ns of his mastery, which, far from shaking it, might establish
it the more thoroughly. And it was established. He judged that he had
not married a simpleton unable to perceive the impossibility of escape,
or to see alternative evils: he had married a girl who had spirit and
pride enough not to make a fool of herself by forfeiting all the
advantages of a position which had attracted her; and if she wanted
pregnant hints to help her in making up her mind properly he would take
care not to withhold them.

Gwendolen, indeed, with all that gnawing trouble in her consciousness,
had hardly for a moment dropped the sense that it was her part to bear
herself with dignity, and appear what is called happy. In disclosure of
disappointment or sorrow she saw nothing but a humiliation which would
have been vinegar to her wounds. Whatever her husband might have come
at last to be to her, she meant to wear the yoke so as not to be
pitied. For she did think of the coming years with presentiment: she
was frightened at Grandcourt. The poor thing had passed from her
girlish sauciness of superiority over this inert specimen of personal
distinction into an amazed perception of her former ignorance about the
possible mental attitude of a man toward the woman he sought in
marriage--of her present ignorance as to what their life with each
other might turn into. For novelty gives immeasurableness to fear, and
fills the early time of all sad changes with phantoms of the future.
Her little coquetries, voluntary or involuntary, had told on Grandcourt
during courtship, and formed a medium of communication between them,
showing him in the light of a creature such as she could understand and
manage: But marriage had nulified all such interchange, and Grandcourt
had become a blank uncertainty to her in everything but this, that he
would do just what he willed, and that she had neither devices at her
command to determine his will, nor any rational means of escaping it.

What had occurred between them and her wearing the diamonds was
typical. One evening, shortly before they came to the Abbey, they were
going to dine at Brackenshaw Castle. Gwendolen had said to herself that
she would never wear those diamonds: they had horrible words clinging
and crawling about them, as from some bad dream, whose images lingered
on the perturbed sense. She came down dressed in her white, with only a
streak of gold and a pendant of emeralds, which Grandcourt had given
her