ke your
resolution to give up singing."

"I should rather think my resolution would be confirmed," said
Gwendolen. "I don't feel able to follow your advice of enjoying my own
middlingness."

"For my part," said Deronda, "people who do anything finely always
inspirit me to try. I don't mean that they make me believe I can do it
as well. But they make the thing, whatever it may be, seem worthy to be
done. I can bear to think my own music not good for much, but the world
would be more dismal if I thought music itself not good for much.
Excellence encourages one about life generally; it shows the spiritual
wealth of the world."

"But then, if we can't imitate it, it only makes our own life seem the
tamer," said Gwendolen, in a mood to resent encouragement founded on
her own insignificance.

"That depends on the point of view, I think," said Deronda. "We should
have a poor life of it if we were reduced for all our pleasure to our
own performances. A little private imitation of what is good is a sort
of private devotion to it, and most of us ought to practice art only in
the light of private study--preparation to understand and enjoy what
the few can do for us. I think Miss Lapidoth is one of the few."

"She must be a very happy person, don't you think?" said Gwendolen,
with a touch of sarcasm, and a turn of her neck toward Mrs. Raymond.

"I don't know," answered the independent lady; "I must hear more of her
before I say that."

"It may have been a bitter disappointment to her that her voice failed
her for the stage," said Juliet Fenn, sympathetically.

"I suppose she's past her best, though," said the deep voice of Lady
Pentreath.

"On the contrary, she has not reached it," said Deronda. "She is barely
twenty."

"And very pretty," interposed Lady Mallinger, with an amiable wish to
help Deronda. "And she has very good manners. I'm sorry she's a bigoted
Jewess; I should not like it for anything else, but it doesn't matter
in singing."

"Well, since her voice is too weak for her to scream much, I'll tell
Lady Clementina to set her on my nine granddaughters," said Lady
Pentreath; "and I hope she'll convince eight of them that they have not
voice enough to sing anywhere but at church. My notion is, that many of
our girls nowadays want lessons not to sing."

"I have had my lessons in that," said Gwendolen, looking at Deronda.
"You see Lady Pentreath is on my side."

While she was speaking, Sir Hugo entered with