e been chosen for her
portrait. It is possible to have a strong self-love without any
self-satisfaction, rather with a self-discontent which is the more
intense because one's own little core of egoistic sensibility is a
supreme care; but Gwendolen knew nothing of such inward strife. She had
a _naive_ delight in her fortunate self, which any but the harshest
saintliness will have some indulgence for in a girl who had every day
seen a pleasant reflection of that self in her friends' flattery as
well as in the looking-glass. And even in this beginning of troubles,
while for lack of anything else to do she sat gazing at her image in
the growing light, her face gathered a complacency gradual as the
cheerfulness of the morning. Her beautiful lips curled into a more and
more decided smile, till at last she took off her hat, leaned forward
and kissed the cold glass which had looked so warm. How could she
believe in sorrow? If it attacked her, she felt the force to crush it,
to defy it, or run away from it, as she had done already. Anything
seemed more possible than that she could go on bearing miseries, great
or small.

Madame von Langen never went out before breakfast, so that Gwendolen
could safely end her early walk by taking her way homeward through the
Obere Strasse in which was the needed shop, sure to be open after
seven. At that hour any observers whom she minded would be either on
their walks in the region of the springs, or would be still in their
bedrooms; but certainly there was one grand hotel, the _Czarina_ from
which eyes might follow her up to Mr. Wiener's door. This was a chance
to be risked: might she not be going in to buy something which had
struck her fancy? This implicit falsehood passed through her mind as
she remembered that the _Czarina_ was Deronda's hotel; but she was then
already far up the Obere Strasse, and she walked on with her usual
floating movement, every line in her figure and drapery falling in
gentle curves attractive to all eyes except those which discerned in
them too close a resemblance to the serpent, and objected to the
revival of serpent-worship. She looked neither to the right hand nor to
the left, and transacted her business in the shop with a coolness which
gave little Mr. Weiner nothing to remark except her proud grace of
manner, and the superior size and quality of the three central
turquoises in the necklace she offered him. They had belonged to a
chain once her father's: but s