bed as indignation and
loathing that she should have been expected to unite herself with an
outworn life, full of backward secrets which must have been more keenly
felt than any association with _her_. True, the question of love on her
own part had occupied her scarcely at all in relation to Grandcourt.
The desirability of marriage for her had always seemed due to other
feeling than love; and to be enamored was the part of the man, on whom
the advances depended. Gwendolen had found no objection to Grandcourt's
way of being enamored before she had had that glimpse of his past,
which she resented as if it had been a deliberate offense against her.
His advances to _her_ were deliberate, and she felt a retrospective
disgust for them. Perhaps other men's lives were of the same kind--full
of secrets which made the ignorant suppositions of the women they
wanted to marry a farce at which they were laughing in their sleeves.

These feelings of disgust and indignation had sunk deep; and though
other troublous experience in the last weeks had dulled them from
passion into remembrance, it was chiefly their reverberating activity
which kept her firm to the understanding with herself, that she was not
going to accept Grandcourt. She had never meant to form a new
determination; she had only been considering what might be thought or
said. If anything could have induced her to change, it would have been
the prospect of making all things easy for "poor mamma:" that, she
admitted, was a temptation. But no! she was going to refuse him.
Meanwhile, the thought that he was coming to be refused was
inspiriting: she had the white reins in her hands again; there was a
new current in her frame, reviving her from the beaten-down
consciousness in which she had been left by the interview with Klesmer.
She was not now going to crave an opinion of her capabilities; she was
going to exercise her power.

Was this what made her heart palpitate annoyingly when she heard the
horse's footsteps on the gravel?--when Miss Merry, who opened the door
to Grandcourt, came to tell her that he was in the drawing-room? The
hours of preparation and the triumph of the situation were apparently
of no use: she might as well have seen Grandcourt coming suddenly on
her in the midst of her despondency. While walking into the
drawing-room, she had to concentrate all her energy in that
self-control, which made her appear gravely gracious--as she gave her
hand to him, and an