like to
be at liberty to do it."

She checked her horse as she spoke, and turned in her saddle, looking
toward the advancing carriage. Her eyes swept across Grandcourt as she
made this movement, but there was no language in them to correct the
carelessness of her reply. At that very moment she was aware that she
was risking something--not her neck, but the possibility of finally
checking Grandcourt's advances, and she did not feel contented with the
possibility.

"Damn her!" thought Grandcourt, as he too checked his horse. He was not
a wordy thinker, and this explosive phrase stood for mixed impressions
which eloquent interpreters might have expanded into some sentences
full of an irritated sense that he was being mystified, and a
determination that this girl should not make a fool of him. Did she
want him to throw himself at her feet and declare that he was dying for
her? It was not by that gate that she could enter on the privileges he
could give her. Or did she expect him to write his proposals? Equally a
delusion. He would not make his offer in any way that could place him
definitely in the position of being rejected. But as to her accepting
him, she had done it already in accepting his marked attentions: and
anything which happened to break them off would be understood to her
disadvantage. She was merely coquetting, then?

However, the carriage came up, and no further _tete-a-tete_ could well
occur before their arrival at the house, where there was abundant
company, to whom Gwendolen, clad in riding-dress, with her hat laid
aside, clad also in the repute of being chosen by Mr. Grandcourt, was
naturally a centre of observation; and since the objectionable Mr. Lush
was not there to look at her, this stimulus of admiring attention
heightened her spirits, and dispersed, for the time, the uneasy
consciousness of divided impulses which threatened her with repentance
of her own acts. Whether Grandcourt had been offended or not there was
no judging: his manners were unchanged, but Gwendolen's acuteness had
not gone deeper than to discern that his manners were no clue for her,
and because these were unchanged she was not the less afraid of him.

She had not been at Diplow before except to dine; and since certain
points of view from the windows and the garden were worth showing, Lady
Flora Hollis proposed after luncheon, when some of the guests had
dispersed, and the sun was sloping toward four o'clock, that the
remain