go and Mrs.
Raymond were close by and could hear every word she said. No matter:
her husband was not near, and her irritation passed without check into
a fit of daring which restored the security of her self-possession.
Deronda was there at last, and she would compel him to do what she
pleased. Already and without effort rather queenly in her air as she
stood in her white lace and green leaves she threw a royal
permissiveness into her way of saying, "I wish you would come and see
me to-morrow between five and six, Mr. Deronda."

There could be but one answer at that moment: "Certainly," with a tone
of obedience.

Afterward it occurred to Deronda that he would write a note to excuse
himself. He had always avoided making a call at Grandcourt's. He could
not persuade himself to any step that might hurt her, and whether his
excuse were taken for indifference or for the affectation of
indifference it would be equally wounding. He kept his promise.
Gwendolen had declined to ride out on the plea of not feeling well
enough having left her refusal to the last moment when the horses were
soon to be at the door--not without alarm lest her husband should say
that he too would stay at home. Become almost superstitious about his
power of suspicious divination, she had a glancing forethought of what
she would do in that case--namely, have herself denied as not well. But
Grandcourt accepted her excuse without remark, and rode off.

Nevertheless when Gwendolen found herself alone, and had sent down the
order that only Mr. Deronda was to be admitted, she began to be alarmed
at what she had done, and to feel a growing agitation in the thought
that he would soon appear, and she should soon be obliged to speak: not
of trivialities, as if she had no serious motive in asking him to come:
and yet what she had been for hours determining to say began to seem
impossible. For the first time the impulse of appeal to him was being
checked by timidity, and now that it was too late she was shaken by the
possibility that he might think her invitation unbecoming. If so, she
would have sunk in his esteem. But immediately she resisted this
intolerable fear as an infection from her husband's way of thinking.
That _he_ would say she was making a fool of herself was rather a
reason why such a judgment would be remote from Deronda's mind. But
that she could not rid herself from this sudden invasion of womanly
reticence was manifest in a kind of action whic