had
created, was disregarded as an ailment might have been, amidst the gratification
of that ambitious vanity and desire for luxury within her which it would take a
great deal of slow poisoning to kill. This morning she could not have said truly
that she repented her acceptance of Grandcourt, or that any fears in hazy
perspective could hinder the glowing effects of the immediate scene in which she
was the central object. That she was doing something wrong - that a punishment
might be hanging over her - that the woman to whom she had given a promise and
broken it, was thinking of her in bitterness and misery with a just reproach -
that Deronda with his way of looking into things very likely despised her for
marrying Grandcourt, as he had despised her for gambling - above all, that the
cord which united her with this lover and which she had hitherto held by the
hand, was now being flung over her neck, - all this yeasty mingling of dimly
understood facts with vague but deep impressions, and with images half real,
half fantastic, had been disturbing her during the weeks of her engagement. Was
that agitating experience nullified this morning? No: it was surmounted and
thrust down with a sort of exulting defiance as she felt herself standing at the
game of life with many eyes upon her, daring everything to win much - or if to
lose, still with éclat and a sense of importance. But this morning a losing
destiny for herself did not press upon her as a fear: she thought that she was
entering on a fuller power of managing circumstance - with all the official
strength of marriage, which some women made so poor a use of. That intoxication
of youthful egoism out of which she had been shaken by trouble, humiliation, and
a new sense of culpability, had returned upon her under the newly-fed strength
of the old fumes. She did not in the least present the ideal of the tearful,
tremulous bride. Poor Gwendolen, whom some had judged much too forward and
instructed in the world's ways! - with her erect head and elastic footstep she
was walking amid illusions; and yet, too, there was an under-consciousness in
her that she was a little intoxicated.
    »Thank God you bear it so well, my darling!« said Mrs. Davilow, when she had
helped Gwendolen to doff her bridal white and put on her travelling dress. All
the trembling had been done by the poor mother, and her agitation urged
Gwendolen doubly to take the morning as if it were a triumph.
    »Why, you might have said that, if I