She would no longer be the unknown wife of a country banker, moving in a narrow sphere, which was altogether painful to her in its provincial philistinism.

It was a sphere to which she had descended in girlish ignorance.

Her uncle, Lord Riversdale, had been willing to let his portionless niece marry this prosperous young banker, who was madly in love with her, and a little gentle pressure had been brought to bear on the girl of eighteen, who had been placed by her father's death in a position of dependence.

Since then a smouldering fire of ambition and of dissatisfaction with her lot had been lurking unsuspected under her cold and self-absorbed manner.
But her thoughts turned with more tenderness than usual toward her husband.

She had aroused in him also a restless spirit of ambition, though in him it was for her sake, not his own.