gainst your
conscience. I was only saying what might be if the world went on. But I
had better have left the world alone, and not wanted to be over-wise.
Forgive me, come! we will not try to take you from anybody you feel has
more right to you."

"I would do anything else for you. I owe you my life," said Mirah, not
yet quite calm.

"Hush, hush, now," said Mrs. Meyrick. "I have been punished enough for
wagging my tongue foolishly--making an almanac for the Millennium, as
my husband used to say."

"But everything in the world must come to an end some time. We must
bear to think of that," said Mab, unable to hold her peace on this
point. She had already suffered from a bondage of tongue which
threatened to become severe if Mirah were to be too much indulged in
this inconvenient susceptibility to innocent remarks.

Deronda smiled at the irregular, blonde face, brought into strange
contrast by the side of Mirah's--smiled, Mab thought, rather
sarcastically as he said, "That 'prospect of everything coming to an
end will not guide us far in practice. Mirah's feelings, she tells us,
are concerned with what is."

Mab was confused and wished she had not spoken, since Mr. Deronda
seemed to think that she had found fault with Mirah; but to have spoken
once is a tyrannous reason for speaking again, and she said--

"I only meant that we must have courage to hear things, else there is
hardly anything we can talk about." Mab felt herself unanswerable here,
inclining to the opinion of Socrates: "What motive has a man to live,
if not for the pleasure of discourse?"

Deronda took his leave soon after, and when Mrs. Meyrick went outside
with him to exchange a few words about Mirah, he said, "Hans is to
share my chambers when he comes at Christmas."

"You have written to Rome about that?" said Mrs. Meyrick, her face
lighting up. "How very good and thoughtful of you! You mentioned Mirah,
then?"

"Yes, I referred to her. I concluded he knew everything from you."

"I must confess my folly. I have not yet written a word about her. I
have always been meaning to do it, and yet have ended my letter without
saying a word. And I told the girls to leave it to me. However!--Thank
you a thousand times."

Deronda divined something of what was in the mother's mind, and his
divination reinforced a certain anxiety already present in him. His
inward colloquy was not soothing. He said to himself that no man could
see this exquisite creature wi