t Diplow
she seemed much more womanly and attractive--less hard and
self-possessed. I thought her mouth and eyes had quite a different
expression."

"Don't flirt with her too much, Dan," said Sir Hugo, meaning to be
agreeably playful. "If you make Grandcourt savage when they come to the
Abbey at Christmas, it will interfere with my affairs."

"I can stay in town, sir."

"No, no. Lady Mallinger and the children can't do without you at
Christmas. Only don't make mischief--unless you can get up a duel, and
manage to shoot Grandcourt, which might be worth a little
inconvenience."

"I don't think you ever saw me flirt," said Deronda, not amused.

"Oh, haven't I, though?" said Sir Hugo, provokingly. "You are always
looking tenderly at the women, and talking to them in a Jesuitical way.
You are a dangerous young fellow--a kind of Lovelace who will make the
Clarissas run after you instead of you running after them."

What was the use of being exasperated at a tasteless joke?--only the
exasperation comes before the reflection on utility. Few friendly
remarks are more annoying than the information that we are always
seeming to do what we never mean to do. Sir Hugo's notion of flirting,
it was to be hoped, was rather peculiar; for his own part, Deronda was
sure that he had never flirted. But he was glad that the baronet had no
knowledge about the repurchase of Gwendolen's necklace to feed his
taste for this kind of rallying.

He would be on his guard in future; for example, in his behavior at
Mrs. Meyrick's, where he was about to pay his first visit since his
arrival from Leubronn. For Mirah was certainly a creature in whom it
was difficult not to show a tender kind of interest both by looks and
speech.

Mrs. Meyrick had not failed to send Deronda a report of Mirah's
well-being in her family. "We are getting fonder of her every day," she
had written. "At breakfast-time we all look toward the door with
expectation to see her come in; and we watch her and listen to her as
if she were a native from a new country. I have not heard a word from
her lips that gives me a doubt about her. She is quite contented and
full of gratitude. My daughters are learning from her, and they hope to
get her other pupils; for she is anxious not to eat the bread of
idleness, but to work, like my girls. Mab says our life has become like
a fairy tale, and all she is afraid of is that Mirah will turn into a
nightingale again and fly away from us.