 had
known --«
    Gwendolen broke off. She had been preparing herself for this interview by
thinking of hardly anything else than this question of right towards her mother;
but the question had carried with it thoughts and reasons which it was
impossible for her to utter, and these perilous remembrances swarmed between her
words, making her speech more and more agitated and tremulous. She looked down
helplessly at her hands, now unladen of all rings except her wedding-ring.
    »Do not hurt yourself by speaking of that,« said Deronda, tenderly. »There
is no need; the case is very simple. I think I can hardly judge wrongly about
it. You consult me because I am the only person to whom you have confided the
most painful part of your experience; and I can understand your scruples.« He
did not go on immediately, waiting for her to recover herself. The silence
seemed to Gwendolen full of the tenderness that she heard in his voice, and she
had courage to lift up her eyes and look at him as he said, »You are conscious
of something which you feel to be a crime towards one who is dead. You think
that you have forfeited all claim as a wife. You shrink from taking what was
his. You want to keep yourself pure from profiting by his death. Your feeling
even urges you to some self-punishment - some scourging of the self that
disobeyed your better will - the will that struggled against temptation. I have
known something of that myself. Do I understand you?«
    »Yes - at least, I want to be good - not like what I have been,« said
Gwendolen. »I will try to bear what you think I ought to bear. I have tried to
tell you the worst about myself. What ought I to do?«
    »If no one but yourself were concerned in this question of income,« said
Deronda, »I should hardly dare to urge you against any remorseful prompting; but
I take as a guide now your feeling about Mrs. Davilow, which seems to me quite
just. I cannot think that your husband's dues even to yourself are nullified by
any act you have committed. He voluntarily entered into your life, and affected
its course in what is always the most momentous way. But setting that aside, it
was due from him in his position that he should provide for your mother, and he
of course understood that if this will took effect she would share the provision
he had made for you.«
    »She has had eight hundred a-year.
