Trollope presents the story in a short novel of 172 pages, which means there are no subplots. However, the reader is not shortchanged by any lack of reflections by and about the characters as each turn of the story unfolds. Whereas James regards his participants in a rather detached fashion, as a puppet master who pulls the strings and watches the unfortunate movements that may result, and with relative economy of words, Trollope regards his characters with as much affection as they deserve, spending paragraphs detailing all aspects of the situation as they may appear to each of them all along the way. The daughter of a wealthy baronet falls in love with her cousin who is a spendthrift and unworthy of her. We must follow the ground rules of Victorian society--cousins may marry, and a father must decide whether to approve of his daughter's intended husband and is indeed obliged to investigate his character. In this case, we learn that the mortal sin committed by the suitor is that he cheated at cards. Remember T. S. Eliot's line about Macavity the Mystery Cat: "He's outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)" For our later generation, Trollope is a patient instructor: We are reminded that an Englishman's home is his castle. "Nothing on earth should induce Sir Harry to see his cousin anywhere on his own premises." In a society in which inheritance could be all important, the lover of the fox hunt was beginning to suspect that the laws of inheritance were not universally applicable: "And good blood too will have its effect--physical for the most part--and will produce bottom, lasting courage, that capacity of carrying on through the mud to which Sir Harry was wont to allude; but good blood will bring no man back to honesty." He gives lessons in the art of negotiation: "Lady Elizabeth had not been instructed to propose a meeting. She had been told rather to avoid it if at all possible. But, like some other undiplomatic ambassadors, in her desire to be civil, she ran at once to the extremity of the permitted concession." A serious interview ensues when George Hotspur plucks up his courage to ask Sir Harry for Emily Hotspur's hand. Two and a half pages of dialogue follow, during which George pleads his losing case well, leaving Sir Harry to decide: "He sat silent for full five minutes before he spoke again, and then he gave judgment as follows: 'You will go away without seeing her tomorrow.'" Trollope follows the narrative to a point further on, at which, "The process of parental yielding had already commenced." Ever the patient instructor, he here teaches: