oing, which was vague, it was true, and aloof from
the daily details of her life, but not the less strong. Whatever was
accepted as consistent with being a lady she had no scruple about; but
from the dim region of what was called disgraceful, wrong, guilty, she
shrunk with mingled pride and terror; and even apart from shame, her
feeling would have made her place any deliberate injury of another in
the region of guilt.

But now--did she know exactly what was the state of the case with
regard to Mrs. Glasher and her children? She had given a sort of
promise--had said, "I will not interfere with your wishes." But would
another woman who married Grandcourt be in fact the decisive obstacle
to her wishes, or be doing her and her boy any real injury? Might it
not be just as well, nay better, that Grandcourt should marry? For what
could not a woman do when she was married, if she knew how to assert
herself? Here all was constructive imagination. Gwendolen had about as
accurate a conception of marriage--that is to say, of the mutual
influences, demands, duties of man and woman in the state of
matrimony--as she had of magnetic currents and the law of storms.

"Mamma managed baldly," was her way of summing up what she had seen of
her mother's experience: she herself would manage quite differently.
And the trials of matrimony were the last theme into which Mrs. Davilow
could choose to enter fully with this daughter.

"I wonder what mamma and my uncle would say if they knew about Mrs.
Glasher!" thought Gwendolen in her inward debating; not that she could
imagine herself telling them, even if she had not felt bound to
silence. "I wonder what anybody would say; or what they would say to
Mr. Grandcourt's marrying some one else and having other children!" To
consider what "anybody" would say, was to be released from the
difficulty of judging where everything was obscure to her when feeling
had ceased to be decisive. She had only to collect her memories, which
proved to her that "anybody" regarded the illegitimate children as more
rightfully to be looked shy on and deprived of social advantages than
illegitimate fathers. The verdict of "anybody" seemed to be that she
had no reason to concern herself greatly on behalf of Mrs. Glasher and
her children.

But there was another way in which they had caused her concern. What
others might think, could not do away with a feeling which in the first
instance would hardly be too strongly descri