It was the speech of a disappointed man, who had hoped, and striven, and fought once; had raised longing hands towards brilliant things and sighed after glory, or riches, or fame, but whose restless spirit had since been tamed, crushed under the heavy weight of unsatisfied ambition.
Poverty--grinding, unceasing, uninteresting poverty, had been Sir Marmaduke's relentless tormentor ever since he had reached man's estate.
His father, Sir Jeremy de Chavasse, had been poor before him.

The younger son of that Earl of Northallerton who cut such a brilliant figure at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, Jeremy had married Mistress Spanton of Acol Court, who had brought him a few acres of land heavily burdened with mortgage as her dowry.

They were a simple-minded, unostentatious couple who pinched and scraped and starved that their two sons might keep up the appearances of gentlemen at the Court of King Charles.
But both the young men seemed to have inherited from their brilliant grandfather luxurious tastes and a love of gambling and of show--but neither his wealth nor yet his personal charm of manner.

The eldest, Rowland, however, soon disappeared from the arena of life.

He married when scarce twenty years of age a girl who had been a play-actress.