The story starts with Giles, Lord Cardross scolding his bride for not paying her bills. He has told her that he wont have her lending money to her scapegrace brother Dysart, and she is afraid of telling him that she did loan him some money. So she lies and says that she lost money gambling.. However, she does not really care for gaming..
Giles tells her that he will pay off her debts but that he wont tolerate her gaming heavily or helping Dysart. He likes the young Viscount but feels rather jealous of Nell's affection for him, and also feels that Dysart would be happier if he took up some kind of occupation. He knows that he would like to be a soldier but that his father Lord Pevensey did not wish for his heir to go to war and that his Mother also dreads the idea of her son going to the Peninsula.
Nell is upset by Cardross's annoyance.. and tells herself that she must learn to manage money and that perhaps in time Giles will come to care more for her.
Giles is depressed and increasingly convinced that Nell will never care for him, that she is polite, well mannered and pleasant but cares only for her own family.. and her amusements. Nell is now acting as chaperone to Giles' young half sister Letitita, who is only 17.. and who is silly but good natured, and rather more worldly in some ways than Nell. He is concerned that his young sister has had a rather casual upbringing with her maternal aunt.. and has been allowed to flirt and be foolish all the time. While Letty does like to flirt and enjoys society, she has fallen in love with a very serious young man, Jeremy Allandale who is working in the Foreign Office and has only a genteel fortune.
Giles worries that his sister may be so lost to propriety as to elope with Allandale and is only relieved by the fact that the young man is very proper and is devoted to his widowed mother and his siblings.. so he is not likely to try to elope.
A few days later, having given all her bills to Giles to settle - Nell finds a demand from a dressmaker for 300 pounds for a court dress. She feels that she cannot ask Giles for the money for this, but on the other hand, he has been hurt by her not being frank about her debts. She speaks to Dysart, who tells her that she can always put off the bill paying by ordering another dress and that he is at present short of ready cash and so he cannot help her. During their talk however he reveals that Giles is in love with Nell... and that his affair with Lady Orsett is over, because he has been so smitten with his new wife. Nell is thrilled but also downcast because she feels that having been cool and polite towards her husband, she cannot now tell him about the debt.. as he will never believe that she loves him. She and Dysart decide that they will have to find a way of paying off the dressmaker without involving Giles.
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