s. I feel the better myself for having spent a
good deal of my time abroad. But, for God's sake, keep an English cut,
and don't become indifferent to bad tobacco! And, my dear boy, it is
good to be unselfish and generous; but don't carry that too far. It
will not do to give yourself to be melted down for the benefit of the
tallow-trade; you must know where to find yourself. However, I shall
put no vote on your going. Wait until I can get off Committee, and I'll
run over with you."

So Deronda went according to his will. But not before he had spent some
hours with Hans Meyrick, and been introduced to the mother and sisters
in the Chelsea home. The shy girls watched and registered every look of
their brother's friend, declared by Hans to have been the salvation of
him, a fellow like nobody else, and, in fine, a brick. They so
thoroughly accepted Deronda as an ideal, that when he was gone the
youngest set to work, under the criticism of the two elder girls, to
paint him as Prince Camaralzaman.

CHAPTER XVII.

"This is truth the poet sings,
That a sorrow's crown of sorrow is remembering happier things."
--TENNYSON: _Locksley Hall_.

On a fine evening near the end of July, Deronda was rowing himself on
the Thames. It was already a year or more since he had come back to
England, with the understanding that his education was finished, and
that he was somehow to take his place in English society; but though,
in deference to Sir Hugo's wish, and to fence off idleness, he had
began to read law, this apparent decision had been without other result
than to deepen the roots of indecision. His old love of boating had
revived with the more force now that he was in town with the
Mallingers, because he could nowhere else get the same still seclusion
which the river gave him. He had a boat of his own at Putney, and
whenever Sir Hugo did not want him, it was his chief holiday to row
till past sunset and come in again with the stars. Not that he was in a
sentimental stage; but he was in another sort of contemplative mood
perhaps more common in the young men of our day--that of questioning
whether it were worth while to take part in the battle of the world: I
mean, of course, the young men in whom the unproductive labor of
questioning is sustained by three or five per cent, on capital which
somebody else has battled for. It puzzled Sir Hugo that one who made a
splendid contrast with all