

handsomely if you had not gone away to Germany, Gwendolen, and had been

engaged to him, as you no doubt might have been, more than a month ago,"

said Mrs. Gascoigne, feeling that she had to discharge a duty on this

occasion. "But now there is no more room for caprice; indeed, I trust you

have no inclination to any. A woman has a great debt of gratitude to a man

who perseveres in making her such an offer. But no doubt you feel

properly."

"I am not at all sure that I do, aunt," said Gwendolen, with saucy

gravity. "I don't know everything it is proper to feel on being engaged."

The rector patted her shoulder and smiled as at a bit of innocent

naughtiness, and his wife took his behavior as an indication that she was

not to be displeased. As for Anna, she kissed Gwendolen and said, "I do

hope you will be happy," but then sank into the background and tried to

keep the tears back too. In the late days she had been imagining a little

romance about Rex--how if he still longed for Gwendolen her heart might be

softened by trouble into love, so that they could by-and-by be married.

And the romance had turned to a prayer that she, Anna, might be able to

rejoice like a good sister, and only think of being useful in working for

Gwendolen, as long as Rex was not rich. But now she wanted grace to

rejoice in something else. Miss Merry and the four girls, Alice with the

high shoulders, Bertha and Fanny the whisperers, and Isabel the listener,

were all present on this family occasion, when everything seemed

appropriately turning to the honor and glory of Gwendolen, and real life

was as interesting as "Sir Charles Grandison." The evening passed chiefly

in decisive remarks from the rector, in answer to conjectures from the two

elder ladies. According to him, the case was not one in which he could

think it his duty to mention settlements: everything must, and doubtless

would safely be left to Mr. Grandcourt.

"I should like to know exactly what sort of places Ryelands and Gadsmere

are," said Mrs. Davilow.

"Gadsmere, I believe, is a secondary place," said Mr. Gascoigne; "But

Ryelands I know to be one of our finest seats. The park is extensive and

the woods of a very valuable order. The house was built by Inigo Jones,

and the ceilings are painted in the Italian style. The estate is said to

be worth twelve thousand a year, and there are two livings, one a rectory,

in the gift of the Grandcourts. There may be some burdens on the land.

Still, Mr. Grandcourt was an only child."

"It would be most remarkable," said Mrs. Gascoigne, "if he were to become

Lord Stannery in addition to everything else. Only think: there is the

Grandcourt estate, the Mallinger estate, _and_ the baronetcy, _and_ the

peerage,"--she was marking off the items on her fingers, and paused on the

fourth while she added, "but they say there will be no land coming to him

with the peerage." It seemed a pity there was nothing for the fifth

finger.

"The peerage," said the rector, judiciously, "must be regarded as a remote

chance. There are two cousins between the present peer and Mr. Grandcourt.

It is certainly a serious reflection how death and other causes do

sometimes concentrate inheritances on one man. But an excess of that kind

is to be deprecated. To be Sir Mallinger Grandcourt Mallinger--I suppose

that will be his style--with corresponding properties, is a valuable

talent enough for any man to have committed to him. Let us hope it will be

well used."

"And what a position for the wife, Gwendolen!" said Mrs. Gascoigne; "a

great responsibility indeed. But you must lose no time in writing to Mrs.

Mompert, Henry. It is a good thing that you have an engagement of marriage

to offer as an excuse, else she might feel offended. She is rather a high

woman."

