being a fact that
only amused his patron, and made him none the less willing to have Lush always
at hand.
    This was how it happened that Grandcourt arrived at the Czarina on the fifth
day after Gwendolen had left Leubronn, and found there his uncle, Sir Hugo
Mallinger, with his family, including Deronda. It is not necessarily a pleasure
either to the reigning power or the heir presumptive when their separate affairs
- a touch of gout, say, in the one, and a touch of wilfulness in the other -
happen to bring them to the same spot. Sir Hugo was an easy-tempered man,
tolerant both of differences and defects; but a point of view different from his
own concerning the settlement of the family estates fretted him rather more than
if it had concerned Church discipline or the ballot, and faults were the less
venial for belonging to a person whose existence was inconvenient to him. In no
case could Grandcourt have been a nephew after his own heart; but as the
presumptive heir to the Mallinger estates he was the sign and embodiment of a
chief grievance in the baronet's life - the want of a son to inherit the lands,
in no portion of which had he himself more than a life-interest. For in the
ill-advised settlement which his father, Sir Francis, had chosen to make by
will, even Diplow with its modicum of land had been left under the same
conditions as the ancient and wide inheritance of the two Toppings - Diplow,
where Sir Hugo had lived and hunted through many a season in his younger years,
and where his wife and daughters ought to have been able to retire after his
death.
    This grievance had naturally gathered emphasis as the years advanced, and
Lady Mallinger, after having had three daughters in quick succession, had
remained for eight years till now that she was over forty without producing so
much as another girl; while Sir Hugo, almost twenty years older, was at a time
of life when, notwithstanding the fashionable retardation of most things from
dinners to marriages, a man's hopefulness is apt to show signs of wear, until
restored by second childhood.
    In fact, he had begun to despair of a son, and this confirmation of
Grandcourt's interest in the estates certainly tended to make his image and
presence the more unwelcome; but, on the other hand, it carried circumstances
which disposed Sir Hugo to take care that the relation between them should be
kept as friendly as possible. It led him to dwell on a plan which had grown up
side by side with his disappointment of an heir;