It has become an institution, like primogeniture,
and is almost as serviceable for maintaining the proper
order of things. Rank squanders money; trade
makes it;—and then trade purchases rank
by re-gilding its splendour. The arrangement,
as it affects the aristocracy generally, is well understood,
and was quite approved of by the old marquis—so
that he had felt himself to be justified in eating
up the property, which his son’s future marriage
would renew as a matter of course. Nidderdale
himself had never dissented, had entertained no fanciful
theory opposed to this view, had never alarmed his
father by any liaison tending towards matrimony with
any undowered beauty;—but had claimed his
right to ‘have his fling’ before he devoted
himself to the reintegration of the family property.
His father had felt that...