walking there yesterday."

But Gwendolen had lingered behind to look at the kenneled blood-hounds,
perhaps because she felt a little dispirited; and Grandcourt waited for
her.

"You had better take my arm," he said, in his low tone of command; and
she took it.

"It's a great bore being dragged about in this way, and no cigar," said
Grandcourt.

"I thought you would like it."

"Like it!--one eternal chatter. And encouraging those ugly
girls--inviting one to meet such monsters. How that _fat_ Deronda can
bear looking at her----"

"Why do you call him _fat_? Do you object to him so much?"

"Object? no. What do I care about his being a _fat_? It's of no
consequence to me. I'll invite him to Diplow again if you like."

"I don't think he would come. He is too clever and learned to care
about _us_," said Gwendolen, thinking it useful for her husband to be
told (privately) that it was possible for him to be looked down upon.

"I never saw that make much difference in a man. Either he is a
gentleman, or he is not," said Grandcourt.

That a new husband and wife should snatch, a moment's _tete-a-tete_ was
what could be understood and indulged; and the rest of the party left
them in the rear till, re-entering the garden, they all paused in that
cloistered court where, among the falling rose-petals thirteen years
before, we saw a boy becoming acquainted with his first sorrow. This
cloister was built of a harder stone than the church, and had been in
greater safety from the wearing weather. It was a rare example of a
northern cloister with arched and pillard openings not intended for
glazing, and the delicately-wrought foliage of the capitals seemed
still to carry the very touches of the chisel. Gwendolen had dropped
her husband's arm and joined the other ladies, to whom Deronda was
noticing the delicate sense which had combined freedom with accuracy in
the imitation of natural forms.

"I wonder whether one oftener learns to love real objects through their
representations, or the representations through the real objects," he
said, after pointing out a lovely capital made by the curled leaves of
greens, showing their reticulated under-side with the firm gradual
swell of its central rib. "When I was a little fellow these capitals
taught me to observe and delight in the structure of leaves."

"I suppose you can see every line of them with your eyes shut," said
Juliet Fenn.

"Yes. I was always repeating them, because for