Dorothy herself is one of Trollope's finest female characters. The one o'clock conversations, when she is summoned to her father's room by the "well-known knock" and "usual invitation," afford us an intimate understanding of them both. Unencumbered by devotion to a lover, she goes about her duties with a peculiar devotion that her father only begins to understand after he retires from his practice. She visits her aunt's family every day, though she does not care for them, turning "old dresses into new frocks." She has her own innings, in a sense, when her father presents his junior partner Mr. Barry as a suitor. She reads Mr. Barry's character better than her father has done, and she knows better than to accept his offer. The woman in the story who is encumbered by devotion to a lover is Florence Mountjoy, who has fallen in love with Harry Annesley and has pledged herself to him by a nod of her head. "A man's heart can be changed, but not a woman's. His love is but one thing among many," she declares to Mountjoy Scarborough in declining his repeated proposal, affirming the doctrine to which so many of Trollope's heroines adhered. Florence shows spunk and determination, standing her ground against her mother, uncle and aunt in the British legation house in Brussels to which she has been brought to clear her head and heart of Harry Annesley. Trollope was sixty-six years old when he wrote _Mr. Scarborough's Family_. He completed a short novel and almost completed another before dying of a stroke at age sixty-seven. His skills were undiminished. His overall themes and views were familiar ones; he was now looking at life, if not through a rear view mirror, at least with a bit more detachment and irony than in earlier decades. He was still able to generate and maintain detailed story lines, and he continued his mastery of showing many facets of his characters and events, mostly through revealing the inner thoughts of several characters.