Mirah--you can
always say something descriptive. What do _you_ think of Mrs.
Grandcourt?"

"I think she is the _Princess of Eboli_ in _Don Carlos_," said Mirah,
with a quick intensity. She was pursuing an association in her own mind
not intelligible to her hearers--an association with a certain actress
as well as the part she represented.

"Your comparison is a riddle for me, my dear," said Mrs. Meyrick,
smiling.

"You said that Mrs. Grandcourt was tall and fair," continued Mirah,
slightly paler. "That is quite true."

Mrs. Meyrick's quick eye and ear detected something unusual, but
immediately explained it to herself. Fine ladies had often wounded
Mirah by caprices of manner and intention.

"Mrs. Grandcourt had thought of having lessons of Mirah," she said
turning to Anna. "But many have talked of having lessons, and then have
found no time. Fashionable ladies have too much work to do."

And the chat went on without further insistance on the _Princess of
Eboli_. That comparison escaped Mirah's lips under the urgency of a
pang unlike anything she had felt before. The conversation from the
beginning had revived unpleasant impressions, and Mrs. Meyrick's
suggestion of Gwendolen's figure by the side of Deronda's had the
stinging effect of a voice outside her, confirming her secret
conviction that this tall and fair woman had some hold on his lot. For
a long while afterward she felt as if she had had a jarring shock
through her frame.

In the evening, putting her cheek against her brother's shoulder as she
was sitting by him, while he sat propped up in bed under a new
difficulty of breathing, she said--

"Ezra, does it ever hurt your love for Mr. Deronda that so much of his
life was all hidden away from you--that he is amongst persons and cares
about persons who are all so unlike us--I mean unlike you?"

"No, assuredly no," said Mordecai. "Rather it is a precious thought to
me that he has a preparation which I lacked, and is an accomplished
Egyptian." Then, recollecting that his words had reference which his
sister must not yet understand, he added. "I have the more to give him,
since his treasure differs from mine. That is a blessedness in
friendship."

Mirah mused a little.

"Still," she said, "it would be a trial to your love for him if that
other part of his life were like a crowd in which he had got entangled,
so that he was carried away from you--I mean in his thoughts, and not
merely carried out of si