her to enter on the subject
with Grandcourt. But how could she arrest his wooing by beginning to
make a formal speech--"I perceive your intention--it is most
flattering, etc."? A fish honestly invited to come and be eaten has a
clear course in declining, but how if it finds itself swimming against
a net? And apart from the network, would she have dared at once to say
anything decisive? Gwendolen had not time to be clear on that point. As
it was, she felt compelled to silence, and after a pause, Grandcourt
said--

"Am I to understand that some one else is preferred?"

Gwendolen, now impatient of her own embarrassment, determined to rush
at the difficulty and free herself. She raised her eyes again and said
with something of her former clearness and defiance, "No"--wishing him
to understand, "What then? I may not be ready to take _you_." There was
nothing that Grandcourt could not understand which he perceived likely
to affect his _amour propre_.

"The last thing I would do, is to importune you. I should not hope to
win you by making myself a bore. If there were no hope for me, I would
ask you to tell me so at once, that I might just ride away to--no
matter where."

Almost to her own astonishment, Gwendolen felt a sudden alarm at the
image of Grandcourt finally riding away. What would be left her then?
Nothing but the former dreariness. She liked him to be there. She
snatched at the subject that would defer any decisive answer.

"I fear you are not aware of what has happened to us. I have lately had
to think so much of my mamma's troubles, that other subjects have been
quite thrown into the background. She has lost all her fortune, and we
are going to leave this place. I must ask you to excuse my seeming
preoccupied."

In eluding a direct appeal Gwendolen recovered some of her
self-possession. She spoke with dignity and looked straight at
Grandcourt, whose long, narrow, impenetrable eyes met hers, and
mysteriously arrested them: mysteriously; for the subtly-varied drama
between man and woman is often such as can hardly be rendered in words
put together like dominoes, according to obvious fixed marks. The word
of all work, Love, will no more express the myriad modes of mutual
attraction, than the word Thought can inform you what is passing
through your neighbor's mind. It would be hard to tell on which
side--Gwendolen's or Grandcourt's--the influence was more mixed. At
that moment his strongest wish was to be compl