Mrs. Meyrick gave no audible answer, but pressed her lips against Mirah’s forehead.
“She’s just a pearl; the mud has only washed her,” was the fervid little woman’s closing commentary when, tete-à-tete with Deronda in the back parlor that evening, she had conveyed Mirah’s story to him with much vividness.
“What is your feeling about a search for this mother?” said Deronda. “Have you no fears? I have, I confess.”
“Oh, I believe the mother’s good,” said Mrs. Meyrick, with rapid decisiveness; “or was good. She may be dead—that’s my fear. A good woman, you may depend: you may know it by the scoundrel the father is. Where did the child get her goodness from? Wheaten flour has to be accounted for.”
Deronda was rather disappointed at this answer; he had wanted a confirmation of his own judgme
