“It is true I have something very weighty to tell you—something I trust that you will rejoice in,” said Deronda, on his guard against the probability that Mordecai had been preparing himself for something quite different from the fact.
“It is all revealed—it is made clear to you,” said Mordecai, more eagerly, leaning forward with clasped hands. “You are even as my brother that sucked the breasts of my mother—the heritage is yours—there is no doubt to divide us.”
“I have learned nothing new about myself,” said Deronda. The disappointment was inevitable: it was better not to let the feeling be strained longer in a mistaken hope.
Mordecai sank back in his chair, unable for the moment to care what was really coming. The whole day his mind had been in a state of tension toward one fulfillment. The reaction was sickening and he closed his eyes.
“Except,” Deronda went on gently, after a pause,—“except that I had really some time ago come into another sort of hidden connection with you, besides what you have spoken of as existing in your own feeling.”
The eyes were not opened, but there was a fluttering in the lids.
“I had made the acquaintance of one in whom you are interested.”
“One who is closely related to your departed mother,” Deronda went on wishing to make the disclosure gradual; but noticing a shrinking movement in Mordecai, he added—“whom she and you held dear above all others.”
Mordecai, with a sudden start, laid a spasmodic grasp on Deronda’s wrist; there was a great terror in him. And Deronda divined it. A tremor was perceptible in his clear tones as he said,
“What was prayed for has come to pass: Mirah has been delivered from evil.”