We were engaged, but at that time, I was only a younger son, with a younger son's meager portion, and the prospect of my falling heir to Barrow seemed of all things the most improbable.

And Pauline Malincourt, your mother, had been taught to abhor the idea of living on small means--trained to regard her beauty and breeding as marketable assets, to go to the highest bidder.

For, although her parents came of fine old stock--there's no better blood in England than the Malincourt strain, my dear--they were deadly hard-up.

So hard-up, that when they died--as the result of a carriage accident which occurred a week after Pauline's marriage--they left nothing behind them but debts which your father liquidated.
"Of your father, Caleb Tennant, the millionaire, I will not write, seeing that, after all, you are his child.

It is enough to say that he was a hard man, and that he and your mother led a very unhappy life together, so unhappy that at last she left him, choosing rather to live in utter poverty than remain with him.