n room, and recalled the
famous writers that she had either not looked into or had found the
most unreadable, with a half-smiling wish that she could mischievously
ask Deronda if they were not the books called "medicine for the mind."
Then she repented of her sauciness, and when she was safe from
observation carried up a miscellaneous selection--Descartes, Bacon,
Locke, Butler, Burke, Guizot--knowing, as a clever young lady of
education, that these authors were ornaments of mankind, feeling sure
that Deronda had read them, and hoping that by dipping into them all in
succession, with her rapid understanding she might get a point of view
nearer to his level.

But it was astonishing how little time she found for these vast mental
excursions. Constantly she had to be on the scene as Mrs. Grandcourt,
and to feel herself watched in that part by the exacting eyes of a
husband who had found a motive to exercise his tenacity--that of making
his marriage answer all the ends he chose, and with the more
completeness the more he discerned any opposing will in her. And she
herself, whatever rebellion might be going on within her, could not
have made up her mind to failure in her representation. No feeling had
yet reconciled her for a moment to any act, word, or look that would be
a confession to the world: and what she most dreaded in herself was any
violent impulse that would make an involuntary confession: it was the
will to be silent in every other direction that had thrown the more
impetuosity into her confidences toward Deronda, to whom her thought
continually turned as a help against herself. Her riding, her hunting,
her visiting and receiving of visits, were all performed in a spirit of
achievement which served instead of zest and young gladness, so that
all around Diplow, in those weeks of the new year, Mrs. Grandcourt was
regarded as wearing her honors with triumph.

"She disguises it under an air of taking everything as a matter of
course," said Mrs. Arrowpoint. "A stranger might suppose that she had
condescended rather than risen. I always noticed that doubleness in
her."

To her mother most of all Gwendolen was bent on acting complete
satisfaction, and poor Mrs. Davilow was so far deceived that she took
the unexpected distance at which she was kept, in spite of what she
felt to be Grandcourt's handsome behavior in providing for her, as a
comparative indifference in her daughter, now that marriage had created
new inter