supposed not to see. It's damnably vulgar."

"You can know all about the necklace," said Gwendolen, her angry pride
resisting the nightmare of fear.

"I don't want to know. Keep to yourself whatever you like." Grandcourt
paused between each sentence, and in each his speech seemed to become
more preternaturally distinct in its inward tones. "What I care to know
I shall know without your telling me. Only you will please to behave as
becomes my wife. And not make a spectacle of yourself."

"Do you object to my talking to Mr. Deronda?"

"I don't care two straws about Deronda, or any other conceited
hanger-on. You may talk to him as much as you like. He is not going to
take my place. You are my wife. And you will either fill your place
properly--to the world and to me--or you will go to the devil."

"I never intended anything but to fill my place properly," said
Gwendolen, with bitterest mortification in her soul.

"You put that thing on your wrist, and hid it from me till you wanted
him to see it. Only fools go into that deaf and dumb talk, and think
they're secret. You will understand that you are not to compromise
yourself. Behave with dignity. That's all I have to say."

With that last word Grandcourt rose, turned his back to the fire and
looked down on her. She was mute. There was no reproach that she dared
to fling back at him in return for these insulting admonitions, and the
very reason she felt them to be insulting was that their purport went
with the most absolute dictate of her pride. What she would least like
to incur was the making a fool of herself and being compromised. It was
futile and irrelevant to try and explain that Deronda too had only been
a monitor--the strongest of all monitors. Grandcourt was contemptuous,
not jealous; contemptuously certain of all the subjection he cared for.
Why could she not rebel and defy him? She longed to do it. But she
might as well have tried to defy the texture of her nerves and the
palpitation of her heart. Her husband had a ghostly army at his back,
that could close round her wherever she might turn. She sat in her
splendid attire, like a white image of helplessness, and he seemed to
gratify himself with looking at her. She could not even make a
passionate exclamation, or throw up her arms, as she would have done in
her maiden days. The sense of his scorn kept her still.

"Shall I ring?" he said, after what seemed to her a long while. She
moved her head in assent,