For an instant or two Gwendolen was mute. Then, again moving her brow from the glass, she said-"You mean that I am selfish and ignorant."
He met her fixed look in silence before he answered firmly--"You will not go on being selfish and ignorant!"
She did not turn away her glance or let her eyelids fall, but a change came over her face--that subtle change in nerve and muscle which will sometimes give a childlike expression even to the elderly: it is the subsidence of self-assertion.
"Shall I lead you back?" said Deronda, gently, turning and offering her his arm again. She took it silently, and in that way they came in sight of Grandcourt, who was walking slowly near their former place. Gwendolen went up to him and said, "I am ready to go now. Mr. Deronda will excuse us to Lady Mallinger."
"Certainly," said Deronda. "Lord and Lady Pentreath disappeared some time ago."
Grandcourt gave his arm in silent compliance, nodding over his shoulder to Deronda, and Gwendolen too only half turned to bow and say, "Thanks." The husband and wife left the gallery and paced the corridors in silence. When the door had closed on them in the boudoir, Grandcourt threw himself into a chair and said, with undertoned peremptoriness, "Sit down." She, already in the expectation of something unpleasant, had thrown off her burnous with nervous unconsciousness, and immediately obeyed. Turning his eyes toward her, he began-"Oblige me in future by not showing whims like a mad woman in a play."
"What do you mean?" said Gwendolen.
"I suppose there is some understanding between you and Deronda about that thing you have on your wrist. If you have anything to say to him, say it. But don't carry on a telegraphing which other people are supposed not to see. It's damnably vulgar."
"You can know all about the necklace," said Gwendolen, her angry pride resisting the nightmare of fear.
"I don't want to know. Keep to yourself whatever you like." Grandcourt paused between each sentence, and in each his speech seemed to become more preternaturally distinct in its inward tones. "What I care to know I shall know without your telling me. Only you will please to behave as becomes my wife. And not make a spectacle of yourself."
"Do you object to my talking to Mr. Deronda?"
"I don't care two straws about Deronda, or any other conceited hanger-on. You may talk to him as much as you like. He is not going to take my place. You are my wife. And you will either fill your place properly--to the world and to me--or you will go to the devil."