hould have
done for her. I suppose, as she was penniless, her friends couldn't
stand out for a settlement, else it's ill trusting to the will a man
may make after he's married. Even a wise man generally lets some folly
ooze out of him in his will--my father did, I know; and if a fellow has
any spite or tyranny in him, he's likely to bottle off a good deal for
keeping in that sort of document. It's quite clear Grandcourt meant
that his death should put an extinguisher on his wife, if she bore him
no heir."

"And, in the other case, I suppose everything would have been
reversed--illegitimacy would have had the extinguisher?" said Deronda,
with some scorn.

"Precisely--Gadsmere and the two thousand. It's queer. One nuisance is
that Grandcourt has made me an executor; but seeing he was the son of
my only brother, I can't refuse to act. And I shall mind it less if I
can be of any use to the widow. Lush thinks she was not in ignorance
about the family under the rose, and the purport of the will. He hints
that there was no very good understanding between the couple. But I
fancy you are the man who knew most about what Mrs. Grandcourt felt or
did not feel--eh, Dan?" Sir Hugo did not put this question with his
usual jocoseness, but rather with a lowered tone of interested inquiry;
and Deronda felt that any evasion would be misinterpreted. He answered
gravely--

"She was certainly not happy. They were unsuited to each other. But as
to the disposal of the property--from all I have seen of her, I should
predict that she will be quite contented with it."

"Then she is not much like the rest of her sex; that's all I can say,"
said Sir Hugo, with a slight shrug. "However, she ought to be something
extraordinary, for there must be an entanglement between your horoscope
and hers--eh? When that tremendous telegram came, the first thing Lady
Mallinger said was, 'How very strange that it should be Daniel who
sends it!' But I have had something of the same sort in my own life. I
was once at a foreign hotel where a lady had been left by her husband
without money. When I heard of it, and came forward to help her, who
should she be but an early flame of mine, who had been fool enough to
marry an Austrian baron with a long mustache and short affection? But
it was an affair of my own that called me there--nothing to do with
knight-errantry, any more than you coming to Genoa had to do with the
Grandcourts."

There was silence for a little