Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/237

 ticular friend, who had undertaken to manage things for me, and I sent him over money to pay expenses. There's one chance, to be sure"—Lapidoth had quickly conceived that he must guard against something unlikely, yet possible—"he may have written me lies for the sake of getting the money out of me."

Mirah made no answer; she could not bear to utter the only true one—"I don't believe one word of what you say"—and she simply showed a wish that they should walk on, feeling that their standing still might draw down unpleasant notice. Even as they walked along, their companionship might well have made a passer-by turn back to look at them. The figure of Mirah, with her beauty set off by the quiet, careful dress of an English lady, made a strange pendant to this shabby, foreign-looking, eager, and gesticulating man, who withal had an ineffaceable jauntiness of air, perhaps due to the bushy curls of his grizzled hair, the smallness of his hands and feet, and his light walk.

"You seem to have done well for yourself, Mirah? You are in no want, I see," said the father, looking at her with emphatic examination.

"Good friends who found me in distress have