the chief
difference would have been that his forebodings would have been fed with wider
knowledge. It was the habit of his mind to connect dread with unknown parentage,
and in this case as well as his own there was enough to make the connection
reasonable.
    But what was to 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 fulfil 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