composite flesh.

On the twenty-ninth of December Deronda knew that the Grandcourts had
arrived at the Abbey, but he had had no glimpse of them before he went
to dress for dinner. There had been a splendid fall of snow, allowing
the party of children the rare pleasures of snow-balling and
snow-building, and in the Christmas holidays the Mallinger girls were
content with no amusement unless it were joined in and managed by
"cousin," as they had always called Deronda. After that outdoor
exertion he had been playing billiards, and thus the hours had passed
without his dwelling at all on the prospect of meeting Gwendolen at
dinner. Nevertheless that prospect was interesting to him; and when, a
little tired and heated with working at amusement, he went to his room
before the half-hour bell had rung, he began to think of it with some
speculation on the sort of influence her marriage with Grandcourt would
have on her, and on the probability that there would be some
discernible shades of change in her manner since he saw her at Diplow,
just as there had been since his first vision of her at Leubronn.

"I fancy there are some natures one could see growing or degenerating
every day, if one watched them," was his thought. "I suppose some of us
go on faster than others: and I am sure she is a creature who keeps
strong traces of anything that has once impressed her. That little
affair of the necklace, and the idea that somebody thought her gambling
wrong, had evidently bitten into her. But such impressibility leads
both ways: it may drive one to desperation as soon as to anything
better. And whatever fascinations Grandcourt may have for capricious
tastes--good heavens! who can believe that he would call out the tender
affections in daily companionship? One might be tempted to horsewhip
him for the sake of getting some show of passion into his face and
speech. I'm afraid she married him out of ambition--to escape poverty.
But why did she run out of his way at first? The poverty came after,
though. Poor thing! she may have been urged into it. How can one feel
anything else than pity for a young creature like that--full of unused
life--ignorantly rash--hanging all her blind expectations on that
remnant of a human being."

Doubtless the phrases which Deronda's meditation applied to the
bridegroom were the less complimentary for the excuses and pity in
which it clad the bride. His notion of Grandcourt as a "remnant" was
founded on n