om any perturbing impression. And yet, after he had made all things
ready, he was visited with doubt whether he were not mistaking her, and
putting the lower effect for the higher: was she not just as capable as
he himself had been of feeling the impressive distinction in her
brother all the more for that aspect of poverty which was among the
memorials of his past? But there were the Meyricks to be propitiated
toward this too Judaic brother; and Deronda detected himself piqued
into getting out of sight everything that might feed the ready
repugnance in minds unblessed with that precious "seeing," that bathing
of all objects in a solemnity as of sun-set glow, which is begotten of
a loving reverential emotion.

And his inclination would have been the more confirmed if he had heard
the dialogue round Mrs. Meyrick's fire late in the evening, after Mirah
had gone to her room. Hans, settled now in his Chelsea rooms, had
stayed late, and Mrs. Meyrick, poking the fire into a blaze, said--

"Now, Kate, put out your candle, and all come round the fire cosily.
Hans, dear, do leave off laughing at those poems for the ninety-ninth
time, and come too. I have something wonderful to tell."

"As if I didn't know that, ma. I have seen it in the corner of your eye
ever so long, and in your pretense of errands," said Kate, while the
girls came up to put their feet on the fender, and Hans, pushing his
chair near them, sat astride it, resting his fists and chin on the back.

"Well, then, if you are so wise, perhaps you know that Mirah's brother
is found!" said Mrs. Meyrick, in her clearest accents.

"Oh, confound it!" said Hans, in the same moment.

"Hans, that is wicked," said Mab. "Suppose we had lost you?"

"I _cannot_ help being rather sorry," said Kate. "And her
mother?--where is she?"

"Her mother is dead."

"I hope the brother is not a bad man," said Amy.

"Nor a fellow all smiles and jewelry--a Crystal Palace Assyrian with a
hat on," said Hans, in the worst humor.

"Were there ever such unfeeling children?" said Mrs. Meyrick, a little
strengthened by the need for opposition. "You don't think the least bit
of Mirah's joy in the matter."

"You know, ma, Mirah hardly remembers her brother," said Kate.

"People who are lost for twelve years should never come back again,"
said Hans. "They are always in the way."

"Hans!" said Mrs. Meyrick, reproachfully. "If you had lost me for
_twenty_ years, I should have thought--"

"