"I am rid of that horror," thought Gwendolen, to whom the name of Mompert

had become a sort of Mumbo-jumbo. She was very silent through the evening,

and that night could hardly sleep at all in her little white bed. It was a

rarity in her strong youth to be wakeful: and perhaps a still greater

rarity for her to be careful that her mother should not know of her

restlessness. But her state of mind was altogether new: she who had been

used to feel sure of herself, and ready to manage others, had just taken a

decisive step which she had beforehand thought that she would not take--

nay, perhaps, was bound not to take. She could not go backward now; she

liked a great deal of what lay before her; and there was nothing for her

to like if she went back. But her resolution was dogged by the shadow of

that previous resolve which had at first come as the undoubting movement

of her whole being. While she lay on her pillow with wide-open eyes,

"looking on darkness which the blind do see," she was appalled by the idea

that she was going to do what she had once started away from with

repugnance. It was new to her that a question of right or wrong in her

conduct should rouse her terror; she had known no compunction that atoning

caresses and presents could not lay to rest. But here had come a moment

when something like a new consciousness was awaked. She seemed on the edge

of adopting deliberately, as a notion for all the rest of her life, what

she had rashly said in her bitterness, when her discovery had driven her

away to Leubronn:--that it did not signify what she did; she had only to

amuse herself as best she could. That lawlessness, that casting away of

all care for justification, suddenly frightened her: it came to her with

the shadowy array of possible calamity behind it--calamity which had

ceased to be a mere name for her; and all the infiltrated influences of

disregarded religious teaching, as well as the deeper impressions of

something awful and inexorable enveloping her, seemed to concentrate

themselves in the vague conception of avenging power. The brilliant

position she had longed for, the imagined freedom she would create for

herself in marriage, the deliverance from the dull insignificance of her

girlhood--all immediately before her; and yet they had come to her hunger

like food with the taint of sacrilege upon it, which she must snatch with

terror. In the darkness and loneliness of her little bed, her more

resistant self could not act against the first onslaught of dread after

her irrevocable decision. That unhappy-faced woman and her children--

Grandcourt and his relations with her--kept repeating themselves in her

imagination like the clinging memory of a disgrace, and gradually

obliterated all other thought, leaving only the consciousness that she had

taken those scenes into her life. Her long wakefulness seemed a delirium;

a faint, faint light penetrated beside the window-curtain; the chillness

increased. She could bear it no longer, and cried "Mamma!"

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

"Let me come to you."

She soon went to sleep on her mother's shoulder, and slept on till late,

when, dreaming of a lit-up ball-room, she opened her eyes on her mother

standing by the bedside with a small packet in her hand.

"I am sorry to wake you, darling, but I thought it better to give you this

at once. The groom has brought Criterion; he has come on another horse,

and says he is to stay here."

Gwendolen sat up in bed and opened the packet. It was a delicate enameled

casket, and inside was a splendid diamond ring with a letter which

contained a folded bit of colored paper and these words:--

"How very kind and delicate!" said Mrs. Davilow, with much feeling. "But I

really should like better not to be dependent on a son-in-law. I and the

girls could get along very well."

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

angrily.

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

Mrs. Davilow, depreciatingly.

Gwendolen tossed her head on the pillow away from her mother, and let the

ring lie. She was irritated at this attempt to take away a motive. Perhaps

the deeper cause of her irritation was the consciousness that she was not

going to marry solely for her mamma's sake--that she was drawn toward the

marriage in ways against which stronger reasons than her mother's

renunciation were yet not strong enough to hinder her. She had waked up to

the signs that she was irrevocably engaged, and all the ugly visions, the

alarms, the arguments of the night, must be met by daylight, in which

probably they would show themselves weak. "What I long for is your

happiness, dear," continued Mrs. Davilow, pleadingly. "I will not say

anything to vex you. Will you not put on the ring?"

For a few moments Gwendolen did not answer, but her thoughts were active.

At last she raised herself with a determination to do as she would do if

she had started on horseback, and go on with spirit, whatever ideas might

be running in her head.

"I thought the lover always put on the betrothal ring himself," she said

laughingly, slipping the ring on her finger, and looking at it with a

charming movement of her head. "I know why he has sent it," she added,

nodding at her mamma.

"Why?"

"He would rather make me put it on than ask me to let him do it. Aha! he

is very proud. But so am I. We shall match each other. I should hate a man

who went down on his knees, and came fawning on me. He really is not

disgusting."

"That is very moderate praise, Gwen."

"No, it is not, for a man," said Gwendolen gaily. "But now I must get up

and dress. Will you come and do my hair, mamma, dear," she went on,

drawing down her mamma's face to caress it with her own cheeks, "and not

be so naughty any more as to talk of living in poverty? You must bear to

be made comfortable, even if you don't like it. And Mr. Grandcourt behaves

perfectly, now, does he not?"

