To this dark picture we must add, however, before we consider the portrait of Lord Sunderland to be complete, some, though few, enlivening touches. Eager for distinction, or at least for notoriety, this nobleman was, nevertheless, exempt from the mercenary motives by which many public men were debased. His high spirit led him, though not rich for his station, to reject a pension offered him by Queen Anne, when, during her reign, he was left out of the administration. The same indifference to his pecuniary interests caused him to reject, with indignation, the attempts made by his mother-in-law to reinstate him in his employments, in the reign of George the First.[328] And when it is stated that he discarded the “holy fathers” from his library, after his father’s death, it must be added that he replaced them by numerous works of great value, forming a library of considerable extent, and selected with admirable judgment. To this ungenial partner the young and lovely Anne was eventually consigned. At first, indeed, her parents made many objections to the marriage. The coldness and indifference of Lord Spencer to their daughter was the chief obstacle. He was now a widower, having recently lost, in the Lady Arabella Cavendish, a wife whom he idolised, and for whom he still mourned with all the depth of feeling, and tenacity of a man of strong passions, and reserved nature. His political violence was another impediment, in the opinion of the rightly-judging mind of the great Marlborough, who saw in the times nothing to justify, but everything to deprecate, temerity and factious heats. But the Countess of Marlborough, more disposed to Whig opinions, viewed that objection to Lord Spencer with far less anxiety than his coldness to her darling child, and the increased gloom of the young nobleman’s deportment and countenance. From those she augured little of happiness to a daughter for whom she evinced true maternal apprehensions, and who lived not to harass and aggravate her, when the once fascinating Countess, degenerated into “Old Marlborough,” had become captious and vindictive. High-minded, though faulty, Lady Marlborough dreaded that her daughter should be sacrificed to a man who loved her not, and who might be induced to marry whilst his affections were buried in the grave of another. The eagerness of Lord and Lady Sunderland for the promotion of the match—their remonstrances, the earnest solicitations, which they addressed to their son—all added to her apprehensions, and occasioned her to draw back somewhat from the first steps in her projected alliance.