No one could make him marry Sophie Mellerby, or any other Sophie, and maintain a grand and gloomy house in Dorsetshire, spending his income, not in a manner congenial to him, but in keeping a large retinue of servants and taking what he called the "heavy line" of an English nobleman.
The property must be his own,--or at any rate the life use of it.

He swore to himself over and over again that nothing should induce him to impoverish the family or to leave the general affairs of the house of Scroope worse than he found them.

Much less than half of that which he understood to be the income coming from the estates would suffice for him.

But let his uncle or aunt,--or his strait-laced methodical brother, say what they would to him, nothing should induce him to make himself a slave to an earldom.
But yet his mind was much confused and his contentment by no means complete.

He knew that there must be a disagreeable scene between himself and his uncle before he returned to Ireland, and he knew also that his uncle could, if he were so minded, stop his present very liberal allowance altogether.