"Certainly he does," said Mrs. Davilow, encouraged, and persuaded that

after all Gwendolen was fond of her betrothed. She herself thought him a

man whose attentions were likely to tell on a girl's feeling. Suitors must

often be judged as words are, by the standing and the figure they make in

polite society: it is difficult to know much else of them. And all the

mother's anxiety turned not on Grandcourt's character, but on Gwendolen's

mood in accepting him.

The mood was necessarily passing through a new phase this morning. Even in

the hour of making her toilet, she had drawn on all the knowledge she had

for grounds to justify her marriage. And what she most dwelt on was the

determination, that when she was Grandcourt's wife, she would urge him to

the most liberal conduct toward Mrs. Glasher's children.

"Of what use would it be to her that I should not marry him? He could have

married her if he liked; but he did _not_ like. Perhaps she is to blame

for that. There must be a great deal about her that I know nothing of. And

he must have been good to her in many ways, else she would not have wanted

to marry him."

But that last argument at once began to appear doubtful. Mrs. Glasher

naturally wished to exclude other children who would stand between

Grandcourt and her own: and Gwendolen's comprehension of this feeling

prompted another way of reconciling claims.

"Perhaps we shall have no children. I hope we shall not. And he might

leave the estate to the pretty little boy. My uncle said that Mr.

Grandcourt could do as he liked with the estates. Only when Sir Hugo

Mallinger dies there will be enough for two."

This made Mrs. Glasher appear quite unreasonable in demanding that her boy

should be sole heir; and the double property was a security that

Grandcourt's marriage would do her no wrong, when the wife was Gwendolen

Harleth with all her proud resolution not to be fairly accused. This

maiden had been accustomed to think herself blameless; other persons only

were faulty.

It was striking, that in the hold which this argument of her doing no

wrong to Mrs. Glasher had taken on her mind, her repugnance to the idea of

Grandcourt's past had sunk into a subordinate feeling. The terror she had

felt in the night-watches at overstepping the border of wickedness by

doing what she had at first felt to be wrong, had dulled any emotions

about his conduct. She was thinking of him, whatever he might be, as a man

over whom she was going to have indefinite power; and her loving him

having never been a question with her, any agreeableness he had was so

much gain. Poor Gwendolen had no awe of unmanageable forces in the state

of matrimony, but regarded it as altogether a matter of management, in

which she would know how to act. In relation to Grandcourt's past she

encouraged new doubts whether he were likely to have differed much from

other men; and she devised little schemes for learning what was expected

of men in general.

But whatever else might be true in the world, her hair was dressed

suitably for riding, and she went down in her riding-habit, to avoid delay

before getting on horseback. She wanted to have her blood stirred once

more with the intoxication of youth, and to recover the daring with which

she had been used to think of her course in life. Already a load was

lifted off her; for in daylight and activity it was less oppressive to

have doubts about her choice, than to feel that she had no choice but to

endure insignificance and servitude.

"Go back and make yourself look like a duchess, mamma," she said, turning

suddenly as she was going down-stairs. "Put your point-lace over your

head. I must have you look like a duchess. You must not take things

humbly."

When Grandcourt raised her left hand gently and looked at the ring, she

said gravely, "It was very good of you to think of everything and send me

that packet."

"You will tell me if there is anything I forget?" he said, keeping the

hand softly within his own. "I will do anything you wish."

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

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

"Then I will not be unreasonable," said Gwendolen, taking away her hand

and tossing her head saucily. "I will not be told that I am what women

always are."

"I did not say that," said Grandcourt, looking at her with his usual

gravity. "You are what no other woman is."

"And what is that, pray?" said Gwendolen, moving to a distance with a

little air of menace.

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

"Oh, what nice speeches!" said Gwendolen, laughing. The sense of that love

which he must once have given to another woman under strange circumstances

was getting familiar.

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

"Not yet. Not till we have had a gallop over the downs. I am so thirsty

for that, I can think of nothing else. I wish the hunting had begun.

Sunday the twentieth, twenty-seventh, Monday, Tuesday." Gwendolen was

counting on her fingers with the prettiest nod while she looked at

Grandcourt, and at last swept one palm over the other while she said

triumphantly, "It will begin in ten days!"

