Towards the end of the year 1875, when he was but twenty-six years old, he thought it his duty to sever his connection with the army and to enter politics. To this piece of self-sacrifice must be ascribed, I fear, all the future misfortunes of his life. He married. Warned, I do not say by his father’s example, but doubtless by some instinct, he took to wife the Lady Arabella Hunt, of an age not far distant from his own, of descent a trifle superior, of a fortune which permitted him—I fear imprudently—to rebuild the stables. Such of my readers as may find their lot cast upon the clayey, the calcareous, or the oolitic soils of our beloved country, will appreciate what I mean, when I allude to the agricultural depression which afflicted the years immediately subsequent to his marriage. Lord Benthorpe, like so many others of his ancient station, refused to believe that the star of England had set. He was too generous to reduce his splendid hospitality; too patriotic to admit that the country and he could go otherwise than forward; too proud of his superb lineage to regret the investments in arable land, pasture, undergrowth, common, waste and marsh, which his forefathers had made. He did indeed attempt to develop a small town in his neighbourhood which boasted a medicinal well. He bought certain freeholds within the borough, and the medical profession were enthusiastic in their praise of the waters. The less healthy of the governing classes began to drink them in increasing numbers; but that fatality which seemed to dog his every effort caused an epidemic of acute colic to coincide with the second year of his effort, and he lost upon this chivalrous venture the considerable sum of two hundred thousand pounds. He borrowed. At first, for his daily needs, from local banks; later, to repay their claims and to set himself afloat again, from the more imposing corporations of the metropolis; from these he received such aid as he imagined would carry him forward to a better day. But that day tarried. He maintained his rents with difficulty. He attempted to increase them. He lost the affection of his tenants, a disaster for which the remaining respect of his equals scarcely compensated him. He was finally compelled to abandon, most reluctantly, the society of public entertainers, political, literary and racing men, to which all his early manhood had rendered him familiar. He grew to inviting to Placton none but those to whom no other hospitality offered. When these failed him, he fell back upon his relatives; when these, upon the local clergy, the smaller squires—the very doctors of his country town. It was of no avail!