ion on a sailing-boat which was advancing swiftly landward, being
rowed by two men. Amidst the clamorous talk in various languages,
Deronda held it the surer means of getting information not to ask
questions, but to elbow his way to the foreground and be an
unobstructed witness of what was occurring. Telescopes were being used,
and loud statements made that the boat held somebody who had been
drowned. One said it was the _milord_ who had gone out in a sailing
boat; another maintained that the prostrate figure he discerned was
_miladi_; a Frenchman who had no glass would rather say that it was
_milord_ who had probably taken his wife out to drown her, according to
the national practice--a remark which an English skipper immediately
commented on in our native idiom (as nonsense which--had undergone a
mining operation), and further dismissed by the decision that the
reclining figure was a woman. For Deronda, terribly excited by
fluctuating fears, the strokes of the oars as he watched them were
divided by swift visions of events, possible and impossible, which
might have brought about this issue, or this broken-off fragment of an
issue, with a worse half undisclosed--if this woman apparently snatched
from the waters were really Mrs. Grandcourt.

But soon there was no longer any doubt: the boat was being pulled to
land, and he saw Gwendolen half raising herself on her hands, by her
own effort, under her heavy covering of tarpaulin and pea-jackets--pale
as one of the sheeted dead, shivering, with wet hair streaming, a wild
amazed consciousness in her eyes, as if she had waked up in a world
where some judgment was impending, and the beings she saw around were
coming to seize her. The first rower who jumped to land was also wet
through, and ran off; the sailors, close about the boat, hindered
Deronda from advancing, and he could only look on while Gwendolen gave
scared glances, and seemed to shrink with terror as she was carefully,
tenderly helped out, and led on by the strong arms of those rough,
bronzed men, her wet clothes clinging about her limbs, and adding to
the impediment of her weakness. Suddenly her wandering eyes fell on
Deronda, standing before her, and immediately, as if she had been
expecting him and looking for him, she tried to stretch out her arms,
which were held back by her supporters, saying, in a muffled voice--

"It is come, it is come! He is dead!"

"Hush, hush!" said Deronda, in a tone of authority; "q