 having run away from the suit of the man she
was now going to take as a husband, had thrown a new sort of light on her
gambling; and it was probably the transition from that fevered worldliness into
poverty which had urged her acceptance where she must in some way have felt
repulsion. All this implied a nature liable to difficulty and struggle -
elements of life which had a predominant attraction for his sympathy, due
perhaps to his early pain in dwelling on the conjectured story of his own
existence. Persons attracted him, as Hans Meyrick had done, in proportion to the
possibility of his defending them, rescuing them, telling upon their lives with
some sort of redeeming influence; and he had to resist an inclination, easily
accounted for, to withdraw coldly from the fortunate. But in the movement which
had led him to repurchase Gwendolen's necklace for her, and which was at work in
him still, there was something beyond his habitual compassionate fervour -
something due to the fascination of her womanhood. He was very open to that sort
of charm, and mingled it with the consciously Utopian pictures of his own
future; yet any one able to trace the folds of his character might have
conceived that he would be more likely than many less passionate men to love a
woman without telling her of it. Sprinkle food before a delicate-eared bird:
there is nothing he would more willingly take, yet he keeps aloof, because of
his sensibility to checks which to you are imperceptible. And one man differs
from another, as we all differ from the Bosjesman, in a sensibility to checks,
that come from variety of needs, spiritual or other. It seemed to foreshadow
that capability of reticence in Deronda that his imagination was much occupied
with two women, to neither of whom would he have held it possible that he should
ever make love. Hans Meyrick had laughed at him for having something of the
knight-errant in his disposition; and he would have found his proof if he had
known what was just now going on in Deronda's mind about Mirah and Gwendolen.
    Deronda wrote without delay to announce the visit to Diplow, and received in
reply a polite assurance that his coming would give great pleasure. That was not
altogether untrue. Grandcourt thought it probable that the visit was prompted by
Sir Hugo's desire to court him for a purpose which he did not make up his mind
to resist; and it was not a disagreeable idea to him that this fine fellow, whom
he believed to be his cousin under the rose, would witness, perhaps with some
jealousy, Henleigh Mallinger
