ures when she
was young, had turned now into a satisfactory strength of form and
expression which defied wrinkles, and was set off by a crown of white
hair; her well-built figure was well covered with black drapery, her
ears and neck comfortably caressed with lace, showing none of those
withered spaces which one would think it a pitiable condition of
poverty to expose. She glided along gracefully enough, her dark eyes
still with a mischievous smile in them as she observed the company. Her
partner's young richness of tint against the flattened hues and rougher
forms of her aged head had an effect something like that of a fine
flower against a lichenous branch. Perhaps the tenants hardly
appreciated this pair. Lady Pentreath was nothing more than a straight,
active old lady: Mr. Deronda was a familiar figure regarded with
friendliness; but if he had been the heir, it would have been regretted
that his face was not as unmistakably English as Sir Hugo's.

Grandcourt's appearance when he came up with Lady Mallinger was not
impeached with foreignness: still the satisfaction in it was not
complete. It would have been matter of congratulation if one who had
the luck to inherit two old family estates had had more hair, a fresher
color, and a look of greater animation; but that fine families dwindled
off into females, and estates ran together into the single heirship of
a mealy-complexioned male, was a tendency in things which seemed to be
accounted for by a citation of other instances. It was agreed that Mr.
Grandcourt could never be taken for anything but what he was--a born
gentleman; and that, in fact, he looked like an heir. Perhaps the
person least complacently disposed toward him at that moment was Lady
Mallinger, to whom going in procession up this country-dance with
Grandcourt was a blazonment of herself as the infelicitous wife who had
produced nothing but daughters, little better than no children, poor
dear things, except for her own fondness and for Sir Hugo's wonderful
goodness to them. But such inward discomfort could not prevent the
gentle lady from looking fair and stout to admiration, or her full blue
eyes from glancing mildly at her neighbors. All the mothers and fathers
held it a thousand pities that she had not had a fine boy, or even
several--which might have been expected, to look at her when she was
first married.

The gallery included only three sides of the quadrangle, the fourth
being shut off as a lob