"Let us be married in ten days, then," said Grandcourt, "and we shall not

be bored about the stables."

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

mischievously.

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

"Then I will not!" said Gwendolen, taking up her gauntlets and putting

them on, while she kept her eyes on him with gathering fun in them.

The scene was pleasant on both sides. A cruder lover would have lost the

view of her pretty ways and attitudes, and spoiled all by stupid attempts

at caresses, utterly destructive of drama. Grandcourt preferred the drama;

and Gwendolen, left at ease, found her spirits rising continually as she

played at reigning. Perhaps if Klesmer had seen more of her in this

unconscious kind of acting, instead of when she was trying to be

theatrical, he might have rated her chance higher.

When they had had a glorious gallop, however, she was in a state of

exhilaration that disposed her to think well of hastening the marriage

which would make her life all of apiece with this splendid kind of

enjoyment. She would not debate any more about an act to which she had

committed herself; and she consented to fix the wedding on that day three

weeks, notwithstanding the difficulty of fulfilling the customary laws of

the _trousseau_.

Lush, of course, was made aware of the engagement by abundant signs,

without being formally told. But he expected some communication as a

consequence of it, and after a few days he became rather impatient under

Grandcourt's silence, feeling sure that the change would affect his

personal prospects, and wishing to know exactly how. His tactics no longer

included any opposition--which he did not love for its own sake. He might

easily cause Grandcourt a great deal of annoyance, but it would be to his

own injury, and to create annoyance was not a motive with him. Miss

Gwendolen he would certainly not have been sorry to frustrate a little,

but--after all there was no knowing what would come. It was nothing new

that Grandcourt should show a perverse wilfulness; yet in his freak about

this girl he struck Lush rather newly as something like a man who was

_fey_--led on by an ominous fatality; and that one born to his fortune

should make a worse business of his life than was necessary, seemed really

pitiable. Having protested against the marriage, Lush had a second-sight

for its evil consequences. Grandcourt had been taking the pains to write

letters and give orders himself instead of employing Lush, and appeared to

be ignoring his usefulness, even choosing, against the habit of years, to

breakfast alone in his dressing-room. But a _tete-*-tete_ was not to be

avoided in a house empty of guests; and Lush hastened to use an

opportunity of saying--it was one day after dinner, for there were

difficulties in Grandcourt's dining at Offendene--

"And when is the marriage to take place?"

Grandcourt, who drank little wine, had left the table and was lounging,

while he smoked, in an easy chair near the hearth, where a fire of oak

boughs was gaping to its glowing depths, and edging them with a delicate

tint of ashes delightful to behold. The chair of red-brown velvet brocade

was a becoming back-ground for his pale-tinted, well-cut features and

exquisite long hands. Omitting the cigar, you might have imagined him a

portrait by Moroni, who would have rendered wonderfully the impenetrable

gaze and air of distinction; and a portrait by that great master would

have been quite as lively a companion as Grandcourt was disposed to be.

But he answered without unusual delay.

"On the tenth."

"I suppose you intend to remain here."

"We shall go to Ryelands for a little while; but we shall return here for

the sake of the hunting."

After this word there was the languid inarticulate sound frequent with

Grandcourt when he meant to continue speaking, and Lush waited for

something more. Nothing came, and he was going to put another question,

when the inarticulate sound began again and introduced the mildly uttered

suggestion--

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

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

the occasion.

"Something of that kind."

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

my services."

"I can't help your being so damnably disagreeable to women," said

Grandcourt, in soothing apology.

"To one woman, if you please."

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

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

provision."

"You must have saved something out of me."

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

"You can have three hundred a year. But you must live in town and be ready

to look after things when I want you. I shall be rather hard up."

"If you are not going to be at Ryelands this winter, I might run down

there and let you know how Swinton goes on."

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

sight."

"Much obliged," said Lush, able to take the affair more easily than he had

expected. He was supported by the secret belief that he should by-and-by

be wanted as much as ever.

"Perhaps you will not object to packing up as soon as possible," said

Grandcourt. "The Torringtons are coming, and Miss Harleth will be riding

over here."

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

"No. I am going myself."

