mptorily. "Tell me the truth. She is a Jewess who will not accept
any one but a Jew. There _are_ a few such," she added, with a touch of
scorn.

Deronda had that objection to answer which we all have known in
speaking to those who are too certain of their own fixed
interpretations to be enlightened by anything we may say. But besides
this, the point immediately in question was one on which he felt a
repugnance either to deny or affirm. He remained silent, and she
presently said--

"You love her as your father loved me, and she draws you after her as I
drew him."

Those words touched Deronda's filial imagination, and some tenderness
in his glance was taken by his mother as an assent. She went on with
rising passion: "But I was leading him the other way. And now your
grandfather is getting his revenge."

"Mother," said Deronda, remonstrantly, "don't let us think of it in
that way. I will admit that there may come some benefit from the
education you chose for me. I prefer cherishing the benefit with
gratitude, to dwelling with resentment on the injury. I think it would
have been right that I should have been brought up with the
consciousness that I was a Jew, but it must always have been a good to
me to have as wide an instruction and sympathy as possible. And now,
you have restored me my inheritance--events have brought a fuller
restitution than you could have made--you have been saved from robbing
my people of my service and me of my duty: can you not bring your whole
soul to consent to this?"

Deronda paused in his pleading: his mother looked at him listeningly,
as if the cadence of his voice were taking her ear, yet she shook her
head slowly. He began again, even more urgently.

"You have told me that you sought what you held the best for me: open
your heart to relenting and love toward my grandfather, who sought what
he held the best for you."

"Not for me, no," she said, shaking her head with more absolute denial,
and folding her arms tightly. "I tell you, he never thought of his
daughter except as an instrument. Because I had wants outside his
purpose, I was to be put in a frame and tortured. If that is the right
law for the world, I will not say that I love it. If my acts were
wrong--if it is God who is exacting from me that I should deliver up
what I withheld--who is punishing me because I deceived my father and
did not warn him that I should contradict his trust--well, I have told
everything. I have don