or her to utter, and these perilous
remembrances swarmed between her words, making her speech more and more
agitated and tremulous. She looked down helplessly at her hands, now
unladen of all rings except her wedding-ring.

"Do not hurt yourself by speaking of that," said Deronda, tenderly.
"There is no need; the case is very simple. I think I can hardly judge
wrongly about it. You consult me because I am the only person to whom
you have confided the most painful part of your experience: and I can
understand your scruples." He did not go on immediately, waiting for
her to recover herself. The silence seemed to Gwendolen full of the
tenderness that she heard in his voice, and she had courage to lift up
her eyes and look at him as he said, "You are conscious of something
which you feel to be a crime toward one who is dead. You think that you
have forfeited all claim as a wife. You shrink from taking what was
his. You want to keep yourself from profiting by his death. Your
feeling even urges you to some self-punishment--some scourging of the
self that disobeyed your better will--the will that struggled against
temptation. I have known something of that myself. Do I understand you?"

"Yes--at least, I want to be good--not like what I have been," said
Gwendolen. "I will try to bear what you think I ought to bear. I have
tried to tell you the worst about myself. What ought I to do?"

"If no one but yourself were concerned in this question of income,"
said Deronda, "I should hardly dare to urge you against any remorseful
prompting; but I take as a guide now, your feeling about Mrs. Davilow,
which seems to me quite just. I cannot think that your husband's dues
even to yourself are nullified by any act you have committed. He
voluntarily entered into your life, and affected its course in what is
always the most momentous way. But setting that aside, it was due from
him in his position that he should provide for your mother, and he of
course understood that if this will took effect she would share the
provision he had made for you."

"She has had eight hundred a year. What I thought of was to take that
and leave the rest," said Gwendolen. She had been so long inwardly
arguing for this as a permission, that her mind could not at once take
another attitude.

"I think it is not your duty to fix a limit in that way," said Deronda.
"You would be making a painful enigma for Mrs. Davilow; an income from
which you shut yourself out m