a greater energy than the sea
and sky he invokes and the deity he defies.

Deronda's circumstances, indeed, had been exceptional. One moment had
been burned into his life as its chief epoch--a moment full of July
sunshine and large pink roses shedding their last petals on a grassy
court enclosed on three sides by a gothic cloister. Imagine him in such
a scene: a boy of thirteen, stretched prone on the grass where it was
in shadow, his curly head propped on his arms over a book, while his
tutor, also reading, sat on a camp-stool under shelter. Deronda's book
was Sismondi's "History of the Italian Republics";--the lad had a
passion for history, eager to know how time had been filled up since
the flood, and how things were carried on in the dull periods. Suddenly
he let down his left arm and looked at his tutor, saying in purest
boyish tones--

"Mr. Fraser, how was it that the popes and cardinals always had so many
nephews?"

The tutor, an able young Scotchman, who acted as Sir Hugo Mallinger's
secretary, roused rather unwillingly from his political economy,
answered with the clear-cut emphatic chant which makes a truth doubly
telling in Scotch utterance--

"Their own children were called nephews."

"Why?" said Deronda.

"It was just for the propriety of the thing; because, as you know very
well, priests don't marry, and the children were illegitimate."

Mr. Fraser, thrusting out his lower lip and making his chant of the
last word the more emphatic for a little impatience at being
interrupted, had already turned his eyes on his book again, while
Deronda, as if something had stung him, started up in a sitting
attitude with his back to the tutor.

He had always called Sir Hugo Mallinger his uncle, and when it once
occurred to him to ask about his father and mother, the baronet had
answered, "You lost your father and mother when you were quite a little
one; that is why I take care of you." Daniel then straining to discern
something in that early twilight, had a dim sense of having been kissed
very much, and surrounded by thin, cloudy, scented drapery, till his
fingers caught in something hard, which hurt him, and he began to cry.
Every other memory he had was of the little world in which he still
lived. And at that time he did not mind about learning more, for he was
too fond of Sir Hugo to be sorry for the loss of unknown parents. Life
was very delightful to the lad, with an uncle who was always indulgent
a