ately the image of this Mrs. Glasher became
painfully associated with his own hidden birth. Gwendolen knowing of
that woman and her children, marrying Grandcourt, and showing herself
contented, would have been among the most repulsive of beings to him;
but Gwendolen tasting the bitterness of remorse for having contributed
to their injury was brought very near to his fellow-feeling. If it were
so, she had got to a common plane of understanding with him on some
difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able to judge of with any
justice or generosity; for, according to precedent, Gwendolen's view of
her position might easily have been no other than that her husband's
marriage with her was his entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs.
Glasher represented his forsaken sin. And Deronda had naturally some
resentment on behalf of the Hagars and Ishmaels.

Undeniably Deronda's growing solicitude about Gwendolen depended
chiefly on her peculiar manner toward him; and I suppose neither man
nor woman would be the better for an utter insensibility to such
appeals. One sign that his interest in her had changed its footing was
that he dismissed any caution against her being a coquette setting
snares to involve him in a vulgar flirtation, and determined that he
would not again evade any opportunity of talking to her. He had shaken
off Mr. Vandernoodt, and got into a solitary corner in the twilight;
but half an hour was long enough to think of those possibilities in
Gwendolen's position and state of mind; and on forming the
determination not to avoid her, he remembered that she was likely to be
at tea with the other ladies in the drawing-room. The conjecture was
true; for Gwendolen, after resolving not to go down again for the next
four hours, began to feel, at the end of one, that in shutting herself
up she missed all chances of seeing and hearing, and that her visit
would only last two days more. She adjusted herself, put on her little
air of self-possession, and going down, made herself resolutely
agreeable. Only ladies were assembled, and Lady Pentreath was amusing
them with a description of a drawing-room under the Regency, and the
figure that was cut by ladies and gentlemen in 1819, the year she was
presented--when Deronda entered.

"Shall I be acceptable?" he said. "Perhaps I had better go back and
look for the others. I suppose they are in the billiard-room."

"No, no; stay where you are," said Lady Pentreath. "They were a