out that Rex never goes
to Offendene, and has never seen the duchess since she came back; and
Miss Gascoigne let fall something in our talk about charade-acting--for
I went through some of my nonsense to please the young ones--something
that proved to me that Rex was once hovering about his fair cousin
close enough to get singed. I don't know what was her part in the
affair. Perhaps the duke came in and carried her off. That is always
the way when an exceptionally worthy young man forms an attachment. I
understand now why Gascoigne talks of making the law his mistress and
remaining a bachelor. But these are green resolves. Since the duke did
not get himself drowned for your sake, it may turn out to be for my
friend Rex's sake. Who knows?"

"Is it absolutely necessary that Mrs. Grandcourt should marry again?"
said Deronda, ready to add that Hans's success in constructing her
fortunes hitherto had not been enough to warrant a new attempt.

"You monster!" retorted Hans, "do you want her to wear weeds for _you_
all her life--burn herself in perpetual suttee while you are alive and
merry?"

Deronda could say nothing, but he looked so much annoyed that Hans
turned the current of his chat, and when he was alone shrugged his
shoulders a little over the thought that there really had been some
stronger feeling between Deronda and the duchess than Mirah would like
to know of. "Why didn't she fall in love with me?" thought Hans,
laughing at himself. "She would have had no rivals. No woman ever
wanted to discuss theology with me."

No wonder that Deronda winced under that sort of joking with a
whip-lash. It touched sensibilities that were already quivering with
the anticipation of witnessing some of that pain to which even Hans's
light words seemed to give more reality:--any sort of recognition by
another giving emphasis to the subject of our anxiety. And now he had
come down with the firm resolve that he would not again evade the
trial. The next day he rode to Offendene. He had sent word that he
intended to call and to ask if Gwendolen could receive him; and he
found her awaiting him in the old drawing-room where some chief crises
of her life had happened. She seemed less sad than he had seen her
since her husband's death; there was no smile on her face, but a placid
self-possession, in contrast with the mood in which he had last found
her. She was all the more alive to the sadness perceptible in Deronda;
and they were no soo