be done with Mirah? She needed shelter and protection
in the fullest sense, and all his chivalrous sentiment roused itself to
insist that the sooner and the more fully he could engage for her the
interest of others besides himself, the better he should fulfill her
claims on him. He had no right to provide for her entirely, though he
might be able to do so; the very depth of the impression she had
produced made him desire that she should understand herself to be
entirely independent of him; and vague visions of the future which he
tried to dispel as fantastic left their influence in an anxiety
stronger than any motive he could give for it, that those who saw his
actions closely should be acquainted from the first with the history of
his relation to Mirah. He had learned to hate secrecy about the grand
ties and obligations of his life--to hate it the more because a strong
spell of interwoven sensibilities hindered him from breaking such
secrecy. Deronda had made a vow to himself that--since the truths which
disgrace mortals are not all of their own making--the truth should
never be made a disgrace to another by his act. He was not without
terror lest he should break this vow, and fall into the apologetic
philosophy which explains the world into containing nothing better than
one's own conduct.

At one moment he resolved to tell the whole of his adventure to Sir
Hugo and Lady Mallinger the next morning at breakfast, but the
possibility that something quite new might reveal itself on his next
visit to Mrs. Meyrick's checked this impulse, and he finally went to
sleep on the conclusion that he would wait until that visit had been
made.

CHAPTER XX.

"It will hardly be denied that even in this frail and corrupted world,
we sometimes meet persons who, in their very mien and aspect, as well
as in the whole habit of life, manifest such a signature and stamp of
virtue, as to make our judgment of them a matter of intuition rather
than the result of continued examination."--ALEXANDER KNOX: quoted in
Southey's Life of Wesley.

Mirah said that she had slept well that night; and when she came down
in Mab's black dress, her dark hair curling in fresh fibrils as it
gradually dried from its plenteous bath, she looked like one who was
beginning to take comfort after the long sorrow and watching which had
paled her cheek and made blue semicircles under her eyes. It was Mab
who carried her breakfast and