Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/270

 ing and restless, Mrs Davilow said, "Let me give you your sleeping-draught, Gwendolen."

"No, mamma, thank you; I don't want to sleep."

"It would be so good for you to sleep more, my darling."

"Don't say what would be good for me, mamma," Gwendolen answered, impetuously. "You don't know what would be good for me. You and my uncle must not contradict me and tell me anything is good for me when I feel it is not good."

Mrs Davilow was silent, not wondering that the poor child was irritable. Presently Gwendolen said—

"I was always naughty to you, mamma."

"No, dear, no."

"Yes, I was," said Gwendolen, insistently. "It is because I was always wicked that I am miserable now."

She burst into sobs and cries. The determination to be silent about all the facts of her married life and its close, reacted in these escapes of enigmatic excitement.

But dim lights of interpretation were breaking on the mother's mind through the information that came from Sir Hugo to Mr Gascoigne, and,