s grief as a fantastic costume. "Already he is
beginning to play at love: he is taking the whole affair as a comedy,"
said Deronda to himself; "he knows very well that there is no chance
for him. Just like him--never opening his eyes on any possible
objection I could have to receive his outpourings about Mirah. Poor old
Hans! If we were under a fiery hail together he would howl like a
Greek, and if I did not howl too it would never occur to him that I was
as badly off as he. And yet he is tender-hearted and affectionate in
intention, and I can't say that he is not active in imagining what goes
on in other people--but then he always imagines it to fit his own
inclination."

With this touch of causticity Deronda got rid of the slight heat at
present raised by Hans's naive expansiveness. The nonsense about
Gwendolen, conveying the fact that she was gone yachting with her
husband, only suggested a disturbing sequel to his own strange parting
with her. But there was one sentence in the letter which raised a more
immediate, active anxiety. Hans's suspicion of a hidden sadness in
Mirah was not in the direction of his wishes, and hence, instead of
distrusting his observation here, Deronda began to conceive a cause for
the sadness. Was it some event that had occurred during his absence, or
only the growing fear of some event? Was it something, perhaps
alterable, in the new position which had been made for her? Or--had
Mordecai, against his habitual resolve, communicated to her those
peculiar cherished hopes about him, Deronda, and had her quickly
sensitive nature been hurt by the discovery that her brother's will or
tenacity of visionary conviction had acted coercively on their
friendship--been hurt by the fear that there was more of pitying
self-suppression than of equal regard in Deronda's relation to him? For
amidst all Mirah's quiet renunciation, the evident thirst of soul with
which she received the tribute of equality implied a corresponding pain
if she found that what she had taken for a purely reverential regard
toward her brother had its mixture of condescension.

In this last conjecture of Deronda's he was not wrong as to the quality
in Mirah's nature on which he was founding--the latent protest against
the treatment she had all her life being subject to until she met him.
For that gratitude which would not let her pass by any notice of their
acquaintance without insisting on the depth of her debt to him, took
half i