ack
in the mere statement. He suspected a growing spirit of opposition in
her, and his feeling about the sentimental inclination she betrayed for
Deronda was what in another man he would have called jealously. In
himself it seemed merely a resolution to put an end to such foolery as
must have been going on in that prearranged visit of Deronda's which he
had divined and interrupted.

And Grandcourt might have pleaded that he was perfectly justified in
taking care that his wife should fulfill the obligations she had
accepted. Her marriage was a contract where all the ostensible
advantages were on her side, and it was only of those advantages that
her husband should use his power to hinder her from any injurious self
committal or unsuitable behavior. He knew quite well that she had not
married him--had not overcome her repugnance to certain facts--out of
love to him personally; he had won her by the rank and luxuries he had
to give her, and these she had got: he had fulfilled his side of the
contract.

And Gwendolen, we know, was thoroughly aware of the situation. She
could not excuse herself by saying that there had been a tacit part of
the contract on her side--namely, that she meant to rule and have her
own way. With all her early indulgence in the disposition to dominate,
she was not one of the narrow-brained women who through life regard all
their own selfish demands as rights, and every claim upon themselves as
an injury. She had a root of conscience in her, and the process of
purgatory had begun for her on the green earth: she knew that she had
been wrong.

But now enter into the soul of this young creature as she found
herself, with the blue Mediterranean dividing her from the world, on
the tiny plank-island of a yacht, the domain of the husband to whom she
felt that she had sold herself, and had been paid the strict
price--nay, paid more than she had dared to ask in the handsome
maintenance of her mother:--the husband to whom she had sold her
truthfulness and sense of justice, so that he held them throttled into
silence, collared and dragged behind him to witness what he would,
without remonstrance.

What had she to complain of? The yacht was of the prettiest; the cabin
fitted up to perfection, smelling of cedar, soft-cushioned, hung with
silk, expanded with mirrors; the crew such as suited an elegant toy,
one of them having even ringlets, as well as a bronze complexion and
fine teeth; and Mr. Lush was not t