s abroad, I will write to let you know how we get on. It
is not fair that we should have all the pleasure of her salvation to
ourselves. And besides, I want to make believe that I am doing
something for you as well as for Mirah."

"That is no make-believe. What should I have done without you last
night? Everything would have gone wrong. I shall tell Hans that the
best of having him for a friend is, knowing his mother."

After that they joined the girls in the other room, where Mirah was
seated placidly, while the others were telling her what they knew about
Mr. Deronda--his goodness to Hans, and all the virtues that Hans had
reported of him.

"Kate burns a pastille before his portrait every day," said Mab. "And I
carry his signature in a little black-silk bag round my neck to keep
off the cramp. And Amy says the multiplication-table in his name. We
must all do something extra in honor of him, now he has brought you to
us."

"I suppose he is too great a person to want anything," said Mirah,
smiling at Mab, and appealing to the graver Amy. "He is perhaps very
high in the world?"

"He is very much above us in rank," said Amy. "He is related to grand
people. I dare say he leans on some of the satin cushions we prick our
fingers over."

"I am glad he is of high rank," said Mirah, with her usual quietness.

"Now, why are you glad of that?" said Amy, rather suspicious of this
sentiment, and on the watch for Jewish peculiarities which had not
appeared.

"Because I have always disliked men of high rank before."

"Oh, Mr. Deronda is not so very high," said Kate, "He need not hinder
us from thinking ill of the whole peerage and baronetage if we like."

When he entered, Mirah rose with the same look of grateful reverence
that she had lifted to him the evening before: impossible to see a
creature freer at once from embarrassment and boldness. Her theatrical
training had left no recognizable trace; probably her manners had not
much changed since she played the forsaken child at nine years of age;
and she had grown up in her simplicity and truthfulness like a little
flower-seed that absorbs the chance confusion of its surrounding into
its own definite mould of beauty. Deronda felt that he was making
acquaintance with something quite new to him in the form of womanhood.
For Mirah was not childlike from ignorance: her experience of evil and
trouble was deeper and stranger than his own. He felt inclined to watch
her and list