Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/84

 der would have been, if you had come to this house without hearing of Mr Deronda—wouldn't it, Mirah?" said Mrs Meyrick.

Mirah smiled acquiescently, but had nothing to say. A confused discontent took possession of her at the mingling of names and images to which she had been listening.

"My son calls Mrs Grandcourt the Vandyke duchess," continued Mrs Meyrick, turning again to Anna; "he thinks her so striking and picturesque."

"Yes," said Anna. "Gwendolen was always so beautiful—people fell dreadfully in love with her. I thought it a pity, because it made them unhappy."

"And how do you like Mr Grandcourt, the happy lover?" said Mrs Meyrick, who, in her way, was as much interested as Mab in the hints she had been hearing of vicissitude in the life of a widow with daughters.

"Papa approved of Gwendolen's accepting him, and my aunt says he is very generous," said Anna, beginning with a virtuous intention of repressing her own sentiments; but then, unable to resist a rare occasion for speaking them freely, she went on—"else I should have thought he was not very nice—rather proud, and not at all lively,