ing to enter into
particulars.

Gwendolen looked toward the window again with an expression which
seemed like a gradual awakening to new thoughts. The twilight was
perceptibly deepening, but Deronda could see a movement in her eyes and
hands such as accompanies a return of perception in one who has been
stunned.

"You will always be with Sir Hugo now!" she said presently, looking at
him. "You will always live at the Abbey--or else at Diplow?"

"I am quite uncertain where I shall live," said Deronda, coloring.

She was warned by his changed color that she had spoken too rashly, and
fell silent. After a little while she began, again looking away--

"It is impossible to think how my life will go on. I think now it would
be better for me to be poor and obliged to work."

"New promptings will come as the days pass. When you are among your
friends again, you will discern new duties," said Deronda. "Make it a
task now to get as well and calm--as much like yourself as you can,
before--" He hesitated.

"Before my mother comes," said Gwendolen. "Ah! I must be changed. I
have not looked at myself. Should you have known me," she added,
turning toward him, "if you had met me now?--should you have known me
for the one you saw at Leubronn?"

"Yes, I should have known you," said Deronda, mournfully. "The outside
change is not great. I should have seen at once that it was you, and
that you had gone through some great sorrow."

"Don't wish now that you had never seen me; don't wish that," said
Gwendolen, imploringly, while the tears gathered.

"I should despise myself for wishing it," said Deronda. "How could I
know what I was wishing? We must find our duties in what comes to us,
not in what we imagine might have been. If I took to foolish wishing of
that sort, I should wish--not that I had never seen you, but that I had
been able to save you from this."

"You have saved me from worse," said Gwendolen, in a sobbing voice. "I
should have been worse if it had not been for you. If you had not been
good, I should have been more wicked than I am."

"It will be better for me to go now," said Deronda, worn in spirit by
the perpetual strain of this scene. "Remember what we said of your
task--to get well and calm before other friends come."

He rose as he spoke, and she gave him her hand submissively. But when
he had left her she sank on her knees, in hysterical crying. The
distance between them was too great. She was a banished s