Marry a girl whose family had been notable for hundreds of years?
For the moment he did not remember his own family.

This was one of the times when he was only conscious that he had savage blood, together with a strain of New World French, and that his life had mostly been a range of adventure and common toil.
This new position was his right, but there were times when it seemed to him that he was an impostor; others, when he felt himself master of it all, when he even had a sense of superiority--why he could not tell; but life in this old land of tradition and history had not its due picturesqueness.

With his grandmother's proposal there shot up in him the thought that for him this was absurd.

He to pace the world beside this fine queenly creature--Delia Gasgoyne--carrying on the traditions of the Belwards! Was it, was it possible?
"Pardon me," he said at last gently, as he saw Lady Belward shrink and then look curiously at him, "something struck me, and I couldn't help it." "Was what I said at all ludicrous ?" "Of course not; you said what was natural for you to say, and I thought what was natural for me to think, at first blush." "There is something wrong," she urged fearfully.

"Is there any reason why you cannot marry?
Gaston,"-- she trembled towards him,--"you have not deceived us--you are not married ?" "My wife is dead, as I told you," he answered gravely, musingly.
"Tell me: there is no woman who has a claim on you ?" "None that I know of--not one.