her newly now that they were unexpectedly mirrored in the
story of a man whose slight relations with her had, by some hidden
affinity, bitten themselves into the most permanent layers of feeling.
It was characteristic that, with all her debating, she was never
troubled by the question whether the indefensibleness of her marriage
did not include the fact that she had accepted Grandcourt solely as a
man whom it was convenient for her to marry, not in the least as one to
whom she would be binding herself in duty. Gwendolen's ideas were
pitiably crude; but many grand difficulties of life are apt to force
themselves on us in our crudity. And to judge wisely, I suppose we must
know how things appear to the unwise; that kind of appearance making
the larger part of the world's history.

In the morning there was a double excitement for her. She was going to
hunt, from which scruples about propriety had threatened to hinder her,
until it was found that Mrs. Torrington was horsewoman enough to
accompany her--going to hunt for the first time since her escapade with
Rex; and she was going again to see Deronda, in whom, since last night,
her interest had so gathered that she expected, as people do about
revealed celebrities, to see something in his appearance which she had
missed before.

What was he going to be? What sort of life had he before him--he being
nothing of any consequence? And with only a little difference in events
he might have been as important as Grandcourt, nay--her imagination
inevitably went into that direction--might have held the very estates
which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would probably some day
see her mistress of the Abbey at Topping, see her bearing the title
which would have been his own wife's. These obvious, futile thoughts of
what might have been, made a new epoch for Gwendolen. She, whose
unquestionable habit it had been to take the best that came to her for
less than her own claim, had now to see the position which tempted her
in a new light, as a hard, unfair exclusion of others. What she had now
heard about Deronda seemed to her imagination to throw him into one
group with Mrs. Glasher and her children; before whom she felt herself
in an attitude of apology--she who had hitherto been surrounded by a
group that in her opinion had need be apologetic to her. Perhaps
Deronda himself was thinking of these things. Could he know of Mrs.
Glasher? If he knew that she knew, he would despise h