e a living out of opinions," said Deronda;
"especially out of borrowed opinions. Not that I mean to blame other
men. I dare say many better fellows than I don't mind getting on to a
platform to praise themselves, and giving their word of honor for a
party."

"I'll tell you what, Dan," said Sir Hugo, "a man who sets his face
against every sort of humbug is simply a three-cornered, impracticable
fellow. There's a bad style of humbug, but there is also a good
style--one that oils the wheels and makes progress possible. If you are
to rule men, you must rule them through their own ideas; and I agree
with the Archbishop at Naples who had a St. Januarius procession
against the plague. It's no use having an Order in Council against
popular shallowness. There is no action possible without a little
acting."

"One may be obliged to give way to an occasional necessity," said
Deronda. "But it is one thing to say, 'In this particular case I am
forced to put on this foolscap and grin,' and another to buy a pocket
foolscap and practice myself in grinning. I can't see any real public
expediency that does not keep an ideal before it which makes a limit of
deviation from the direct path. But if I were to set up for a public
man I might mistake my success for public expediency."

It was after this dialogue, which was rather jarring to him, that
Deronda set out on his meditated second visit to Ezra Cohen's. He
entered the street at the end opposite to the Holborn entrance, and an
inward reluctance slackened his pace while his thoughts were
transferring what he had just been saying about public expediency to
the entirely private difficulty which brought him back again into this
unattractive thoroughfare. It might soon become an immediate practical
question with him how far he could call it a wise expediency to conceal
the fact of close kindred. Such questions turning up constantly in life
are often decided in a rough-and-ready way; and to many it will appear
an over-refinement in Deronda that he should make any great point of a
matter confined to his own knowledge. But we have seen the reasons why
he had come to regard concealment as a bane of life, and the necessity
of concealment as a mark by which lines of action were to be avoided.
The prospect of being urged against the confirmed habit of his mind was
naturally grating. He even paused here and there before the most
plausible shop-windows for a gentleman to look into, half inclined to