r every new shock of humiliation she tried to
adjust herself and seize her old supports--proud concealment, trust in
new excitements that would make life go by without much thinking; trust
in some deed of reparation to nullify her self-blame and shield her
from a vague, ever-visiting dread of some horrible calamity; trust in
the hardening effect of use and wont that would make her indifferent to
her miseries.

Yes--miseries. This beautiful, healthy young creature, with her
two-and-twenty years and her gratified ambition, no longer felt
inclined to kiss her fortunate image in the glass. She looked at it
with wonder that she could be so miserable. One belief which had
accompanied her through her unmarried life as a self-cajoling
superstition, encouraged by the subordination of every one about
her--the belief in her own power of dominating--was utterly gone.
Already, in seven short weeks, which seemed half her life, her husband
had gained a mastery which she could no more resist than she could have
resisted the benumbing effect from the touch of a torpedo. Gwendolen's
will had seemed imperious in its small girlish sway; but it was the
will of a creature with a large discourse of imaginative fears: a
shadow would have been enough to relax its hold. And she had found a
will like that of a crab or a boa-constrictor, which goes on pinching
or crushing without alarm at thunder. Not that Grandcourt was without
calculation of the intangible effects which were the chief means of
mastery; indeed, he had a surprising acuteness in detecting that
situation of feeling in Gwendolen which made her proud and rebellious
spirit dumb and helpless before him.

She had burned Lydia Glasher's letter with an instantaneous terror lest
other eyes should see it, and had tenaciously concealed from Grandcourt
that there was any other cause of her violent hysterics than the
excitement and fatigue of the day: she had been urged into an implied
falsehood. "Don't ask me--it was my feeling about everything--it was
the sudden change from home." The words of that letter kept repeating
themselves, and hung on her consciousness with the weight of a
prophetic doom. "I am the grave in which your chance of happiness is
buried as well as mine. You had your warning. You have chosen to injure
me and my children. He had meant to marry me. He would have married me
at last, if you had not broken your word. You will have your
punishment. I desire it with all my soul.