Throughout his career at school he never failed to win any prize he tried for, and when he left, it was with scholarships that almost covered the expenses of his time at Cambridge. Moreover, he was head of his house and a member of the Eleven. His mother, a gentle and unselfish lady, felt that she could not do enough to promote the comfort of so brilliant and satisfactory a son. Hilary's likes and dislikes in the matter of food, Hilary's preference for silk underwear, Hilary's love of art and music, were all matters of equal and supreme importance to Mrs Ffolliot, and in every way she fostered the strain of selfishness that exists even in the best of us. At the university he did equally well. He took a brilliant degree, and then travelled for a year or so, devoting himself to the study of Italian art and architecture; and finally accepted (he never seemed to try for things like other people) a clerkship in the Foreign Office. When he was eight and twenty his uncle died, and he inherited Redmarley. His conduct had always been blameless. He shared the ordinary pleasures of upper-class young men without committing any of their follies. He was careful about money, and never got into debt. He accepted kindnesses as his right, and felt under no obligation to return them. He could not be said ever to have worked hard, for all the work he had hitherto undertaken came so easily to him. He possessed a large circle of agreeable acquaintances, and no intimate friends. He met Marjory Grantly in her second season, and for the first time in his life fell ardently and hopelessly in love. Now was the chance for the Fairy Blackstick! But she evidently took no interest in Hilary Ffolliot, for Marjory, instead of sending him about his business, and perhaps thus rendering him for a space the most miserable of men, fell in love with him, and they were married in three months. The General, it is true, had misgivings, and remarked to Mrs Grantly that Ffolliot seemed too good to be true. But there was no disproving it; and Hilary was so much in love that for a while, for nearly a year, he thought more about Marjory's likes and dislikes than his own. And Marjory's likes included such a vast number of other people. But the chance, the hundred-to-one chance, of turning him into an ordinary human being--loving, suffering, understanding--was lost. Once more in Life's Market he had got what he wanted at his own price, and with the cessation of competitive examinations all ambition seemed dead in him. And what of Marjory?