this course and created agreeable consequences, but not with unbroken
confidence and rising certainty as it would have done if she had been
touched with the gambler's mania. She had gone to the roulette-table not
because of passion, but in search of it: her mind was still sanely capable
of picturing balanced probabilities, and while the chance of winning
allured her, the chance of losing thrust itself on her with alternate
strength and made a vision from which her pride sank sensitively. For she
was resolved not to tell the Langens that any misfortune had befallen her
family, or to make herself in any way indebted to their compassion; and if
she were to part with her jewelry to any observable extent, they would
interfere by inquiries and remonstrances. The course that held the least
risk of intolerable annoyance was to raise money on her necklace early in
the morning, tell the Langens that her mother desired her immediate return
without giving a reason, and take the train for Brussels that evening. She
had no maid with her, and the Langens might make difficulties about her
returning home, but her will was peremptory.

Instead of going to bed she made as brilliant a light as she could and
began to pack, working diligently, though all the while visited by the
scenes that might take place on the coming day--now by the tiresome
explanations and farewells, and the whirling journey toward a changed
home, now by the alternative of staying just another day and standing
again at the roulette-table. But always in this latter scene there was the
presence of that Deronda, watching her with exasperating irony, and--the
two keen experiences were inevitably revived together--beholding her again
forsaken by luck. This importunate image certainly helped to sway her
resolve on the side of immediate departure, and to urge her packing to the
point which would make a change of mind inconvenient. It had struck twelve
when she came into her room, and by the time she was assuring herself that
she had left out only what was necessary, the faint dawn was stealing