had observed
the dialogue on the settee as keenly as Hans had done, it was characteristic of
him that he named Deronda for invitation along with the Mallingers, tenaciously
avoiding the possible suggestion to anybody concerned that Deronda's presence or
absence could be of the least importance to him; and he made no direct
observation to Gwendolen on her behaviour that evening, lest the expression of
his disgust should be a little too strong to satisfy his own pride. But a few
days afterwards he remarked, without being careful of the à propos -
    »Nothing makes a woman more of a gawky than looking out after people and
showing tempers in public. A woman ought to have fine manners. Else it's
intolerable to appear with her.«
    Gwendolen made the expected application, and was not without alarm at the
notion of being a gawky. For she, too, with her melancholy distaste for things,
preferred that her distaste should include admirers. But the sense of
overhanging rebuke only intensified the strain of expectation towards any
meeting with Deronda. The novelty and excitement of her town life was like the
hurry and constant change of foreign travel: whatever might be the inward
despondency, there was a programme to be fulfilled, not without gratification to
many-sided self. But, as always happens with a deep interest, the comparatively
rare occasions on which she could exchange any words with Deronda had a
diffusive effect in her consciousness, magnifying their communication with each
other, and therefore enlarging the place she imagined it to have in his mind.
How could Deronda help this? He certainly did not avoid her; rather he wished to
convince her by every delicate indirect means that her confidence in him had not
been indiscreet, since it had not lowered his respect. Moreover, he liked being
near her - how could it be otherwise? She was something more than a problem: she
was a lovely woman, for the turn of whose mind and fate he had a care which,
however futile it might be, kept soliciting him as a responsibility, perhaps all
the more that, when he dared to think of his own future, he saw it lying far
away from this splendid sad-hearted creature, who, because he had once been
impelled to arrest her attention momentarily, as he might have seized her arm
with warning to hinder her from stepping where there was danger, had turned to
him with a beseeching persistent need.
    One instance in which Grandcourt stimulated a feeling in Gwendolen that he
would have liked to suppress without seeming to care about it, had relation to
Mirah. Gwendolen's inclination lingered over the project