alked with her stateliest air into the next room, where
Lush immediately arose, awaiting her approach. When she was four yards
from him, it was hardly an instant that she paused to say in a high
tone, while she swept him with her eyelashes--

"Tell Mr. Grandcourt that his arrangements are just what I
desired"--passing on without haste, and leaving Lush time to mingle
some admiration of her graceful back with that half-amused sense of her
spirit and impertinence, which he expressed by raising his eyebrows and
just thrusting his tongue between his teeth. He really did not want her
to be worse punished, and he was glad to think that it was time to go
and lunch at the club, where he meant to have a lobster salad.

What did Gwendolen look forward to? When her husband returned he found
her equipped in her riding-dress, ready to ride out with him. She was
not again going to be hysterical, or take to her bed and say she was
ill. That was the implicit resolve adjusting her muscles before she
could have framed it in words, as she walked out of the room, leaving
Lush behind her. She was going to act in the spirit of her message, and
not to give herself time to reflect. She rang the bell for her maid,
and went with the usual care through her change of toilet. Doubtless
her husband had meant to produce a great effect on her: by-and-by
perhaps she would let him see an effect the very opposite of what he
intended; but at present all that she could show was a defiant
satisfaction in what had been presumed to be disagreeable. It came as
an instinct rather than a thought, that to show any sign which could be
interpreted as jealousy, when she had just been insultingly reminded
that the conditions were what she had accepted with her eyes open,
would be the worst self-humiliation. She said to herself that she had
not time to-day to be clear about her future actions; all she could be
clear about was that she would match her husband in ignoring any ground
for excitement. She not only rode, but went out with him to dine,
contributing nothing to alter their mutual manner, which was never that
of rapid interchange in discourse; and curiously enough she rejected a
handkerchief on which her maid had by mistake put the wrong scent--a
scent that Grandcourt had once objected to. Gwendolen would not have
liked to be an object of disgust to this husband whom she hated: she
liked all disgust to be on her side.

But to defer thought in this way was som