Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/203

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BOOK VIII.—FRUIT AND SEED.
195

his hand. Looking at him with small penetrating eyes which glittered like black gems in the midst of his yellowish face and white hair, he said in German—

"Good! It is now you who seek me, young man."

"Yes; I seek you with gratitude, as a friend of my grandfather's," said Deronda, "and I am under an obligation to you for giving yourself much trouble on my account." He spoke without difficulty in that liberal language which takes many strange accents to its maternal bosom.

Kalonymos now put out his hand and said cordially, "So—you are no longer angry at being something more than an Englishman?"

"On the contrary. I thank you heartily for helping to save me from remaining in ignorance of my parentage, and for taking care of the chest that my grandfather left in trust for me."

"Sit down, sit down," said Kalonymos, in a quick under-tone, seating himself again, and pointing to a chair near him. Then deliberately laying aside his hat and showing a head thickly covered with white hair, he stroked and clutched his beard while he looked examiningly at the young face before him. The moment wrought strongly on Deronda's imaginative susceptibility: in the