That Lady Honoria had received nothing but a mere pittance on her father’s death had in no ways affected her husband’s equanimity. He knew, before he married her, that Lord Ingleborough’s property would go away under the law of entail to a distant cousin, as a matter of course, and just as if there were no such things in the world as daughters to be provided for; and he was perfectly content that it should be so. He had felt, and he had felt rightly, that it was dishonourable to marry a woman for her money, and therefore, since family considerations compelled him to take a wife, he did not do that, but he choose her for her blood, which even he, the heir of all the Manwarings, allowed to be unexceptionable; and when the sweet, bright little lady, who ought to have been the joy and crown of her husband, fell asleep a few moments after she had kissed and blessed her new-born boy, he felt consoled by the idea that henceforth the blood of the direct line of the Weathercotes would blend with and go to enhance the blueness of that of his own family. The fact is that Cuthbert Manwaring was a man of one idea, and that idea was the importance and honour of his Family. There was indeed scarcely a family in all Lancashire, except perhaps the Elthornes of Elthorne, the Formbys of Formby, the extinct Weathercotes, and the Stanleys, which he would allow even to have any pretensions to vie with his own. It will be seen, therefore, that the Squire was no vulgar tuft-hunter. On the contrary, one of his most marked peculiarities was the supreme contempt with which he regarded the titled aristocracy of England, and he could scarcely be got to be decently civil to a Baronet. “Dukes,” he was wont to say to a casual visitor, “are mere mushrooms; Marquises a modern growth of Frenchified funguses, things of yesterday; two or three Earls perhaps can claim to be considered gentlemen; Viscounts I disallow altogether; and of the Barons of England there are perhaps a score who date the patents of their creation to a period earlier than that robber and plunderer, Henry VIII. Baronets! What do I know or care about Baronets? Why, they were only invented as a means of putting money in the pocket of that detestable old Scotch snob, James I.! No, the real aristocracy of England is only to be found amongst the ancient landed gentry, of whom a few still survive the invasion of millionaire Jew money-lenders and Brummagem button-makers, and of these there are few, if any, as I am prepared to prove from muniments in my own possession, who can compete in antiquity and respectability with the Knightly Family of Manwaring, of which I have the honour to be the humble representative. Allow me to show you the Family Tree.”