 confided everything except Mordecai's
peculiar relation to himself, had been active in helping him to find a suitable
lodging in Brompton, not many minutes' walk from her own house, so that the
brother and sister would be within reach of her motherly care. Her happy mixture
of Scottish caution with her Scottish fervour and Gallic liveliness had enabled
her to keep the secret close from the girls as well as from Hans, any betrayal
to them being likely to reach Mirah in some way that would raise an agitating
suspicion, and spoil the important opening of that work which was to secure her
independence, as we rather arbitrarily call one of the more arduous and
dignified forms of our dependence. And both Mrs. Meyrick and Deronda had more
reasons than they could have expressed for desiring that Mirah should be able to
maintain herself. Perhaps »the little mother« was rather helped in her secrecy
by some dubiousness in her sentiment about the remarkable brother described to
her; and certainly, if she felt any joy and anticipatory admiration, it was due
to her faith in Deronda's judgment. The consumption was a sorrowful fact that
appealed to her tenderness; but how was she to be very glad of an enthusiasm
which, to tell the truth, she could only contemplate as Jewish pertinacity, and
as rather an undesirable introduction among them all of a man whose conversation
would not be more modern and encouraging than that of Scott's Covenanters? Her
mind was anything but prosaic, and she had her soberer share of Mab's delight in
the romance of Mirah's story and of her abode with them; but the romantic or
unusual in real life requires some adaptation. We sit up at night to read about
Sakya-Mouni, Saint Francis, or Oliver Cromwell; but whether we should be glad
for any one at all like them to call on us the next morning, still more, to
reveal himself as a new relation, is quite another affair. Besides, Mrs. Meyrick
had hoped, as her children did, that the intensity of Mirah's feeling about
Judaism would slowly subside, and be merged in the gradually deepening current
of loving interchange with her new friends. In fact, her secret favourite
continuation of the romance had been no discovery of Jewish relations, but
something much more favourable to the hopes she discerned in Hans. And now -
here was a brother who would dip Mirah's mind over again in the deepest dye of
Jewish sentiment. She could not help saying to Deronda -
    »I am as glad as you are that the pawnbroker is not her brother; there are
Ezras
