Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. III, 1876.djvu/305

 begun. If I do it well, it must be by remembering how my master taught me."

Gwendolen was in reality too uncertain about herself to be prepared for this simple promptitude of Mirah's, and in her wish to change the subject said, with some lapse from the good taste of her first address—

"You have not been long in London, I think?—but you were perhaps introduced to Mr Deronda abroad?

"No," said Mirah; "I never saw him before I came to England in the summer."

"But he has seen you often and heard you sing a great deal, has he not?" said Gwendolen, led on partly by the wish to hear anything about Deronda, and partly by the awkwardness which besets the readiest person in carrying on a dialogue when empty of matter. "He spoke of you to me with the highest praise. He seemed to know you quite well."

"Oh, I was poor, and needed help," said Mirah, in a new tone of feeling, "and Mr Deronda has given me the best friends in the world. That is the only way he came to know anything about me—because he was sorry for me. I had no friends when I came. I was in distress. I owe everything to him."