New blood is brought into the family, new faces appear in the story. The woman who brings a bit of spice is Lady Mabel Grex. She has loved her childhood friend, Francis Tregear, but she decided that since they were both penniless, each had better marry for money. (Shades of Lady Laura Standish!) Tregear goes on to better things, as bees flit from flower to flower, but Lady Mabel never loses her love. She reveals herself when she confides to her older companion Miss Cassewary that Lord Silverbridge would have proposed to her if she had given him any encouragement, but "I spared him;--out of sheer downright Christian charity! I said to myself, 'Love your neighbours.' 'Don't be selfish.' 'Do unto him as you would he should do unto you,'--that is, think of his welfare. Though I had him in my net, I let him go. Shall I go to heaven for doing that?" Isabel Boncassen, her successor in the Duchess of Omnium sweepstakes, faces different challenges from those that confront Lady Mabel. Frankly in love with Silverbridge, her disadvantage is one not readily appreciated on this side of the Atlantic: she is American. As Lady Mabel is revealed in the above passage, so we see Isabel as she walks with Silverbridge among the old graves at Matching and hears him tell her how Sir Guy ran away with half a dozen heiresses. "Nobody should have run away with me. I have no idea of going on such a journey except on terms of equality,--just step and step alike." Then she took hold of his arm and put out one foot. "Are you ready?" The action of the story is all carried out by the young people. They gamble and lose, they fall in love, they run for office, they scheme and dally, they sin and reform. But the story is really about the one person who doesn't do anything: the Duke of Omnium. Grieved by the sudden loss of his wife and forced to deal with issues she would have addressed--basically, the children--he is forced to learn that where the children are concerned, even the Duke is far from omnipotent. One who had stated that he would prefer the House of Commons to the House of Lords, he is found defending the order and telling his children of their obligation to marry within their rank. He instructs Miss Boncassen on the opportunity that the poorest man in England has to rise by merit to the highest office in the land, and he has long conversations with Isabel on the advantages of a decimal coinage system, but it never occurs to him that her wit and beauty should outweigh the rank of Lady Mabel Grex as qualifications for becoming his son's wife. Lest the reader miss the irony, Trollope spells it out in telling the reader that in his heart of hearts the Duke kept his own family and his own self entirely apart from his grand theories. "That one and the same man should have been in one part of himself so unlike the other part,--that he should have one set of opinions so contrary to another set,--poor Isabel Boncassen did not understand."