urt was outwardly in the same place, presenting
herself as she was expected to do in the accustomed scenes, with the
accustomed grace, beauty, and costume; from church at one end of the
week, through all the scale of desirable receptions, to opera at the
other. Church was not markedly distinguished in her mind from the other
forms of self-presentation, for marriage had included no instruction
that enabled her to connect liturgy and sermon with any larger order of
the world than that of unexplained and perhaps inexplicable social
fashions. While a laudable zeal was laboring to carry the light of
spiritual law up the alleys where law is chiefly known as the
policeman, the brilliant Mrs. Grandcourt, condescending a little to a
fashionable rector and conscious of a feminine advantage over a learned
dean, was, so far as pastoral care and religious fellowship were
concerned, in as complete a solitude as a man in a lighthouse.

Can we wonder at the practical submission which hid her constructive
rebellion? The combination is common enough, as we know from the number
of persons who make us aware of it in their own case by a clamorous
unwearied statement of the reasons against their submitting to a
situation which, on inquiry, we discover to be the least disagreeable
within their reach. Poor Gwendolen had both too much and too little
mental power and dignity to make herself exceptional. No wonder that
Deronda now marked some hardening in a look and manner which were
schooled daily to the suppression of feeling.

For example. One morning, riding in Rotten Row with Grandcourt by her
side, she saw standing against the railing at the turn, just facing
them, a dark-eyed lady with a little girl and a blonde boy, whom she at
once recognized as the beings in all the world the most painful for her
to behold. She and Grandcourt had just slackened their pace to a walk;
he being on the outer side was the nearer to the unwelcome vision, and
Gwendolen had not presence of mind to do anything but glance away from
the dark eyes that met hers piercingly toward Grandcourt, who wheeled
past the group with an unmoved face, giving no sign of recognition.

Immediately she felt a rising rage against him mingling with her shame
for herself, and the words, "You might at least have raised your hat to
her," flew impetuously to her lips--but did not pass them. If as her
husband, in her company, he chose to ignore these creatures whom she
herself had exclu