What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such thoughts? He was not one who could quite naively introduce himself where he had just excluded his friend, yet it was undeniable that what had just happened made a new stage in his feeling toward Mirah. But apart from other grounds for self-repression, reasons both definite and vague made him shut away that question as he might have shut up a half-opened writing that would have carried his imagination too far, and given too much shape to presentiments. Might there not come a disclosure which would hold the missing determination of his course? What did he really know about his origin? Strangely in these latter months when it seemed right that he should exert his will in the choice of a destination, the passion of his nature had got more and more locked by this uncertainty. The disclosure might bring its pain, indeed the likelihood seemed to him to be all on that side; but if it helped him to make his life a sequence which would take the form of duty--if it saved him from having to make an arbitrary selection where he felt no preponderance of desire? Still more, he wanted to escape standing as a critic outside the activities of men, stiffened into the ridiculous attitude of self-assigned superiority. His chief tether was his early inwrought affection for Sir Hugo, making him gratefully deferential to wishes with which he had little agreement: but gratitude had been sometimes disturbed by doubts which were near reducing it to a fear of being ungrateful. Many of us complain that half our birthright is sharp duty: Deronda was more inclined to complain that he was robbed of this half; yet he accused himself, as he would have accused another, of being weakly self-conscious and wanting in resolve. 
What would it be for Daniel Deronda to entertain such hopes? He could not naively introduce himself where he had just excluded his friend, yet it was undeniable that he had reached a new stage in his feeling toward Mirah. But reasons both definite and vague made him shut away that question. What did he really know about his origin? What was his destination? Strangely, in these latter months when it seemed right that he should choose a destination, he had become more and more locked in by this uncertainty. His chief tether was his early affection for Sir Hugo: he was gratefully deferential to his wishes, while not agreeing with them; but now his doubts were close to making him ungrateful.
He accused himself of being weakly self-conscious and wanting in resolve. 