to be likely; but his
imagination was as much astray about Grandcourt as it would have been
about an unexplored continent where all the species were peculiar. He
did not conceive that he himself was a likely subject of jealousy, or
that he should give any pretext for it; but the suspicion that a wife
is not happy naturally leads one to speculate on the husband's private
deportment; and Deronda found himself after one o'clock in the morning
in the rather ludicrous position of sitting up severely holding a
Hebrew grammar in his hands (for somehow, in deference to Mordecai, he
had begun to study Hebrew), with the consciousness that he had been in
that attitude nearly an hour, and had thought of nothing but Gwendolen
and her husband. To be an unusual young man means for the most part to
get a difficult mastery over the usual, which is often like the sprite
of ill-luck you pack up your goods to escape from, and see grinning at
you from the top of your luggage van. The peculiarities of Deronda's
nature had been acutely touched by the brief incident and words which
made the history of his intercourse with Gwendolen; and this evening's
slight addition had given them an importunate recurrence. It was not
vanity--it was ready sympathy that had made him alive to a certain
appealingness in her behavior toward him; and the difficulty with which
she had seemed to raise her eyes to bow to him, in the first instance,
was to be interpreted now by that unmistakable look of involuntary
confidence which she had afterward turned on him under the
consciousness of his approach.

"What is the use of it all?" thought Deronda, as he threw down his
grammar, and began to undress. "I can't do anything to help her--nobody
can, if she has found out her mistake already. And it seems to me that
she has a dreary lack of the ideas that might help her. Strange and
piteous to human flesh like that might be, wrapped round with fine
raiment, her ears pierced for gems, her head held loftily, her mouth
all smiling pretence, the poor soul within her sitting in sick distaste
of all things! But what do I know of her? There may be a demon in her
to match the worst husband, for what I can tell. She was clearly an
ill-educated, worldly girl: perhaps she is a coquette."

This last reflection, not much believed in, was a self-administered
dose of caution, prompted partly by Sir Hugo's much-contemned joking on
the subject of flirtation. Deronda resolved not to volunte