h had never occurred to
her before. In her struggle between agitation and the effort to
suppress it, she was walking up and down the length of the two
drawing-rooms, where at one end a long mirror reflected her in her
black dress, chosen in the early morning with a half-admitted reference
to this hour. But above this black dress her head on its white pillar
of a neck showed to advantage. Some consciousness of this made her turn
hastily and hurry to the boudoir, where again there was a glass, but
also, tossed over a chair, a large piece of black lace which she
snatched and tied over her crown of hair so as completely to conceal
her neck, and leave only her face looking out from the black frame. In
this manifest contempt of appearance, she thought it possible to be
freer from nervousness, but the black lace did not take away the
uneasiness from her eyes and lips.

She was standing in the middle of the room when Deronda was announced,
and as he approached her she perceived that he too for some reason was
not his usual self. She could not have defined the change except by
saying that he looked less happy than usual, and appeared to be under
some effort in speaking to her. And yet the speaking was the slightest
possible. They both said, "How do you do?" quite curtly; and Gwendolen,
instead of sitting down, moved to a little distance, resting her arms
slightly on the tall back of a chair, while Deronda stood where he
was,--both feeling it difficult to say any more, though the
preoccupation in his mind could hardly have been more remote than it
was from Gwendolen's conception. She naturally saw in his embarrassment
some reflection of her own. Forced to speak, she found all her training
in concealment and self-command of no use to her and began with timid
awkwardness--

"You will wonder why I begged you to come. I wanted to ask you
something. You said I was ignorant. That is true. And what can I do but
ask you?"

And at this moment she was feeling it utterly impossible to put the
questions she had intended. Something new in her nervous manner roused
Deronda's anxiety lest there might be a new crisis. He said with the
sadness of affection in his voice--

"My only regret is, that I can be of so little use to you." The words
and the tone touched a new spring in her, and she went on with more
sense of freedom, yet still not saying anything she had designed to
say, and beginning to hurry, that she might somehow arrive at the ri