The Inheritance

As the noblest attribute of man, family pride had been cherished time immemorial by the noble race of Rossville. Deep and incurable, therefore, was the wound inflicted on all its members by the marriage of the Honourable Thomas St. Clair, youngest son of the Earl of Rossville, with the humble Miss Sarah Black, a beautiful girl of obscure origin and no fortune. In such an union there was everything to exasperate, nothing to mollify, the outraged feelings of the Rossville family, for youth and beauty were all that Mrs. St. Clair had to oppose to pride and ambition. - p. 1-2.