it me somewhere--I could fit myself out by the day after
to-morrow."

Mirah felt herself under a temptation which she must try to overcome.
She answered, obliging herself to look at him again--

"I don't like to deny you what you ask, father; but I have given a
promise not to do things for you in secret. It _is_ hard to see you
looking needy; but we will bear that for a little while; and then you
can have new clothes, and we can pay for them." Her practical sense
made her see now what was Mrs. Meyrick's wisdom in exacting a promise
from her.

Lapidoth's good humor gave way a little. He said, with a sneer, "You
are a hard and fast young lady--you have been learning useful
virtues--keeping promises not to help your father with a pound or two
when you are getting money to dress yourself in silk--your father who
made an idol of you, and gave up the best part of his life to providing
for you."

"It seems cruel--I know it seems cruel," said Mirah, feeling this a
worse moment than when she meant to drown herself. Her lips were
suddenly pale. "But, father, it is more cruel to break the promises
people trust in. That broke my mother's heart--it has broken Ezra's
life. You and I must eat now this bitterness from what has been. Bear
it. Bear to come in and be cared for as you are."

"To-morrow, then," said Lapidoth, almost turning on his heel away from
this pale, trembling daughter, who seemed now to have got the
inconvenient world to back her; but he quickly turned on it again, with
his hands feeling about restlessly in his pockets, and said, with some
return to his appealing tone, "I'm a little cut up with all this,
Mirah. I shall get up my spirits by to-morrow. If you've a little money
in your pocket, I suppose it isn't against your promise to give me a
trifle--to buy a cigar with."

Mirah could not ask herself another question--could not do anything
else than put her cold trembling hands in her pocket for her
_portemonnaie_ and hold it out. Lapidoth grasped it at once, pressed
her fingers the while, said, "Good-bye, my little girl--to-morrow
then!" and left her. He had not taken many steps before he looked
carefully into all the folds of the purse, found two half-sovereigns
and odd silver, and, pasted against the folding cover, a bit of paper
on which Ezra had inscribed, in a beautiful Hebrew character, the name
of his mother, the days of her birth, marriage, and death, and the
prayer, "May Mirah be delivered from evi