first important attempt she made was to turn her respectable young Tory
husband into a second-rate Whig bantling. As this lady's character
will, it is hoped, show itself in the following pages, we need not now
describe it more closely.

It is not a bad thing to be son-in-law to a potent earl, member of
Parliament for a county, and a possessor of a fine old English seat,
and a fine old English fortune. As a very young man, Frank Gresham
found the life to which he was thus introduced agreeable enough. He
consoled himself as best he might for the blue looks with which he was
greeted by his own party, and took his revenge by consorting more
thoroughly than ever with his political adversaries. Foolishly, like a
foolish moth, he flew to the bright light, and, like the moths, of
course he burnt his wings. Early in 1833 he had become a member of
Parliament, and in the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came. Young
members of three had four-and-twenty do not think much of dissolutions,
forget the fancies of their constituents, and are too proud of the
present to calculate much as to the future. So it was with Mr Gresham.
His father had been member for Barsetshire all his life, and he looked
forward to similar prosperity as though it was part of his inheritance;
but he failed to take any of the steps which had secured his father's
seat.

In the autumn of 1834 the dissolution came, and Frank Gresham, with his
honourable lady wife and all the De Courcys at his back, found that he
had mortally offended the county.

To his great disgust another candidate was brought forward as a fellow
to his late colleague, and though he manfully fought the battle, and
spent ten thousand pounds in the contest, he could not recover his