is mind had hardly so much relation to his mother as to
Mordecai and Mirah.

"God bless you, Dan!" Sir Hugo had said, when they shook hands.
"Whatever else changes for you, it can't change my being the oldest
friend you have known, and the one who has all along felt the most for
you. I couldn't have loved you better if you'd been my own-only I
should have been better pleased with thinking of you always as the
future master of the Abbey instead of my fine nephew; and then you
would have seen it necessary for you to take a political line.
However--things must be as they may." It was a defensive movement of
the baronet's to mingle purposeless remarks with the expression of
serious feeling.

When Deronda arrived at the _Italia_ in Genoa, no Princess
Halm-Eberstein was there; but on the second day there was a letter for
him, saying that her arrival might happen within a week, or might be
deferred a fortnight and more; she was under circumstances which made
it impossible for her to fix her journey more precisely, and she
entreated him to wait as patiently as he could.

With this indefinite prospect of suspense on matters of supreme moment
to him, Deronda set about the difficult task of seeking amusement on
philosophic grounds, as a means of quieting excited feeling and giving
patience a lift over a weary road. His former visit to the superb city
had been only cursory, and left him much to learn beyond the prescribed
round of sight-seeing, by spending the cooler hours in observant
wandering about the streets, the quay, and the environs; and he often
took a boat that he might enjoy the magnificent view of the city and
harbor from the sea. All sights, all subjects, even the expected
meeting with his mother, found a central union in Mordecai and Mirah,
and the ideas immediately associated with them; and among the thoughts
that most filled his mind while his boat was pushing about within view
of the grand harbor was that of the multitudinous Spanish Jews
centuries ago driven destitute from their Spanish homes, suffered to
land from the crowded ships only for a brief rest on this grand quay of
Genoa, overspreading it with a pall of famine and plague--dying mothers
and dying children at their breasts--fathers and sons a-gaze at each
other's haggardness, like groups from a hundred Hunger-towers turned
out beneath the midday sun. Inevitably dreamy constructions of a
possible ancestry for himself would weave themselves with historic