Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/119

 persuading them northward again towards Corsica. But this floating, gently-wafted existence, with its apparently peaceful influences, was becoming as bad as a nightmare to Gwendolen.

"How long are we to be yachting?" she ventured to ask one day after they had been touching at Ajaccio, and the mere fact of change in going ashore had given her a relief from some of the thoughts which seemed now to cling about the very rigging of the vessel, mix with the air in the red silk cabin below, and make the smell of the sea odious.

"What else should we do?" said Grandcourt. "I'm not tired of it. I don't see why we shouldn't stay out any length of time. There's less to bore one in this way. And where would you go to? I'm sick of foreign places. And we shall have enough of Ryelands. Would you rather be at Ryelands?"

"Oh no," said Gwendolen, indifferently, finding all places alike undesirable as soon as she imagined herself and her husband in them. "I only wondered how long you would like this."

"I like yachting longer than I like anything else," said Grandcourt; "and I had none last year. I suppose you are beginning to tire of it.