but Deronda wondered at the misleading alternations
in Gwendolen's manner, which at one moment seemed to excite sympathy by
childlike indiscretion, at another to repel it by proud concealment. He
tried to keep out of her way by devoting himself to Miss Juliet Fenn, a
young lady whose profile had been so unfavorably decided by
circumstances over which she had no control, that Gwendolen some months
ago had felt it impossible to be jealous of her. Nevertheless, when
they were seeing the kitchen--a part of the original building in
perfect preservation--the depth of shadow in the niches of the
stone-walls and groined vault, the play of light from the huge glowing
fire on polished tin, brass, and copper, the fine resonance that came
with every sound of voice or metal, were all spoiled for Gwendolen, and
Sir Hugo's speech about them was made rather importunate, because
Deronda was discoursing to the other ladies and kept at a distance from
her. It did not signify that the other gentlemen took the opportunity
of being near her: of what use in the world was their admiration while
she had an uneasy sense that there was some standard in Deronda's mind
which measured her into littleness? Mr. Vandernoodt, who had the mania
of always describing one thing while you were looking at another, was
quite intolerable with his insistence on Lord Blough's kitchen, which
he had seen in the north.

"Pray don't ask us to see two kitchens at once. It makes the heat
double. I must really go out of it," she cried at last, marching
resolutely into the open air, and leaving the others in the rear.
Grandcourt was already out, and as she joined him, he said--

"I wondered how long you meant to stay in that damned place"--one of
the freedoms he had assumed as a husband being the use of his strongest
epithets. Gwendolen, turning to see the rest of the party approach,
said--

"It was certainly rather too warm in one's wraps."

They walked on the gravel across a green court, where the snow still
lay in islets on the grass, and in masses on the boughs of the great
cedar and the crenelated coping of the stone walls, and then into a
larger court, where there was another cedar, to find the beautiful
choir long ago turned into stables, in the first instance perhaps after
an impromptu fashion by troopers, who had a pious satisfaction in
insulting the priests of Baal and the images of Ashtoreth, the queen of
heaven. The exterior--its west end, save for the st