ith a vague impression that
in this mighty frame of things there might be some preparation of
rescue for her. Why not?--since the weather had just been on her side.
This possibility of hoping, after her long fluctuation amid fears, was
like a first return of hunger to the long-languishing patient.

She was waked the next morning by the casting of the anchor in the port
of Genoa--waked from a strangely-mixed dream in which she felt herself
escaping over the Mont Cenis, and wondering to find it warmer even in
the moonlight on the snow, till suddenly she met Deronda, who told her
to go back.

In an hour or so from that dream she actually met Deronda. But is was
on the palatial staircase of the _Italia_, where she was feeling warm
in her light woolen dress and straw hat; and her husband was by her
side.

There was a start of surprise in Deronda before he could raise his hat
and pass on. The moment did not seem to favor any closer greeting, and
the circumstances under which they had last parted made him doubtful
whether Grandcourt would be civilly inclined to him.

The doubt might certainly have been changed into a disagreeable
certainty, for Grandcourt on this unaccountable appearance of Deronda
at Genoa of all places, immediately tried to conceive how there could
have been an arrangement between him and Gwendolen. It is true that
before they were well in their rooms, he had seen how difficult it was
to shape such an arrangement with any probability, being too
cool-headed to find it at once easily credible that Gwendolen had not
only while in London hastened to inform Deronda of the yachting
project, but had posted a letter to him from Marseilles or Barcelona,
advising him to travel to Genoa in time for the chance of meeting her
there, or of receiving a letter from her telling of some other
destination--all which must have implied a miraculous foreknowledge in
her, and in Deronda a bird-like facility in flying about and perching
idly. Still he was there, and though Grandcourt would not make a fool
of himself by fabrications that others might call preposterous, he was
not, for all that, disposed to admit fully that Deronda's presence was,
so far as Gwendolen was concerned, a mere accident. It was a disgusting
fact; that was enough; and no doubt she was well pleased. A man out of
temper does not wait for proofs before feeling toward all things
animate and inanimate as if they were in a conspiracy against him, but
at once