Plot
The Rev. Mark Robarts, a
college friend of his neighbor Lord Lufton, was as a
young man presented with the comfortable living of Framley by his friend's
mother Lady Lufton, and soon married her protegee Fanny Monsell. Robarts, a genial, easy-going young clergyman, became
acquainted with Nathaniel Sowerby of Chaldicotes the old Duke of Omnium's
MP from
The old Duke, who held the mortgages on the
Chaldicotes property, pressed for payment, and Sowerby
made a half-hearted and ineffectual attempt to marry the wealthy patent
medicine heiress Martha Dunstable as a means of
extricating himself from his complicated financial difficulties. Miss Dunstable refused, but did buy up the mortgages, and after
her marriage to Doctor Thorne made Chaldicotes her home.
After the death of Mark Robarts' father, his young
sister Lucy went to live at the parsonage, where she was cordially welcomed by
Lady Lufton until it became apparent that Lord Lufton was attracted to her.
Lady Lufton's dearest plan was that her son should
marry the stately Griselda Grantly, but the young lord
refused and Griselda soon married the stupid but highly placed Lord Dumbello, When Lord Lufton. proposed to Lucy she would not accept him, knowing that such
a marriage would be displeasing to her brother's patroness, and declared that
she would marry him only when Lady Lufton herself
requested it. The resourcefulness and unselfishness with which she nursed Mrs.
Crawley, wife of a neighboring clergyman, through a serious illness
completely won Lady Lufton's admiration, and she
drove over to Hogglestock to ask Lucy to marry her son. Mark, meantime, had
been bedeviled by the moneylenders on account of the Sowerby
notes, and it was only when the bailiffs were at the parsonage door, ready to
take his belongings, that Lord Lufton bought up the
notes and saved his friend from disgrace.
GEROULD,
WINIFRED GREGORY;
A GUIDE TO TROLLOPE.
© 1948 Princeton University Press,
1976 renewed PUP
Reprinted by permission of
Url: http://www.anthonytrollope.com/
Academic year 2008/2009
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés
López
©Davinia Moreno Arroyo
Universitat de València
Press
damoa2@alumni.uv.es