As his debts become impossible to manage Ralph the heir hesitates between marrying Polly Neefit for the financial security her father can provide and selling his future interest in Newton Priory to his uncle, but when Polly refuses to respond to him with the affection he expects and remains emotionally attached to Ontario Moggs he finally chooses to sell his inheritance, allowing the elderly Squire to celebrate the belief that his own son Ralph will eventually possess the family estate even though the legal transfer has not yet been fully completed, while Sir Thomas enters the corrupt parliamentary contest at Percycross and Ontario Moggs campaigns on principles of electoral purity and the rights of labour only to lose amid questionable practices, bringing together the novel’s central concerns with debt, inheritance, calculated marriage, class ambition, and political corruption.
