hat is my notion about the
plants; they are often bored, and that is the reason why some of them
have got poisonous. What do you think?" Gwendolen had run on rather
nervously, lightly whipping the rhododendron bush in front of her.

"I quite agree. Most things are bores," said Grandcourt, his mind
having been pushed into an easy current, away from its intended track.
But, after a moment's pause, he continued in his broken, refined drawl--

"But a woman can be married."

"Some women can."

"You, certainly, unless you are obstinately cruel."

"I am not sure that I am not both cruel and obstinate." Here Gwendolen
suddenly turned her head and looked full at Grandcourt, whose eyes she
had felt to be upon her throughout their conversation. She was
wondering what the effect of looking at him would be on herself rather
than on him.

He stood perfectly still, half a yard or more away from her; and it
flashed through her mind what a sort of lotus-eater's stupor had begun
in him and was taking possession of her. Then he said--

"Are you as uncertain about yourself as you make others about you?"

"I am quite uncertain about myself; I don't know how uncertain others
may be."

"And you wish them to understand that you don't care?" said Grandcourt,
with a touch of new hardness in his tone.

"I did not say that," Gwendolen replied, hesitatingly, and turning her
eyes away whipped the rhododendron bush again. She wished she were on
horseback that she might set off on a canter. It was impossible to set
off running down the knoll.

"You do care, then," said Grandcourt, not more quickly, but with a
softened drawl.

"Ha! my whip!" said Gwendolen, in a little scream of distress. She had
let it go--what could be more natural in a slight agitation?--and--but
this seemed less natural in a gold-handled whip which had been left
altogether to itself--it had gone with some force over the immediate
shrubs, and had lodged itself in the branches of an azalea half-way
down the knoll. She could run down now, laughing prettily, and
Grandcourt was obliged to follow; but she was beforehand with him in
rescuing the whip, and continued on her way to the level ground, when
she paused and looked at Grandcourt with an exasperating brightness in
her glance and a heightened color, as if she had carried a triumph, and
these indications were still noticeable to Mrs. Davilow when Gwendolen
and Grandcourt joined the rest of the party.

"It is all coqu