Silverbridge becomes increasingly entangled with Major Tifto and the racehorse Prime Minister, risking large sums of money and alarming his father even as he establishes himself in politics and fashionable society, while Mary and Tregear refuse to abandon their engagement and manage to meet again despite the Duke’s prohibition, deepening the conflict between paternal authority and the children’s determination to choose their own lives, and at the same time the beautiful and intelligent American Isabel Boncassen enters London society and begins to attract Silverbridge’s attention, particularly during her river party, introducing a second romantic challenge that will eventually force the Duke to reconsider his assumptions about rank, family, and marriage.
