me to live in a good style of
house in your neighborhood, and I cannot decline. So he said nothing
about it to you?"

"No; he wished me to hear it from you, I suppose."

Gwendolen in fact had been very anxious to have some definite knowledge
of what would be done for her mother, but at no moment since her
marriage had she been able to overcome the difficulty of mentioning the
subject to Grandcourt. Now, however, she had a sense of obligation
which would not let her rest without saying to him, "It is very good of
you to provide for mamma. You took a great deal on yourself in marrying
a girl who had nothing but relations belonging to her."

Grandcourt was smoking, and only said carelessly, "Of course I was not
going to let her live like a gamekeeper's mother."

"At least he is not mean about money," thought Gwendolen, "and mamma is
the better off for my marriage."

She often pursued the comparison between what might have been, if she
had not married Grandcourt, and what actually was, trying to persuade
herself that life generally was barren of satisfaction, and that if she
had chosen differently she might now have been looking back with a
regret as bitter as the feeling she was trying to argue away. Her
mother's dullness, which used to irritate her, she was at present
inclined to explain as the ordinary result of woman's experience. True,
she still saw that she would "manage differently from mamma;" but her
management now only meant that she would carry her troubles with
spirit, and let none suspect them. By and by she promised herself that
she should get used to her heart-sores, and find excitements that would
carry her through life, as a hard gallop carried her through some of
the morning hours. There was gambling: she had heard stories at
Leubronn of fashionable women who gambled in all sorts of ways. It
seemed very flat to her at this distance, but perhaps if she began to
gamble again, the passion might awake. Then there was the pleasure of
producing an effect by her appearance in society: what did celebrated
beauties do in town when their husbands could afford display? All men
were fascinated by them: they had a perfect equipage and toilet, walked
into public places, and bowed, and made the usual answers, and walked
out again, perhaps they bought china, and practiced accomplishments. If
she could only feel a keen appetite for those pleasures--could only
believe in pleasure as she used to do! Accomplishments had