Daniel Deronda

Chapter 54

In taking his wife with him on a yachting expedition, Grandcourt had no

intention to get rid of her; on the contrary, he wanted to feel more

securely that she was his to do as he liked with, and to make her feel it

also. Moreover, he was himself very fond of yachting: its dreamy do-

nothing absolutism, unmolested by social demands, suited his disposition,

and he did not in the least regard it as an equivalent for the dreariness

of the Maremma. He had his reasons for carrying Gwendolen out of reach,

but they were not reasons that can seem black in the mere statement. He

suspected a growing spirit of opposition in her, and his feeling about the

sentimental inclination she betrayed for Deronda was what in another man

he would have called jealously. In himself it seemed merely a reso