re important difference
in her life than the possible improvement of her singing--if the
leisure and spirits of a Mrs. Grandcourt would allow of other lessons
than such as the world was giving her at rather a high charge.

With her wonted alternation from resolute care of appearances to some
rash indulgence of an impulse, she chose, under the pretext of getting
farther from the instrument, not to go again to her former seat, but
placed herself on a settee where she could only have one neighbor. She
was nearer to Deronda than before: was it surprising that he came up in
time to shake hands before the music began--then, that after he had
stood a little while by the elbow of the settee at the empty end, the
torrent-like confluences of bass and treble seemed, like a convulsion
of nature, to cast the conduct of petty mortals into insignificance,
and to warrant his sitting down?

But when at the end of Klesmer's playing there came the outburst of
talk under which Gwendolen had hoped to speak as she would to Deronda,
she observed that Mr. Lush was within hearing, leaning against the wall
close by them. She could not help her flush of anger, but she tried to
have only an air of polite indifference in saying--

"Miss Lapidoth is everything you described her to be."

"You have been very quick in discovering that," said Deronda,
ironically.

"I have not found out all the excellencies you spoke of--I don't mean
that," said Gwendolen; "but I think her singing is charming, and
herself, too. Her face is lovely--not in the least common; and she is
such a complete little person. I should think she will be a great
success."

This speech was grating on Deronda, and he would not answer it, but
looked gravely before him. She knew that he was displeased with her,
and she was getting so impatient under the neighborhood of Mr. Lush,
which prevented her from saying any word she wanted to say, that she
meditated some desperate step to get rid of it, and remained silent,
too. That constraint seemed to last a long while, neither Gwendolen nor
Deronda looking at the other, till Lush slowly relieved the wall of his
weight, and joined some one at a distance.

Gwendolen immediately said, "You despise me for talking artificially."

"No," said Deronda, looking at her coolly; "I think that is quite
excusable sometimes. But I did not think what you were last saying was
altogether artificial."

"There was something in it that displeased you," sa