uestioning about the circumstances of
her flight and arrival in England. But he was much interested in the
fact of his children having a beneficent friend apparently high in the
world.

It was the brother who told Deronda of this new condition added to
their life. "I am become calm in beholding him now," Ezra ended, "and I
try to think it possible that my sister's tenderness, and the daily
tasting a life of peace, may win him to remain aloof from temptation. I
have enjoined her, and she has promised, to trust him with no money. I
have convinced her that he will buy with it his own destruction."

Deronda first came on the third day from Ladipoth's arrival. The new
clothes for which he had been measured were not yet ready, and wishing
to make a favorable impression, he did not choose to present himself in
the old ones. He watched for Deronda's departure, and, getting a view
of him from the window, was rather surprised at his youthfulness, which
Mirah had not mentioned, and which he had somehow thought out of the
question in a personage who had taken up a grave friendship and hoary
studies with the sepulchral Ezra. Lapidoth began to imagine that
Deronda's real or chief motive must be that he was in love with Mirah.
And so much the better; for a tie to Mirah had more promise of
indulgence for her father than a tie to Ezra: and Lapidoth was not
without the hope of recommending himself to Deronda, and of softening
any hard prepossessions. He was behaving with much amiability, and
trying in all ways at his command to get himself into easy
domestication with his children--entering into Mirah's music, showing
himself docile about smoking, which Mrs. Adam could not tolerate in her
parlor, and walking out in the square with his German pipe, and the
tobacco with which Mirah supplied him. He was too acute to offer any
present remonstrance against the refusal of money, which Mirah told him
that she must persist in as a solemn duty promised to her brother. He
was comfortable enough to wait.

The next time Deronda came, Lapidoth, equipped in his new clothes, and
satisfied with his own appearance, was in the room with Ezra, who was
teaching himself, as a part of his severe duty, to tolerate his
father's presence whenever it was imposed. Deronda was cold and
distant, the first sight of this man, who had blighted the lives of his
wife and children, creating in him a repulsion that was even a physical
discomfort. But Lapidoth did not le