In this temper, (just
before the election of a new parliament, when contending interests
were running very close,) he obtained the not less eagerly disputed
hand of Lady Arabella Studeley, whose elder sister (as has been
mentioned) had made a magnificent marriage, only a year or two
before, with John of Beaufort, the lord of the noble domain of
Beaufort in the Weald of Kent--a lineal endowment from his princely
ancestor, John of Gaunt. This illustrious pair dwelt on the land,
like its munificent owners in the olden times, revered and beloved;
and they were the parents of their two equally-honored representatives--
Guy, afterwards Admiral Beaufort, and Edith, who subsequently became
the adored wife of her also tenderly-beloved cousin, Robert Somerset.
But before that fondly-anticipated event took place, the young lover
had to pass through a path of thorns, some of which pierced him to
the end. From his childhood to manhood, he saw little of Algernon,
his elder brother, who always seemed to him more like an occasional
brilliant phantom, alighting amongst them, than a dear member of the
family coming delightedly to cheer and to share his paternal home.
Algernon was either at Eaton school, or at one of the universities,
or travelling somewhere on the continent; and at all these places, or
from them all, he became the enchanted theme of every tongue.
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