he fancied that her face looked blank. A smile beamed over it as she saw him coming, and she raised herself from her leaning posture. Grandcourt had been grumbling at the ennui of staying so long in this stupid dance, and proposing that they should vanish: she had resisted on the ground of politeness—not without being a little frightened at the probability that he was silently angry with her. She had her reason for staying, though she had begun to despair of the opportunity for the sake of which she had put the old necklace on her wrist. But now at last Deronda had come.
"Yes; I shall not dance any more. Are you not glad?" she said, with some gaiety. "You might have felt obliged humbly to offer yourself as a partner, and I feel sure you have danced more than you like already."
"I will not deny that," said Deronda, "since you have danced as much as you like."
"But will you take trouble for me in another way, and fetch me a glass of that fresh water?"
It was but a few steps that Deronda had to go for the water. Gwendolen was wrapped in the lightest, softest of white woollen burnouses, under which her hands were hidden. While he was gone she had drawn off her glove, which was fin-
