to some giant oaks worth looking at in their
bareness. He also felt an interest in this piece of contemporary gossip, but he
was satisfied that Mr. Vandernoodt had no more to tell about it.
    Since the early days when he tried to construct the hidden story of his own
birth, his mind had perhaps never been so active in weaving probabilities about
any private affair as it had now begun to be about Gwendolen's marriage. This
unavowed relation of Grandcourt's, - could she have gained some knowledge of it,
which caused her to shrink from the match - a shrinking finally overcome by the
urgence of poverty? He could recall almost every word she had said to him, and
in certain of these words he seemed to discern that she was conscious of having
done some wrong - inflicted some injury. His own acute experience made him alive
to the form of injury which might affect the unavowed children and their mother.
Was Mrs. Grandcourt, under all her determined show of satisfaction, gnawed by a
double, a treble-headed grief - self-reproach, disappointment, jealousy? He
dwelt especially on all the slight signs of self-reproach: he was inclined to
judge her tenderly, to excuse, to pity. He thought he had found a key now by
which to interpret her more clearly: what magnifying of her misery might not a
young creature get into who had wedded her fresh hopes to old secrets! He
thought he saw clearly enough now why Sir Hugo had never dropped any hint of
this affair to him; and immediately the image of this Mrs. Glasher became
painfully associated with his own hidden birth. Gwendolen knowing of that woman
and her children, marrying Grandcourt, and showing herself contented, would have
been among the most repulsive of beings to him; but Gwendolen tasting the
bitterness of remorse for having contributed to their injury was brought very
near to his fellow-feeling. If it were so, she had got to a common plane of
understanding with him on some difficulties of life which a woman is rarely able
to judge of with any justice or generosity; for, according to precedent,
Gwendolen's view of her position might easily have been no other than that her
husband's marriage with her was his entrance on the path of virtue, while Mrs.
Glasher represented his forsaken sin. And Deronda had naturally some resentment
on behalf of the Hagars and Ishmaels.
    Undeniably Deronda's growing solicitude about Gwendolen depended chiefly on
her peculiar manner towards him; and I suppose neither man nor woman would be
the better for an utter insensibility to such appeals. One