As young adults, Mary and Frank Gresham — the only son and heir of the squire of Greshamsbury — fall in love. However, his parents want him to marry wealth, to rescue them from the financial distress resulting from the squire's expensive and fruitless campaigns for a seat in Parliament. As Mary is penniless and of lower birth, such a marriage is inconceivable to his mother and to the de Courcys, the Greshams' aristocratic relatives. They wish Frank to marry the 30-year-old, eccentric heiress Martha Dunstable instead. Frank reluctantly visits Courcy Castle in order to meet Miss Dunstable, and they become friends. He foolishly and playfully proposes but she demurs, knowing that he does not love her.