em so." Gwendolen put the notes into her mother's hands and
looked away hastily, moving toward the door.

"God bless you, dear," said Mrs. Davilow. "It will please them so that
you should have thought of them in particular."

"Oh, they are troublesome things; but they don't trouble me now," said
Gwendolen, turning and nodding playfully. She hardly understood her own
feeling in this act toward her sisters, but at any rate she did not
wish it to be taken as anything serious. She was glad to have got out
of the bedroom without showing more signs of emotion, and she went
through the rest of her visit and all the good-byes with a quiet
propriety that made her say to herself sarcastically as she rode away,
"I think I am making a very good Mrs. Grandcourt."

She believed that her husband had gone to Gadsmere that day--had
inferred this, as she had long ago inferred who were the inmates of
what he had described as "a dog-hutch of a place in a black country;"
and the strange conflict of feeling within her had had the
characteristic effect of sending her to Offendene with a tightened
resolve--a form of excitement which was native to her.

She wondered at her own contradictions. Why should she feel it bitter
to her that Grandcourt showed concern for the beings on whose account
she herself was undergoing remorse? Had she not before her marriage
inwardly determined to speak and act on their behalf?--and since he had
lately implied that he wanted to be in town because he was making
arrangements about his will, she ought to have been glad of any sign
that he kept a conscience awake toward those at Gadsmere; and yet, now
that she was a wife, the sense that Grandcourt was gone to Gadsmere was
like red heat near a burn. She had brought on herself this indignity in
her own eyes--this humiliation of being doomed to a terrified silence
lest her husband should discover with what sort of consciousness she
had married him; and as she had said to Deronda, she "must go on."
After the intense moments of secret hatred toward this husband who from
the very first had cowed her, there always came back the spiritual
pressure which made submission inevitable. There was no effort at
freedoms that would not bring fresh and worse humiliation. Gwendolen
could dare nothing except an impulsive action--least of all could she
dare premeditatedly a vague future in which the only certain condition
was indignity. In spite of remorse, it still seemed the worst