, "Good-night, girls."

"Suppose Mirah knew how you are behaving," said Kate. But her answer
was a slam of the door. "I _should_ like to see Mirah when Mr. Deronda
tells her," she went on to her mother. "I know she will look so
beautiful."

But Deronda, on second thoughts, had written a letter, which Mrs.
Meyrick received the next morning, begging her to make the revelation
instead of waiting for him, not giving the real reason--that he shrank
from going again through a narrative in which he seemed to be making
himself important and giving himself a character of general
beneficence--but saying that he wished to remain with Mordecai while
Mrs. Meyrick would bring Mirah on what was to be understood as a visit,
so that there might be a little interval before that change of abode
which he expected that Mirah herself would propose.

Deronda secretly felt some wondering anxiety how far Mordecai, after
years of solitary preoccupation with ideas likely to have become the
more exclusive from continual diminution of bodily strength, would
allow him to feel a tender interest in his sister over and above the
rendering of pious duties. His feeling for the Cohens, and especially
for little Jacob, showed a persistent activity of affection; but these
objects had entered into his daily life for years; and Deronda felt it
noticeable that Mordecai asked no new questions about Mirah,
maintaining, indeed, an unusual silence on all subjects, and appearing
simply to submit to the changes that were coming over his personal
life. He donned the new clothes obediently, but said afterward to
Deronda, with a faint smile, "I must keep my old garments by me for a
remembrance." And when they were seated, awaiting Mirah, he uttered no
word, keeping his eyelids closed, but yet showing restless feeling in
his face and hands. In fact, Mordecai was undergoing that peculiar
nervous perturbation only known to those whose minds, long and
habitually moving with strong impetus in one current, are suddenly
compelled into a new or reopened channel. Susceptible people, whose
strength has been long absorbed by dormant bias, dread an interview
that imperiously revives the past, as they would dread a threatening
illness. Joy may be there, but joy, too, is terrible.

Deronda felt the infection of excitement, and when he heard the ring at
the door, he went out, not knowing exactly why, that he might see and
greet Mirah beforehand. He was startled to find that she h