pressed upon
her newly now that they were unexpectedly mirrored in the story of a man whose
slight relations with her had, by some hidden affinity, bitten themselves into
the most permanent layers of feeling. It was characteristic that, with all her
debating, she was never troubled by the question whether the indefensibleness of
her marriage did not include the fact that she had accepted Grandcourt solely as
the man whom it was convenient for her to marry, not in the least as one to whom
she would be binding herself in duty. Gwendolen's ideas were pitiably crude; but
many grand difficulties of life are apt to force themselves on us in our
crudity. And to judge wisely I suppose we must know how things appear to the
unwise; that kind of appearance making the larger part of the world's history.
    In the morning, there was a double excitement for her. She was going to
hunt, from which scruples about propriety had threatened to hinder her, until it
was found that Mrs. Torrington was horsewoman enough to accompany her: - going
to hunt for the first time since her escapade with Rex; and she was going again
to see Deronda, in whom, since last night, her interest had so gathered that she
expected, as people do about revealed celebrities, to see something in his
appearance which she had missed before. What was he going to be? What sort of
life had he before him - he being nothing of any consequence? And with only a
little difference in events he might have been as important as Grandcourt, nay -
her imagination inevitably went in that direction - might have held the very
estates which Grandcourt was to have. But now, Deronda would probably some day
see her mistress of the Abbey at Topping, see her bearing the title which would
have been his own wife's. These obvious, futile thoughts of what might have
been, made a new epoch for Gwendolen. She, whose unquestioning habit it had been
to take the best that came to her for less than her own claim, had now to see
the position which tempted her in a new light, as a hard, unfair exclusion of
others. What she had now heard about Deronda seemed to her imagination to throw
him into one group with Mrs. Glasher and her children; before whom she felt
herself in an attitude of apology - she who had hitherto been surrounded by a
group that in her opinion had need be apologetic to her. Perhaps Deronda himself
was thinking of these things. Could he know of Mrs. Glasher? If he knew that she
knew, he would despise her