Rector. »But just
come with me one instant, Gascoigne, will you? I want to speak a word about the
clout-shooting.«
    Gwendolen chose to go too and be deposited in the same group with her mamma
and aunt until she had to shoot again. That Mr. Grandcourt might after all not
appear on the archery-ground, had begun to enter into Gwendolen's thought as a
possible deduction from the completeness of her pleasure. Under all her saucy
satire, provoked chiefly by her divination that her friends thought of him as a
desirable match for her, she felt something very far from indifference as to the
impression she would make on him. True, he was not to have the slightest power
over her (for Gwendolen had not considered that the desire to conquer is itself
a sort of subjection); she had made up her mind that he was to be one of those
complimentary and assiduously admiring men of whom even her narrow experience
had shown her several with various-coloured beards and various styles of
bearing; and the sense that her friends would want her to think him delightful,
gave her a resistant inclination to presuppose him ridiculous. But that was no
reason why she could spare his presence: and even a passing prevision of trouble
in case she despised and refused him, raised not the shadow of a wish that he
should save her that trouble by showing no disposition to make her an offer. Mr.
Grandcourt taking hardly any notice of her, and becoming shortly engaged to Miss
Arrowpoint, was not a picture which flattered her imagination.
    Hence Gwendolen had been all ear to Lord Brackenshaw's mode of accounting
for Grandcourt's non-appearance; and when he did arrive, no consciousness - not
even Mrs. Arrowpoint's or Mr. Gascoigne's - was more awake to the fact than
hers, although she steadily avoided looking towards any point where he was
likely to be. There should be no slightest shifting of angles to betray that it
was of any consequence to her whether the much-talked-of Mr. Mallinger
Grandcourt presented himself or not. She became again absorbed in the shooting,
and so resolutely abstained from looking round observantly that, even supposing
him to have taken a conspicuous place among the spectators, it might be clear
she was not aware of him. And all the while the certainty that he was there made
a distinct thread in her consciousness. Perhaps her shooting was the better for
it: at any rate, it gained in precision, and she at last raised a delightful
storm of clapping and applause by three hits running in