I can assure you it never shall.

I hope you will soon have a worthier ambition than that to which you allude; for I am well aware that no attempt will ever make me shine anywhere.
I am quite sure you have had no mercenary motives: such motives in marriage are very base, and quite below your name and lineage.

Any little fortune that I may have must be a matter of indifference to one who looks forward, as you do, to put a coronet on his wife's brow.

Nevertheless, for the sake of the family, I trust that Lord Porlock, in spite of his obstacles, may live to do the same for a wife of his own some of these days.

I am glad to hear that there is nothing to interfere with your own prospects of domestic felicity.
Sincerely hoping that you may be perfectly successful in your proud ambition to shine in Parliament, and regretting extremely that I cannot share that ambition with you, I beg to subscribe myself, with very great respect,-- Your sincere well-wisher, MARTHA DUNSTABLE.
The Honourable George, with that modesty which so well became him, accepted Miss Dunstable's reply as a final answer to his little proposition, and troubled her with no further courtship.