,« said Gwendolen, without the slightest movement
except this of the lips.
    »We could put off going over the house, you know, and only go out of doors,«
said Sir Hugo, kindly, while Grandcourt turned aside.
    »Oh dear no!« said Gwendolen, speaking with determination; »let us put off
nothing. I want a long walk.«
    The rest of the walking party - two ladies and two gentlemen besides Deronda
- had now assembled; and Gwendolen, rallying, went with due cheerfulness by the
side of Sir Hugo, paying apparently an equal attention to the commentaries
Deronda was called upon to give on the various architectural fragments, and to
Sir Hugo's reasons for not attempting to remedy the mixture of the undisguised
modern with the antique - which in his opinion only made the place the more
truly historical. On their way to the buttery and kitchen they took the outside
of the house and paused before a beautiful pointed doorway, which was the only
old remnant in the east front.
    »Well, now, to my mind,« said Sir Hugo, »that is more interesting standing
as it is in the middle of what is frankly four centuries later, than if the
whole front had been dressed up in a pretence of the thirteenth century.
Additions ought to smack of the time when they are made and carry the stamp of
their period. I wouldn't destroy any old bits, but that notion of reproducing
the old is a mistake, I think. At least, if a man likes to do it he must pay for
his whistle. Besides, where are you to stop along that road - making loopholes
where you don't want to peep, and so on? You may as well ask me to wear out the
stones with kneeling; eh, Grandcourt?«
    »A confounded nuisance,« drawled Grandcourt. »I hate fellows wanting to howl
litanies - acting the greatest bores that have ever existed.«
    »Well, yes, that's what their romanticism must come to,« said Sir Hugo, in a
tone of confidential assent - »that is, if they carry it out logically.«
    »I think that way of arguing against a course because it may be ridden down
to an absurdity would soon bring life to a standstill,« said Deronda. »It is not
the logic of human action, but of a roasting-jack, that must go on to the last
turn when it has been once wound up. We can do nothing safely without some
judgment as to where we are to stop.