Daniel Deronda · Book VI · Chapter 48 (5/5)

Gwendolen had shrunk and changed her attitude on seeing him, but she did not turn or move from her place. It was not a moment in which she could feign anything, or manifest any strong revulsion of feeling: the passionate movement of her last speech was still too strong within her. What she felt beside was a dull despairing sense that her interview with Deronda was at an end: a curtain had fallen. But he, naturally, was urged into self-possession and effort by susceptibility to what might follow for her from being seen by her husband in this betrayal of agitation; and feeling that any pretense of ease in prolonging his visit would only exaggerate Grandcourt’s possible conjectures of duplicity, he merely said,

“I will not stay longer now. Goodbye.”

He put out his hand, and she let him press her poor little chill fingers; but she said no goodbye.

When he had left the room, Gwendolen threw herself into a seat, with an expectation as dull as her despair⁠—the expectation that she was going to be punished. But Grandcourt took no notice: he was satisfied to have let her know that she had not deceived him, and to keep a silence which was formidable with omniscience. He went out that evening, and her plea of feeling ill was accepted without even a sneer.

The next morning at breakfast he said, “I am going yachting to the Mediterranean.”

“When?” said Gwendolen, with a leap of heart which had hope in it.

“The day after tomorrow. The yacht is at Marseilles. Lush is gone to get everything ready.”

“Shall I have mamma to stay with me, then?” said Gwendolen, the new sudden possibility of peace and affection filling her mind like a burst of morning light.

“No; you will go with me.”