l." It was Mirah's liking to
have this little inscription on many articles that she used. The father
read it, and had a quick vision of his marriage day, and the bright,
unblamed young fellow he was at that time; teaching many things, but
expecting by-and-by to get money more easily by writing; and very fond
of his beautiful bride Sara--crying when she expected him to cry, and
reflecting every phase of her feeling with mimetic susceptibility.
Lapidoth had traveled a long way from that young self, and thought of
all that this inscription signified with an unemotional memory, which
was like the ocular perception of a touch to one who has lost the sense
of touch, or like morsels on an untasting palate, having shape and
grain, but no flavor. Among the things we may gamble away in a lazy
selfish life is the capacity for ruth, compunction, or any unselfish
regret--which we may come to long for as one in slow death longs to
feel laceration, rather than be conscious of a widening margin where
consciousness once was. Mirah's purse was a handsome one--a gift to
her, which she had been unable to reflect about giving away--and
Lapidoth presently found himself outside of his reverie, considering
what the purse would fetch in addition to the sum it contained, and
what prospect there was of his being able to get more from his daughter
without submitting to adopt a penitential form of life under the eyes
of that formidable son. On such a subject his susceptibilities were
still lively.

Meanwhile Mirah had entered the house with her power of reticence
overcome by the cruelty of her pain. She found her brother quietly
reading and sifting old manuscripts of his own, which he meant to
consign to Deronda. In the reaction from the long effort to master
herself, she fell down before him and clasped his knees, sobbing, and
crying, "Ezra, Ezra!"

He did not speak. His alarm for her spending itself on conceiving the
cause of her distress, the more striking from the novelty in her of
this violent manifestation. But Mirah's own longing was to be able to
speak and tell him the cause. Presently she raised her hand, and still
sobbing, said brokenly--

"Ezra, my father! our father! He followed me. I wanted him to come in.
I said you would let him come in. And he said No, he would not--not
now, but to-morrow. And he begged for money from me. And I gave him my
purse, and he went away."

Mirah's words seemed to herself to express all the misery she