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 willfulness 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; namely, to try and secure Diplow as a future residence for
Lady Mallinger and her daughters, and keep this pretty bit of the
family inheritance for his own offspring in spite of that
disappointmen