Some two years before this date he had proposed to a pretty girl of great family and no money, with whom he supposed himself ardently in love.

She, after some hesitation, had refused him, and Marsham had had some reason to believe that in spite of his mother's great fortune and his own expectations, his _provenance_ had not been regarded as sufficiently aristocratic by the girl's fond parents.

Perhaps had he--and not Lady Lucy--been the owner of Tallyn and its L18,000 a year, things might have been different.

As it was, Marsham had felt the affront, as a strong and self-confident man was likely to feel it; and it was perhaps in reaction from it that he had allowed himself those passages with Alicia Drake which had, at least, soothed his self-love.
In this affair Marsham had acted on one of the convictions with which he had entered public life--that there is no greater help to a politician than a distinguished, clever, and, if possible, beautiful wife.
Distinction, Radical though he was, had once seemed to him a matter of family and "connection." But after the failure of his first attempt, "family," in the ordinary sense, had ceased to attract him.

Personal breeding, intelligence, and charm--these, after all, are what the politician who is already provided with money, wants to secure in his wife; without, of course, any obvious disqualification in the way of family history.