Page:Eliot - Daniel Deronda, vol. IV, 1876.djvu/243

 "To-morrow, then." said Lapidoth, almost turning on his heel away from this pale, trembling daughter, who seemed now to have got the inconvenient world to back her; but he quickly turned on it again, with his hands feeling about restlessly in his pockets, and said, with some return to his appealing tone, "I'm a little cut up with all this, Mirah. I shall get up my spirits by to-morrow. If you've a little money in your pocket, I suppose it isn't against your promise to give me a trifle—to buy a cigar with."

Mirah could not ask herself another question—could not do anything else than put her cold trembling hands in her pocket for her porte-monnaie and hold it out. Lapidoth grasped it at once, pressed her fingers the while, said, "Good-bye, my little girl—to-morrow then!" and left her. He had not taken many steps before he looked carefully into all the folds of the purse, found two half-sovereigns and odd silver, and, pasted against the folding cover, a bit of paper on which Ezra had inscribed, in a beautiful Hebrew character, the name of his mother, the days of her birth, marriage, and death, and the prayer, "May Mirah be delivered from evil." It was Mirah's liking to have this little inscription on many articles that she used. The father read it, and