uttering no word, but reading their faces, till he said anxiously to Mirah, "Has anything happened?—any trouble?"
"Talk not of trouble now," said Mordecai, saving her from the need to answer. "There is joy in your face—let the joy be ours."
Mirah thought, "It is for something he cannot tell us." But they all sat down, Deronda drawing a chair close in front of Mordecai.
"That is true," he said, emphatically. "I have a joy which will remain to us even in the worst trouble. I did not tell you the reason of my journey abroad, Mordecai, because—never mind—I went to learn my parentage. And you were right. I am a Jew."
The two men clasped hands with a movement that seemed part of the flash from Mordecai's eyes, and passed through Mirah like an electric shock. But Deronda went on without pause, speaking from Mordecai's mind as much as from his own—
"We have the same people. Our souls have the same vocation. We shall not be separated by life or by death."
Mordecai's answer was uttered in Hebrew, and in no more than a loud whisper. It was in the
