The countess had not omitted to write to her when Frank left Courcy Castle; and the countess's letter certainly made the anxious mother think that her son's education had hardly yet been completed.

With this secondary object, but with that of keeping him out of the way of Mary Thorne in the first place, Lady Arabella was now quite satisfied that her son should enjoy such advantages as an education completed at the university might give him.
With his father Frank had a long conversation; but, alas! the gist of his father's conversation was this, that it behoved him, Frank, to marry money.

The father, however, did not put it to him in the cold, callous way in which his lady-aunt had done, and his lady-mother.
He did not bid him go and sell himself to the first female he could find possessed of wealth.

It was with inward self-reproaches, and true grief of spirit, that the father told the son that it was not possible for him to do as those may do who are born really rich, or really poor.
"If you marry a girl without a fortune, Frank, how are you to live ?" the father asked, after having confessed how deep he himself had injured his own heir.
"I don't care about money, sir," said Frank.

"I shall be just as happy as if Boxall Hill had never been sold.