r, and Gwendolen, there is the same delicate purity, the same
tender meekness, the same full acceptance of the life of a Jewess as--in
harmony with the life of her race--one of "sufferance." Even as her
spirits gladden in that sunny Meyrick home, with its delicious interiors,
and brighten under the noble-hearted musician Klesmer's encouragement,
the brightness refers to something entirely without herself. In one
sense far more acquainted with the evil that is in the world than
Gwendolen with all her alleged worldliness, it is her shrinking from the
least approach to this that prompts her strange, apparently hopeless
flight in search of the mother she had loved so dearly. Her sad, humble
complaints that she has not been a good Jewess, because she has been
inevitably cut off from the use of Jewish books, and restrained by her
scoundrel father from attendance at Jewish worship, find their answer in
her deep unfailing sense of her share in the national doom of suffering.
We feel with Mrs Meyrick "that she is a pearl, and the mud has only
washed her." In her startling interview with Gwendolen, the sudden
indignant protest which the inquiry of the latter calls out is a protest
against even a hint of evil being directed towards that which has been
best and highest to her. Her love for Deronda steals into the maiden
purity of her soul with an unconscious delicacy which cannot be
surpassed; and as she parts from us by his side, we feel that she is no
Judith or Esther, but the meek Mary of the annunciation, going forth on
her unknown mission of love with the words, "Behold the handmaid of the
Lord."

Beside the exquisitely meek child-figure, with the small delicate head
faintly drooping under the sorrow which is the heritage of her race,
stands up Deronda in his calm dignity. As he lies on the grass, and the
first faint glimmering of the possible origin of his life breaks upon
him, even the first inevitable risings of resentment against Sir Hugo are
softened and toned down by the old yearning affection; and the longings
for the unknown mother, intense as they are, yet shrink from full
discovery of what she may have been or may still be. He and he alone, in
unconscious dignity, stands up uncowering before Grandcourt. His whole
relations to Mordecai are characterised by a deep suppressed enthusiasm,
that fully responds to the enthusiast's soul. Towards Gwendolen every
word he speaks, every act he does, is marked by the ferv