How are we to understand/make of  Fred’s conflicting attitudes in chapter XIV?

Like many in Middlemarch who are obsessed with money, Fred Vincy is deeply enchanted by the prospect of inhering his uncle Mr Featherstone’s asset and grow rich. However, when Featherstone is fetching some bills for him a gift Fred displays an intriguing air of a combination of dignity, and moral superiority:

‘The deep-veined hands fingered many bank-notes one after the other, laying them down flat again, while Fred leaned back in his chair, scorning to look eager. He held himself to be a gentleman at heart, and did not like courting an old fellow for his money.’

Fred’s demeanour in this instance is not an act to fake a desirable appearance to make himself seem honourable and gentlemanly. His incentive is genuine as betrayed by his posturer, which adds a psychological dimension to novelistic realism in the characterisation of Fred Vincy. Leaning backwards signals denial to things the observer beholds, here they are the vulgarity of counting cash and ‘courting an old (and obnoxious) man merely for the sake of money’. 

Yet, his conceived decency stands in juxtaposition with typical greed for materials. Despite his physical withdrawal from the notes, he nonetheless can clearly see that there are five bank-notes in his beneficent’s hand and expects that they are ‘fifty pounds’ each. As the saying ‘distance makes the heart grow fonder’ goes, the novel also depicts Fred’s obsession and yearning for money in the most emotionally heightened manner, that is, to lose it (or the hope for it):

‘Fred was not so happy, however, after he had counted them. For they actually presented the absurdity of being less than his hopefulness had decided that they must be. What can the fitness of things mean, if not their fitness to a man’s expectations? Failing this, absurdity and atheism gaped behind him. The collapse for him was severe when he found that he held then five twenties…’

The repeated word ‘absurdity’ articulates the irreconcilable disparity stretching between Fred’s optimistic hope and the reality he faces. He fancies himself as a righteous man who does not kowtow for money, but in the next moment his rather sharp observation of the notes betrayed his eagerness for money. He also expects that Featherstone will give him £2,500, but to his disappointment (and perhaps indignity) his uncle makes a great fuss about just £100. 

However, I don’t think Fred’s struggle is the kind of the incongruity between reality and hope as the text explicitly expressed, rather, I see it as that between reality and delusion. For hope is an expectation for uncertainties whereas delusion is an idiosyncratic belief or impression maintained disregarding reality. Hopefulness can expect a handsome sum of money but never decide what that sum is, which only delusion has the power to execute, the same goes for his ‘noble character’. Through the characterisation of Fred, Eliot gives an account of the experience of seeing the world through a delusional lens. This dynamic between delusion and reality seems to be prevalent in the novel that several important characters are also facing the same problem as Fred is (i.e. Dorothea’s notion of the ideal life). My view towards the prevalence of delusion is not so critical, for it is but a natural disposition that constitutes humanity. In light of this, the question ‘What can the fitness of things mean, if not their fitness to a man’s expectations?’ is not so much teasing on Fred, but a champion of individual subjectivity.