"Don't ask. Little mother was witness. The upshot is, that Mirah is
jealous of the duchess, and the sooner you relieve your mind the
better. There! I've cleared off a score or two, and may be allowed to
swear at you for getting what you deserve--which is just the very best
luck I know of."

"God bless you, Hans!" said Deronda, putting out his hand, which the
other took and wrung in silence.

CHAPTER LXVIII.

"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of Love,
And feed his sacred flame."
--COLERIDGE.

Deronda's eagerness to confess his love could hardly have had a
stronger stimulus than Hans had given it in his assurance that Mirah
needed relief from jealousy. He went on his next visit to Ezra with the
determination to be resolute in using--nay, in requesting--an
opportunity of private conversation with her. If she accepted his love,
he felt courageous about all other consequences, and as her betrothed
husband he would gain a protective authority which might be a desirable
defense for her in future difficulties with her father. Deronda had not
observed any signs of growing restlessness in Lapidoth, or of
diminished desire to recommend himself; but he had forebodings of some
future struggle, some mortification, or some intolerable increase of
domestic disquietude in which he might save Ezra and Mirah from being
helpless victims.

His forebodings would have been strengthened if he had known what was
going on in the father's mind. That amount of restlessness, that
desultoriness of attention, which made a small torture to Ezra, was to
Lapidoth an irksome submission to restraint, only made bearable by his
thinking of it as a means of by-and-by securing a well-conditioned
freedom. He began with the intention of awaiting some really good
chance, such as an opening for getting a considerable sum from Deronda;
but all the while he was looking about curiously, and trying to
discover where Mirah deposited her money and her keys. The imperious
gambling desire within him, which carried on its activity through every
other occupation, and made a continuous web of imagination that held
all else in its meshes, would hardly have been under the control of a
contracted purpose, if he had been able to lay his hands on any sum
worth capturing. But Mirah, with her practical clear-sightedness,
guarded against any frustration of the