 receive him; and he found her
awaiting him in the old drawing-room where some chief crises of her life had
happened. She seemed less sad than he had seen her since her husband's death;
there was no smile on her face, but a placid self-possession, in contrast with
the mood in which he had last found her. She was all the more alive to the
sadness perceptible in Deronda; and they were no sooner seated - he at a little
distance opposite to her - than she said:
    »You were afraid of coming to see me, because I was so full of grief and
despair the last time. But I am not so to-day. I have been sorry ever since. I
have been making it a reason why I should keep up my hope and be as cheerful as
I can, because I would not give you any pain about me.«
    There was an unwonted sweetness in Gwendolen's tone and look as she uttered
these words that seemed to Deronda to infuse the utmost cruelty into the task
now laid upon him. But he felt obliged to make his answer a beginning of the
task.
    »I am in some trouble to-day,« he said, looking at her rather mournfully;
»but it is because I have things to tell you which you will almost think it a
want of confidence on my part not to have spoken of before. They are things
affecting my own life - my own future. I shall seem to have made an ill return
to you for the trust you have placed in me - never to have given you an idea of
events that make great changes for me. But when we have been together we have
hardly had time to enter into subjects which at the moment were really less
pressing to me than the trials you have been going through.« There was a sort of
timid tenderness in Deronda's deep tones, and he paused with a pleading look, as
if it had been Gwendolen only who had conferred anything in her scenes of
beseeching and confession.
    A thrill of surprise was visible in her. Such meaning as she found in his
words had shaken her, but without causing fear. Her mind had flown at once to
some change in his position with regard to Sir Hugo and Sir Hugo's property. She
said, with a sense of comfort from Deronda's way of asking her pardon -
    »You never thought of anything but what you could do to help me; and I was
so troublesome. How could you tell me things?«
    »It will perhaps astonish
