Now master of Bragton, Reginald discovers that Mary fears his inheritance has raised him even further beyond her social reach and finally tells her that he too has loved her for years, leading to the proposal and engagement that resolve the novel’s quieter love story, while Arabella, unsuccessful in capturing Lord Rufford but financially strengthened by John Morton’s legacy, accepts Mounser Green after his appointment to a diplomatic post in Patagonia and thereby achieves the secure marriage for which she has struggled so relentlessly, and Senator Gotobed concludes his English visit with a provocative London lecture attacking the irrationalities he believes he has discovered in English customs before returning to America and ironically praising many English institutions to his own countrymen, bringing the novel to a close by contrasting Mary and Reginald’s reciprocal love with Arabella’s calculated matrimonial campaign and by using the Senator’s satire to question class, hunting, property, marriage, and justice in Victorian England.
