He never again rose to his feet; but twice again he made violent efforts to do so.  Elections in East Barsetshire, from various causes, came quick upon each other in those days, and before he was eight-and-twenty years of age Mr Gresham had three times contested the county and been three times beaten.  To speak the truth of him, his own spirit would have been satisfied with the loss of the first ten thousand pounds; but Lady Arabella was made of higher mettle.  She had married a man with a fine place and a fine fortune; but she had nevertheless married a commoner and had in so far derogated from her high birth.  She felt that her husband should be by rights a member of the House of Lords; but, if not, that it was at least essential that he should have a seat in the lower chamber.  She would by degrees sink into nothing if she allowed herself to sit down, the mere wife of a mere county squire.

Thus instigated, Mr Gresham repeated the useless contest three times, and repeated it each time at a serious cost.  He lost his money, Lady Arabella lost her temper, and things at Greshamsbury went on by no means as prosperously as they had done in the days of the old squire.

In the first twelve years of their marriage, children came fast into the nursery at Greshamsbury.  The first that was born was a boy; and in those happy halcyon days, when the old squire was still alive, great was the joy at the birth of an heir to Greshamsbury; bonfires gleamed through the country-side, oxen were roasted whole, and the customary paraphernalia of joy, usual to rich Britons on such occasions were gone through with wondrous eclat.  But when the tenth baby, and the ninth little girl, was brought into the world, the outward show of joy was not so great.

Then other troubles came.  Some of these little girls were sickly, some very sickly.  Lady Arabella had her faults, and they were such as were extremely detrimental to her husband’s happiness and her own; but that of being an indifferent mother was not among them.  She had worried her husband daily for years because he was not in Parliament, she had worried him because he would not furnish his house in Portman Square, she had worried him because he objected to have more people carried every winter at Greshamsbury Park than the house would hold; but now she changed her tune and worried him because Selina coughed, because Helena was hectic, because poor Sophy’s spine was weak, and Matilda’s appetite was gone.

Worrying from such causes was pardonable it will be said.  So it was; but the manner was hardly pardonable.  Selina’s cough was certainly not fairly attributable to the old-fashioned furniture in Portman Square; nor would Sophy’s spine have been materially benefited by her father having a seat in Parliament; and yet, to have heard Lady Arabella discussing those matters in family conclave, one would have thought that she would have expected such results.