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

"Just leave me alone, will you?" said Grandcourt, in his lowest audible

tone, tossing his cigar into the fire, and rising to walk away.

He spent the evening in the solitude of the smaller drawing-room, where,

with various new publications on the table of the kind a gentleman may

like to have on hand without touching, he employed himself (as a

philosopher might have done) in sitting meditatively on the sofa and

abstaining from literature--political, comic, cynical, or romantic. In

this way hours may pass surprisingly soon, without the arduous invisible

chase of philosophy; not from love of thought, but from hatred of effort--

from a state of the inward world, something like premature age, where the

need for action lapses into a mere image of what has been, is, and may or

might be; where impulse is born and dies in a phantasmal world, pausing in

rejection of even a shadowy fulfillment. That is a condition which often

comes with whitening hair; and sometimes, too, an intense obstinacy and

tenacity of rule, like the main trunk of an exorbitant egoism, conspicuous

in proportion as the varied susceptibilities of younger years are stripped

away.

But Grandcourt's hair, though he had not much of it, was of a fine, sunny

blonde, and his moods were not entirely to be explained as ebbing energy.

We mortals have a strange spiritual chemistry going on within us, so that

a lazy stagnation or even a cottony milkiness may be preparing one knows

not what biting or explosive material. The navvy waking from sleep and

without malice heaving a stone to crush the life out of his still sleeping

comrade, is understood to lack the trained motive which makes a character

fairly calculable in its actions; but by a roundabout course even a

gentleman may make of himself a chancy personage, raising an uncertainty

as to what he may do next, that sadly spoils companionship.

Grandcourt's thoughts this evening were like the circlets one sees in a

dark pool, continually dying out and continually started again by some

impulse from below the surface. The deeper central impulse came from the

image of Gwendolen; but the thoughts it stirred would be imperfectly

illustrated by a reference to the amatory poets of all ages. It was

characteristic that he got none of his satisfaction from the belief that

Gwendolen was in love with him; and that love had overcome the jealous

resentment which had made her run away from him. On the contrary, he

believed that this girl was rather exceptional in the fact that, in spite

of his assiduous attention to her, she was not in love with him; and it

seemed to him very likely that if it had not been for the sudden poverty

which had come over her family, she would not have accepted him. From the

very first there had been an exasperating fascination in the tricksiness

with which she had--not met his advances, but--wheeled away from them. She

had been brought to accept him in spite of everything--brought to kneel

down like a horse under training for the arena, though she might have an

objection to it all the while. On the whole, Grandcourt got more pleasure

out of this notion than he could have done out of winning a girl of whom

he was sure that she had a strong inclination for him personally. And yet

this pleasure in mastering reluctance flourished along with the habitual

persuasion that no woman whom he favored could be quite indifferent to his

personal influence; and it seemed to him not unlikely that by-and-by

Gwendolen might be more enamored of him than he of her. In any case, she

would have to submit; and he enjoyed thinking of her as his future wife,

whose pride and spirit were suited to command every one but himself. He

had no taste for a woman who was all tenderness to him, full of

petitioning solicitude and willing obedience. He meant to be master of a

woman who would have liked to master him, and who perhaps would have been

capable of mastering another man.

