 for you as well as for Mirah.«
    »That is no make-believe. What should I have done without you last night?
Everything would have gone wrong. I shall tell Hans that the best of having him
for a friend is, knowing his mother.«
    After that they joined the girls in the other room, where Mirah was seated
placidly, while the others were telling her what they knew about Mr. Deronda -
his goodness to Hans, and all the virtues that Hans had reported of him.
    »Kate burns a pastille before his portrait every day,« said Mab. »And I
carry his signature in a little black-silk bag round my neck to keep off the
cramp. And Amy says the multiplication-table in his name. We must all do
something extra in honour of him, now he has brought you to us.«
    »I suppose he is too great a person to want anything,« said Mirah, smiling
at Mab, and appealing to the graver Amy. »He is perhaps very high in the world?«
    »He is very much above us in rank,« said Amy. »He is related to grand
people. I daresay he leans on some of the satin cushions we prick our fingers
over.«
    »I am glad he is of high rank,« said Mirah, with her usual quietness.
    »Now, why are you glad of that?« said Amy, rather suspicious of this
sentiment, and on the watch for Jewish peculiarities which had not appeared.
    »Because I have always disliked men of high rank before.«
    »Oh, Mr. Deronda is not so very high,« said Kate. »He need not hinder us
from thinking ill of the whole peerage and baronetage if we like.«
    When he entered, Mirah rose with the same look of grateful reverence that
she had lifted to him the evening before: impossible to see a creature freer at
once from embarrassment and boldness. Her theatrical training had left no
recognisable trace; probably her manners had not much changed since she played
the forsaken child at nine years of age; and she had grown up in her simplicity
and truthfulness like a little flower-seed that absorbs the chance confusion of
its surroundings into its own definite mould of beauty. Deronda felt that he was
making acquaintance with something quite new to him in the form of womanhood.
For Mirah was not childlike from ignorance: her experience of evil and trouble
was deeper and stranger than his own. He felt inclined to watch her and listen
to her as if she had come from a
