emain as it always had been, locked away from their
mutual speech. But Gwendolen was watching her mother with that new
divination which experience had given her; and in tender relenting at
her own peremptoriness, said, "Come and sit nearer to me, mamma, and
don't be unhappy."

Mrs. Davilow did as she was told, but bit her lips in the vain attempt
to hinder smarting tears. Gwendolen leaned toward her caressingly and
said, "I mean to be very wise; I do, really. And good--oh, so good to
you, dear, old, sweet mamma, you won't know me. Only you must not cry."

The resolve that Gwendolen had in her mind was that she would ask
Deronda whether she ought to accept any of her husband's money--whether
she might accept what would enable her to provide for her mother. The
poor thing felt strong enough to do anything that would give her a
higher place in Deronda's mind.

An invitation that Sir Hugo pressed on her with kind urgency was that
she and Mrs. Davilow should go straight with him to Park Lane, and make
his house their abode as long as mourning and other details needed
attending to in London. Town, he insisted, was just then the most
retired of places; and he proposed to exert himself at once in getting
all articles belonging to Gwendolen away from the house in Grosvenor
Square. No proposal could have suited her better than this of staying a
little while in Park Lane. It would be easy for her there to have an
interview with Deronda, if she only knew how to get a letter into his
hands, asking him to come to her. During the journey, Sir Hugo, having
understood that she was acquainted with the purport of her husband's
will, ventured to talk before her and to her about her future
arrangements, referring here and there to mildly agreeable prospects as
matters of course, and otherwise shedding a decorous cheerfulness over
her widowed position. It seemed to him really the more graceful course
for a widow to recover her spirits on finding that her husband had not
dealt as handsomely by her as he might have done; it was the testator's
fault if he compromised all her grief at his departure by giving a
testamentary reason for it, so that she might be supposed to look sad,
not because he had left her, but because he had left her poor. The
baronet, having his kindliness doubly fanned by the favorable wind on
his fortunes and by compassion for Gwendolen, had become quite fatherly
in his behavior to her, called her "my dear," and in mentio