There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered above shop windows, but Deronda had not seen them. Probably the young man interested in a possible customer was Ezra himself; and he was about the age to be expected in Mirah's brother, who was grown up while she was still a little child. But Deronda's first endeavor as he drove homeward was to convince himself that there was not the slightest warrantable presumption of this Ezra being Mirah's brother; and next, that even if, in spite of good reasoning, he turned out to be that brother, while on inquiry the mother was found to be dead, it was not his--Deronda's--duty to make known the discovery to Mirah. In inconvenient disturbance of this conclusion there came his lately-acquired knowledge that Mirah would have a religious desire to know of her mother's death, and also to learn whether her brother were living. How far was he justified in determining another life by his own notions? Was it not his secret complaint against the way in which others had ordered his own life, that he had not open daylight on all its relations, so that he had not, like other men, the full guidance of primary duties?

There might be a hundred Ezra Cohens lettered above shop windows, but Deronda had not seen them. Probably the young man was Ezra himself; and he was about the age to be expected in Mirah's brother, who was grown up while she was still a little child.
But as he drove home Deronda tried to convince himself that there was not the slightest likelihood of this Ezra being Mirah's brother; and that even if he did turn out to be, and if the mother was found to be dead, it was not Deronda's duty to make the discovery known to Mirah. In inconvenient disturbance of this conclusion, he knew that Mirah would have a religious desire to know of her mother's death, and also to learn whether her brother were living. How far was he justified in determining her life by his own notions? Was it not his secret complaint that others had ordered his own life, so that he had not open daylight on all its relations?
