and the timid Lady Mallinger with her fast-coming little
ones might have been images to scowl at, as likely to divert much that was
disposable in the feelings and possessions of the baronet from one who felt his
own claim to be prior. But hatred of innocent human obstacles was a form of
moral stupidity not in Deronda's grain; even the indignation which had long
mingled itself with his affection for Sir Hugo took the quality of pain rather
than of temper; and as his mind ripened to the idea of tolerance towards error,
he habitually linked the idea with his own silent grievances.
    The sense of an entailed, disadvantage - the deformed foot doubtfully hidden
by the shoe, makes a restlessly active spiritual yeast, and easily turns a
self-centred, unloving nature into an Ishmaelite. But in the rarer sort, who
presently see their own frustrated claim as one among a myriad, the inexorable
sorrow takes the form of fellowship and makes the imagination tender. Deronda's
early-wakened susceptibility, charged at first with ready indignation and
resistant pride, had raised in him a premature reflection on certain questions
of life; it had given a bias to his conscience, a sympathy with certain ills,
and a tension of resolve in certain directions, which marked him off from other
youths much more than any talents he possessed.
    One day near the end of the Long Vacation, when he had been making a tour in
the Rhineland with his Eton tutor, and was come for a farewell stay at the Abbey
before going to Cambridge, he said to Sir Hugo -
    »What do you intend me to be, sir?« They were in the library, and it was the
fresh morning. Sir Hugo had called him in to read a letter from a Cambridge Don
who was to be interested in him; and since the baronet wore an air at once
businesslike and leisurely, the moment seemed propitious for entering on a grave
subject which had never yet been thoroughly discussed.
    »Whatever your inclination leads you to, my boy. I thought it right to give
you the option of the army, but you shut the door on that, and I was glad. I
don't expect you to choose just yet - by-and-by, when you have looked about you
a little more and tried your mettle among older men. The university has a good
wide opening into the forum. There are prizes to be won, and a bit of good
fortune often gives the turn to a man's taste. From what I see and hear, I
should think you can take up anything