e got drowned. Yet Rex wondered much whether
Gwendolen had been in love with the successful suitor, or had only
forborne to tell him that she hated being made love to.

CHAPTER LIX.

"I count myself in nothing else so happy
As in a soul remembering my good friends."
--SHAKESPEARE.

Sir Hugo Mallinger was not so prompt in starting for Genoa as Mr.
Gascoigne had been, and Deronda on all accounts would not take his
departure until he had seen the baronet. There was not only
Grandcourt's death, but also the late crisis in his own life to make
reasons why his oldest friend would desire to have the unrestrained
communication of speech with him, for in writing he had not felt able
to give any details concerning the mother who had come and gone like an
apparition. It was not till the fifth evening that Deronda, according
to telegram, waited for Sir Hugo at the station, where he was to arrive
between eight and nine; and while he was looking forward to the sight
of the kind, familiar face, which was part of his earliest memories,
something like a smile, in spite of his late tragic experience, might
have been detected in his eyes and the curve of his lips at the idea of
Sir Hugo's pleasure in being now master of his estates, able to leave
them to his daughters, or at least--according to a view of inheritance
which had just been strongly impressed on Deronda's imagination--to
take makeshift feminine offspring as intermediate to a satisfactory
heir in a grandson. We should be churlish creatures if we could have no
joy in our fellow-mortals' joy, unless it were in agreement with our
theory of righteous distribution and our highest ideal of human good:
what sour corners our mouths would get--our eyes, what frozen glances!
and all the while our own possessions and desires would not exactly
adjust themselves to our ideal. We must have some comradeship with
imperfection; and it is, happily, possible to feel gratitude even where
we discern a mistake that may have been injurious, the vehicle of the
mistake being an affectionate intention prosecuted through a life-time
of kindly offices. Deronda's feeling and judgment were strongly against
the action of Sir Hugo in making himself the agent of a falsity--yes, a
falsity: he could give no milder name to the concealment under which he
had been reared. But the baronet had probably had no clear knowledge
concerning the mother's breach of trust, and