l
to the walk?"

"Yes, I shall like it," said Gwendolen, without the slightest movement
except this of the lips.

"We could put off going over the house, you know, and only go out of
doors," said Sir Hugo, kindly, while Grandcourt turned aside.

"Oh, dear no!" said Gwendolen, speaking with determination; "let us put
off nothing. I want a long walk."

The rest of the walking party--two ladies and two gentlemen besides
Deronda--had now assembled; and Gwendolen rallying, went with due
cheerfulness by the side of Sir Hugo, paying apparently an equal
attention to the commentaries Deronda was called upon to give on the
various architectural fragments, to Sir Hugo's reasons for not
attempting to remedy the mixture of the undisguised modern with the
antique--which in his opinion only made the place the more truly
historical. On their way to the buttery and kitchen they took the
outside of the house and paused before a beautiful pointed doorway,
which was the only old remnant in the east front.

"Well, now, to my mind," said Sir Hugo, "that is more interesting
standing as it is in the middle of what is frankly four centuries
later, than if the whole front had been dressed up in a pretense of the
thirteenth century. Additions ought to smack of the time when they are
made and carry the stamp of their period. I wouldn't destroy any old
bits, but that notion of reproducing the old is a mistake, I think. At
least, if a man likes to do it he must pay for his whistle. Besides,
where are you to stop along that road--making loopholes where you don't
want to peep, and so on? You may as well ask me to wear out the stones
with kneeling; eh, Grandcourt?"

"A confounded nuisance," drawled Grandcourt. "I hate fellows wanting to
howl litanies--acting the greatest bores that have ever existed."

"Well, yes, that's what their romanticism must come to," said Sir Hugo,
in a tone of confidential assent--"that is if they carry it out
logically."

"I think that way of arguing against a course because it may be ridden
down to an absurdity would soon bring life to a standstill," said
Deronda. "It is not the logic of human action, but of a roasting-jack,
that must go on to the last turn when it has been once wound up. We can
do nothing safely without some judgment as to where we are to stop."

"I find the rule of the pocket the best guide," said Sir Hugo,
laughingly. "And as for most of your new-old building, you had need to
hire men to scrat