Gwendolen is looking sharp in 'sea-green robes and silver ornaments, with a pale sea-green feather fastened in silver falling backward over her green hat and light-brown hair' (1.10). That evening, a bunch of people get together.We also learn that the paragraphs in this book tend to be very long. We learn that Daniel is 'young, handsome, distinguished in appearance' (1.8).Gwendolen ends up losing all of her money she looks at Daniel, who has a 'smile of irony in his eyes' (1.8).Everyone is watching her, but she's only aware of Daniel (but she never looks up at him). Gwendolen keeps playing round after round, and every time she loses one round she doubles her stake on the next.She figures that 'since she was not winning strikingly, the next best thing was to lose strikingly' (1.8). The young woman's chaperone tells her that they should stop playing, but she decides to ignore this and keep gambling.She's pretty sure that Daniel is still watching her. The young woman loses the next round, and the narrator comments that Daniel's gaze had somehow acted as an evil eye that jinxed her.She wonders how long they've been looking at each other. When their eyes meet, we shift from Daniel's perspective to the young woman's.As she looks around her, she and Daniel lock eyes. The young lady wins a round of roulette and collects her money.She's not someone who would necessarily make people stop and admire her, but she's not someone you can ignore, either. All of a sudden Daniel feels his attention captured by a young lady who is gambling (the one who he's not sure is beautiful or not).It's a pretty diverse crowd (for nineteenth-century Europe, we mean). Fifty or sixty people are either gambling or watching others gamble we get a few descriptions of some of them.

The narrative jumps back in time, but just a little, to show us how he got there and why he's looking at this girl.

He's trying to decide whether or not she's beautiful.

Daniel Deronda is at a gambling resort watching a young woman at the roulette table.

The epigraph to the chapter tells us that there's no such thing as the beginning of a story, so we get the idea that, even though this is the beginning of the novel, other things have been going on.

Daniel deronda book