en turning with firm lips and proud self-possession
from her losses at the gaming table. The sight pierced him with pity,
and the effects of all their past relations began to revive within him.

"I beseech you to rest--not to stand," said Deronda, as he approached
her; and she obeyed, falling back into her chair again.

"Will you sit down near me?" she said. "I want to speak very low."

She was in a large arm-chair, and he drew a small one near to her side.
The action seemed to touch her peculiarly: turning her pale face full
upon his, which was very near, she said, in the lowest audible tone,
"You know I am a guilty woman?"

Deronda himself turned paler as he said, "I know nothing." He did not
dare to say more.

"He is dead." She uttered this with the same undertoned decision.

"Yes," said Deronda, in a mournful suspense which made him reluctant to
speak.

"His face will not be seen above the water again," said Gwendolen, in a
tone that was not louder, but of a suppressed eagerness, while she held
both her hands clenched.

"No."

"Not by any one else--only by me--a dead face--I shall never get away
from it."

It was with an inward voice of desperate self-repression that she spoke
these last words, while she looked away from Deronda toward something
at a distance from her on the floor. She was seeing the whole
event--her own acts included--through an exaggerating medium of
excitement and horror? Was she in a state of delirium into which there
entered a sense of concealment and necessity for self-repression? Such
thoughts glanced through Deronda as a sort of hope. But imagine the
conflict of feeling that kept him silent. She was bent on confession,
and he dreaded hearing her confession. Against his better will he
shrank from the task that was laid on him: he wished, and yet rebuked
the wish as cowardly, that she could bury her secrets in her own bosom.
He was not a priest. He dreaded the weight of this woman's soul flung
upon his own with imploring dependence. But she spoke again, hurriedly,
looking at him--

"You will not say that I ought to tell the world? you will not say that
I ought to be disgraced? I could not do it. I could not bear it. I
cannot have my mother know. Not if I were dead. I could not have her
know. I must tell you; but you will not say that any one else should
know."

"I can say nothing in my ignorance," said Deronda, mournfully, "except
that I desire to help you."

"I told you from