riding on the wings of the
wind, till the mountains smoke and the plains shudder under the rolling
fiery visitations. Often the good cause seems to lie prostrate under
the thunder of relenting force, the martyrs live reviled, they die, and
no angel is seen holding forth the crown and the palm branch. Then it
is that the submission of the soul to the Highest is tested, and even
in the eyes of frivolity life looks out from the scene of human
struggle with the awful face of duty, and a religion shows itself which
is something else than a private consolation.

That was the sort of crisis which was at this moment beginning in
Gwendolen's small life: she was for the first time feeling the pressure
of a vast mysterious movement, for the first time being dislodged from
her supremacy in her own world, and getting a sense that her horizon
was but a dipping onward of an existence with which her own was
revolving. All the troubles of her wifehood and widowhood had still
left her with the implicit impression which had accompanied her from
childhood, that whatever surrounded her was somehow specially for her,
and it was because of this that no personal jealousy had been roused in
her relation to Deronda: she could not spontaneously think of him as
rightfully belonging to others more than to her. But here had come a
shock which went deeper than personal jealousy--something spiritual and
vaguely tremendous that thrust her away, and yet quelled all her anger
into self-humiliation.

There had been a long silence. Deronda had stood still, even thankful
for an interval before he needed to say more, and Gwendolen had sat
like a statue with her wrists lying over each other and her eyes
fixed--the intensity of her mental action arresting all other
excitation. At length something occurred to her that made her turn her
face to Deronda and say in a trembling voice--

"Is that all you can tell me?"

The question was like a dart to him. "The Jew whom I mentioned just
now," he answered, not without a certain tremor in his tones too, "the
remarkable man who has greatly influenced my mind, has not perhaps been
totally unheard of by you. He is the brother of Miss Lapidoth, whom you
have often heard sing."

A great wave of remembrance passed through Gwendolen and spread as a
deep, painful flush over neck and face. It had come first at the scene
of that morning when she had called on Mirah, and heard Deronda's voice
reading, and been told, without