Lush, having failed in his attempted reminder to Grandcourt, thought it

well to communicate with Sir Hugo, in whom, as a man having perhaps

interest enough to command the bestowal of some place where the work was

light, gentlemanly, and not ill-paid, he was anxious to cultivate a sense

of friendly obligation, not feeling at all secure against the future need

of such a place. He wrote the following letter, and addressed it to Park

Lane, whither he knew the family had returned from Leubronn:--

MY DEAR SIR HUGO--Since we came home the marriage has been absolutely

decided on, and is to take place in less than three weeks. It is so

far the worse for him that her mother has lately lost all her fortune,

and he will have to find supplies. Grandcourt, I know, is feeling the

want of cash; and unless some other plan is resorted to, he will be

raising money in a foolish way. I am going to leave Diplow

immediately, and I shall not be able to start the topic. What I should

advise is, that Mr. Deronda, who I know has your confidence, should

propose to come and pay a short visit here, according to invitation

(there are going to be other people in the house), and that you should

put him fully in possession of your wishes and the possible extent of

your offer. Then, that he should introduce the subject to Grandcourt

so as not to imply that you suspect any particular want of money on

his part, but only that there is a strong wish on yours, What I have

formerly said to him has been in the way of a conjecture that you

might be willing to give a good sum for his chance of Diplow; but if

Mr. Deronda came armed with a definite offer, that would take another

sort of hold. Ten to one he will not close for some time to come; but

the proposal will have got a stronger lodgment in his mind; and though

at present he has a great notion of the hunting here, I see a

likelihood, under the circumstances, that he will get a distaste for

the neighborhood, and there will be the notion of the money sticking

by him without being urged. I would bet on your ultimate success. As I

am not to be exiled to Siberia, but am to be within call, it is

possible that, by and by, I may be of more service to you. But at

present I can think of no medium so good as Mr. Deronda. Nothing puts

Grandcourt in worse humor than having the lawyers thrust their paper

under his nose uninvited.

Trusting that your visit to Leubronn has put you in excellent

condition for the winter, I remain, my dear Sir Hugo,

Yours very faithfully,

THOMAS CRANMER LUSH.

Sir Hugo, having received this letter at breakfast, handed it to Deronda,

who, though he had chambers in town, was somehow hardly ever in them, Sir

Hugo not being contented without him. The chatty baronet would have liked

a young companion even if there had been no peculiar reasons for

attachment between them: one with a fine harmonious unspoiled face fitted

to keep up a cheerful view of posterity and inheritance generally,

notwithstanding particular disappointments; and his affection for Deronda

was not diminished by the deep-lying though not obtrusive difference in

their notions and tastes. Perhaps it was all the stronger; acting as the

same sort of difference does between a man and a woman in giving a

piquancy to the attachment which subsists in spite of it. Sir Hugo did not

think unapprovingly of himself; but he looked at men and society from a

liberal-menagerie point of view, and he had a certain pride in Deronda's

differing from him, which, if it had found voice, might have said--"You

see this fine young fellow--not such as you see every day, is he?--he

belongs to me in a sort of way. I brought him up from a child; but you

would not ticket him off easily, he has notions of his own, and he's as

far as the poles asunder from what I was at his age." This state of

feeling was kept up by the mental balance in Deronda, who was moved by an

affectionateness such as we are apt to call feminine, disposing him to

yield in ordinary details, while he had a certain inflexibility of

judgment, and independence of opinion, held to be rightfully masculine.

When he had read the letter, he returned it without speaking, inwardly

wincing under Lush's mode of attributing a neutral usefulness to him in

the family affairs.

"What do you say, Dan? It would be pleasant enough for you. You have not

seen the place for a good many years now, and you might have a famous run

with the harriers if you went down next week," said Sir Hugo.

"I should not go on that account," said Deronda, buttering his bread

attentively. He had an objection to this transparent kind of

persuasiveness, which all intelligent animals are seen to treat with

indifference. If he went to Diplow he should be doing something

disagreeable to oblige Sir Hugo.

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

occasion."

"That is a different matter--if you think my going of importance to your

object," said Deronda, still with that aloofness of manner which implied

some suppression. He knew that the baronet had set his heart on the

affair.

"Why, you will see the fair gambler, the Leubronn Diana, I shouldn't

wonder," said Sir Hugo, gaily. "We shall have to invite her to the Abbey,

when they are married," he added, turning to Lady Mallinger, as if she too

had read the letter.

"I cannot conceive whom you mean," said Lady Mallinger, who in fact had

not been listening, her mind having been taken up with her first sips of

coffee, the objectionable cuff of her sleeve, and the necessity of

carrying Theresa to the dentist--innocent and partly laudable

preoccupations, as the gentle lady's usually were. Should her appearance

be inquired after, let it be said that she had reddish blonde hair (the

hair of the period), a small Roman nose, rather prominent blue eyes and

delicate eyelids, with a figure which her thinner friends called fat, her

hands showing curves and dimples like a magnified baby's.

"I mean that Grandcourt is going to marry the girl you saw at Leubronn--

don't you remember her--the Miss Harleth who used to play at roulette."

