“Some women can.”
“You, certainly, unless you are obstinately cruel.”
“I am not sure that I am not both cruel and obstinate.” Here Gwendolen suddenly turned her head and looked full at Grandcourt, whose eyes she had felt to be upon her throughout their conversation. She was wondering what the effect of looking at him would be on herself rather than on him.
He stood perfectly still, half a yard or more away from her; and it flashed through her mind what a sort of lotus-eater’s stupor had begun in him and was taking possession of her. Then he said,
“Are you as uncertain about yourself as you make others about you?”
“I am quite uncertain about myself; I don’t know how uncertain others may be.”
“And you wish them to understand that you don’t care?” said Grandcourt, with a touch of new hardness in his tone.
“I did not say that,” Gwendolen replied, hesitatingly, and turning her eyes away whipped the rhododendron bush again. She wished she were on horseback that she might set off on a canter. It was impossible to set off running down the knoll.
“You do care, then,” said Grandcourt, not more quickly, but with a softened drawl.
“Ha! my whip!” said Gwendolen, in a little scream of distress. She had let it go—what could be more natural in a slight agitation?—and—but this seemed less natural in a gold-handled whip which had been left altogether to itself—it had gone with some force over the immediate shrubs, and had lodged itself in the branches of an azalea half-way down the knoll. She could run down now, laughing prettily, and Grandcourt was obliged to follow; but she was beforehand with him in rescuing the whip, and continued on her way to the level ground, when she paused and looked at Grandcourt with an exasperating brightness in her glance and a heightened color, as if she had carried a triumph, and these indications were still noticeable to Mrs. Davilow when Gwendolen and Grandcourt joined the rest of the party.