DANIEL DERONDA (Completed)

Chapter 4

"_Gorgibus._-- * * * Je te dis que le mariage est une chose sainte

et sacree: et que c'est faire en honnetes gens, que de debuter par la.

"_Madelon._--Mon Dieu! que si tout le monde vous ressemblait, un

roman serait bientot fini! La belle chose que ce serait, si d'abord

Cyrus epousait Mandane, et qu'Aronce de plain-pied fut marie a Clelie!

* * * Laissez-nous faire a loisir le tissu de notre roman, et n'en

pressez pas tant la conclusion."

MOLIERE. _Les Precieuses Ridicules._

It would be a little hard to blame the rector of Pennicote that in the

course of looking at things from every point of view, he looked at

Gwendolen as a girl likely to make a brilliant marriage. Why should he be

expected to differ from his contemporaries in this matter, and wish his

niece a worse end of her charming maidenhood than they would approve as

the best possible? It is rather to be set down to his credit that his

feelings on the subject were entirely good-natured. And in considering the

relation of means to ends, it would have been mere folly to have been

guided by the exceptional and idyllic--to have recommended that Gwendolen

should wear a gown as shabby as Griselda's in order that a marquis might

fall in love with her, or to have insisted that since a fair maiden was to

be sought, she should keep herself out of the way. Mr. Gascoigne's

calculations were of the kind called rational, and he did not even think

of getting a too frisky horse in order that Gwendolen might be threatened

with an accident and be rescued by a man of property. He wished his niece

well, and he meant her to be seen to advantage in the best society of the

neighborhood.

Her uncle's intention fell in perfectly with Gwendolen's own wishes. But

let no one suppose that she also contemplated a brilliant marriage as the

direct end of her witching the world with her grace on horseback, or with

any other accomplishment. That she was to be married some time or other

she would have felt obliged to admit; and that her marriage would not be

of a middling kind, such as most girls were contented with, she felt

quietly, unargumentatively sure. But her thoughts never dwelt on marriage

as the fulfillment of her ambition; the dramas in which she imagined

herself a heroine were not wrought up to that close. To be very much sued

or hopelessly sighed for as a bride was indeed an indispensable and

agreeable guarantee of womanly power; but to become a wife and wear all

the domestic fetters of that condition, was on the whole a vexatious

necessity. Her observation of matrimony had inclined her to think it