the world is so arranged that if
you have an impious objection to a squint, your offspring is the more
likely to be born with one; also, that if you happened to desire a
squint you would not get it. This desponding view of probability the
hopeful entirely reject, taking their wishes as good and sufficient
security for all kinds of fulfilment. Who is absolutely neutral?
Deronda happening one morning to turn into a little side street out of
the noise and obstructions of Holborn, felt the scale dip on the
desponding side.

He was rather tired of the streets and had paused to hail a hansom cab
which he saw coming, when his attention was caught by some fine old
clasps in chased silver displayed in the window at his right hand. His
first thought was that Lady Mallinger, who had a strictly Protestant
taste for such Catholic spoils, might like to have these missal-clasps
turned into a bracelet: then his eyes traveled over the other contents
of the window, and he saw that the shop was that kind of pawnbroker's
where the lead is given to jewelry, lace and all equivocal objects
introduced as _bric-a-brac_. A placard in one corner
announced--_Watches and Jewelry exchanged and repaired_. But his survey
had been noticed from within, and a figure appeared at the door,
looking round at him and saying in a tone of cordial encouragement,
"Good day, sir." The instant was enough for Deronda to see the face,
unmistakably Jewish, belonged to a young man about thirty, and wincing
from the shopkeeper's persuasiveness that would probably follow, he had
no sooner returned the "good day," than he passed to the other side of
the street and beckoned to the cabman to draw up there. From that
station he saw the name over the shop window--Ezra Cohen.

There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered above shop windows, but
Deronda had not seen them. Probably the young man interested in a
possible customer was Ezra himself; and he was about the age to be
expected in Mirah's brother, who was grown up while she was still a
little child. But Deronda's first endeavor as he drove homeward was to
convince himself that there was not the slightest warrantable
presumption of this Ezra being Mirah's brother; and next, that even if,
in spite of good reasoning, he turned out to be that brother, while on
inquiry the mother was found to be dead, it was not
his--Deronda's--duty to make known the discovery to Mirah. In
inconvenient disturbance of this conclusion there