Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/216

 However, Deronda is a lucky fellow in being there to take care of her."

Mirah had sunk on the music-stool again, with her eyelids down and her hands tightly clasped; and Mrs Meyrick, giving up the paper to Mab, said—

'Poor thing! she must have been fond of her husband, to jump in after him."

"It was an inadvertence—a little absence of mind," said Hans, creasing his face roguishly, and throwing himself into a chair not far from Mirah. "Who can be fond of a jealous baritone, with freezing glances, always singing asides?—that was the husband's rôle, depend upon it. Nothing can be neater than his getting drowned. The Duchess is at liberty now to marry a man with a fine head of hair, and glances that will melt instead of freezing her. And I shall be invited to the wedding."

Here Mirah started from her sitting posture, and fixing her eyes on Hans with an angry gleam in them, she said, in the deeply-shaken voice of indignation—

"Mr Hans, you ought not to speak in that way. Mr Deronda would not like you to speak so. Why will you say he is lucky—why will you use words of that sort about life and death