would be sure to love, - and
much more to the usual effect when a man, having done something agreeable to
himself, is disposed to congratulate others on his own good fortune, and the
deducible satisfactoriness of events in general.
    Let Sir Hugo be partly excused until the grounds of his action can be more
fully known. The mistakes in his behaviour to Deronda were due to that dulness
towards what may be going on in other minds, especially the minds of children,
which is among the commonest deficiencies even in good-natured men like him,
when life has been generally easy to themselves, and their energies have been
quietly spent in feeling gratified. No one was better aware than he that Daniel
was generally suspected to be his own son. But he was pleased with that
suspicion; and his imagination had never once been troubled with the way in
which the boy himself might be affected, either then or in the future, by the
enigmatic aspect of his circumstances. He was as fond of him as could be, and
meant the best by him. And considering the lightness with which the preparation
of young lives seems to lie on respectable consciences, Sir Hugo Mallinger can
hardly be held open to exceptional reproach. He had been a bachelor till he was
five-and- had always been regarded as a fascinating man of elegant tastes; what
could be more natural, even according to the index of language, than that he
should have a beautiful boy like the little Deronda to take care of? The mother
might even perhaps be in the great world - met with in Sir Hugo's residences
abroad. The only person to feel any objection was the boy himself, who could not
have been consulted. And the boy's objections had never been dreamed of by
anybody but himself.
    By the time Deronda was ready to go to Cambridge, Lady Mallinger had already
three daughters - charming babies, all three, but whose sex was announced as a
melancholy alternative, the offspring desired being a son: if Sir Hugo had no
son the succession must go to his nephew Mallinger Grandcourt. Daniel no longer
held a wavering opinion about his own birth. His fuller knowledge had tended to
convince him that Sir Hugo was his father, and he conceived that the baronet,
since he never approached a communication on the subject, wished him to have a
tacit understanding of the fact, and to accept in silence what would be
generally considered more than the due love and nurture. Sir Hugo's marriage
might certainly have been felt as a new ground of resentment by some youths in
Deronda's position,