She might be ignorant of it.

And to strangers, to chance acquaintances, even to friends, the position, of the loathsome name, was not materially important.

Marriage altered the view.

He sided with his family.
He sided, edgeing away, against his family.

But a vision of the earldom coming to him, stirred reverential objections, composed of all which his unstained family could protest in religion, to repudiate an alliance with a stained house, and the guilty of a condonation of immorality.