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

"That depends on the sort of goodness he wants," said Sir Hugo, smiling.

"However, she and her friends have nothing, and she will bring him

expenses. It's a good match for my purposes, because if I am willing to

fork out a sum of money, he may be willing to give up his chance of

Diplow, so that we shall have it out and out, and when I die you will have

the consolation of going to the place you would like to go to--wherever I

may go."

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

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

thousand, at least."

"But why are we to invite them to the Abbey?" said Lady Mallinger. "I do

_not_ like women who gamble, like Lady Cragstone."

"Oh, you will not mind her for a week. Besides, she is not like Lady

Cragstone because she gambled a little, any more than I am like a broker

because I'm a Whig. I want to keep Grandcourt in good humor, and to let

him see plenty of this place, that he may think the less of Diplow. I

don't know yet whether I shall get him to meet me in this matter. And if

Dan were to go over on a visit there, he might hold out the bait to him.

It would be doing me a great service." This was meant for Deronda.

"Daniel is not fond of Mr. Grandcourt, I think, is he?" said Lady

Mallinger, looking at Deronda inquiringly.

"There is no avoiding everybody one doesn't happen to be fond of," said

Deronda. "I will go to Diplow--I don't know that I have anything better to

do--since Sir Hugo wishes it."

"That's a trump!" said Sir Hugo, well pleased. "And if you don't find it

very pleasant, it's so much experience. Nothing used to come amiss to me

when I was young. You must see men and manners."

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

Deronda.

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

"Well, you see they succeed with your s*x," said Sir Hugo, provokingly.

"And he was an uncommonly good-looking fellow when he was two or three and

twenty--like his father. He doesn't take after his father in marrying the

heiress, though. If he had got Miss Arrowpoint and my land too, confound

him, he would have had a fine principality."

Deronda, in anticipating the projected visit, felt less disinclination

than when consenting to it. The story of that girl's marriage did interest

him: what he had heard through Lush of her having run away from the suit

of the man she was now going to take as a husband, had thrown a new sort

of light on her gambling; and it was probably the transition from that

fevered worldliness into poverty which had urged her acceptance where she

must in some way have felt repulsion. All this implied a nature liable to

difficulty and struggle--elements of life which had a predominant

attraction for his sympathy, due perhaps to his early pain in dwelling on

the conjectured story of his own existence. Persons attracted him, as Hans

Meyrick had done, in proportion to the possibility of his defending them,

rescuing them, telling upon their lives with some sort of redeeming

influence; and he had to resist an inclination, easily accounted for, to

withdraw coldly from the fortunate. But in the movement which had led him

to repurchase Gwendolen's necklace for her, and which was at work in him

still, there was something beyond his habitual compassionate fervor--

something due to the fascination of her womanhood. He was very open to

that sort of charm, and mingled it with the consciously Utopian pictures

of his own future; yet any one able to trace the folds of his character

might have conceived that he would be more likely than many less

passionate men to love a woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle food

before a delicate-eared bird: there is nothing he would more willingly

take, yet he keeps aloof, because of his sensibility to checks which to

you are imperceptible. And one man differs from another, as we all differ

from the Bosjesman, in a sensibility to checks, that come from variety of

needs, spiritual or other. It seemed to foreshadow that capability of

reticence in Deronda that his imagination was much occupied with two

women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should

ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of

the knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof if

he had known what was just now going on in Deronda's mind about Mirah and

Gwendolen.

Deronda wrote without delay to announce his visit to Diplow, and received

in reply a polite assurance that his coming would give great pleasure.

That was not altogether untrue. Grandcourt thought it probable that the

visit was prompted by Sir Hugo's desire to court him for a purpose which

he did not make up his mind to resist; and it was not a disagreeable idea

to him that this fine fellow, whom he believed to be his cousin under the

rose, would witness, perhaps with some jealousy, Henleigh Mallinger

Grandcourt play the commanding part of betrothed lover to a splendid girl

whom the cousin had already looked at with admiration.

Grandcourt himself was not jealous of anything unless it threatened his

mastery--which he did not think himself likely to lose.