Teviot, the great parti of the year, with five country houses—being four more than he could live in, with £120,000 a year—being £30,000 less than he could spend, with diamonds that had been collected by the last ten generations of Teviots, and a yacht that had been built by himself, with the rank of a marquess, and the good looks of the poorest of younger brothers."
Spoilt from the cradle, having every craving instantly satisfied, Teviot is violently and passionately in love. The very strength of his passion frightens and puzzles the child wife, whose only experience of love hitherto has been the devotion of an adoring family, and her continued interest in the home from which her early marriage has torn her is more than sufficient to send him into paroxysms of jealousy and to build up a barrier of misunderstandings.
There is in the character of Teviot, which is drawn with less than Miss Eden's usual sureness, more than a touch of Darcy; that selfishness "in practice but not in theory" is common to both the young men, and though Teviot had not, like Darcy, fallen in love "beneath him," a pride, bred of spoiling and flattery from childhood, led him remorselessly to learn the bitter lesson from a young and inexperienced girl.
The estrangement, which is widened on one side by the malice of an egotistical woman of fashion. Lady Portmore, and on the other by the machinations of a roue, is finally ended by a severe illness and worldly misfortunes which threaten Teviot. He recovers his health and property, and with them the love of his young and lovely wife. Minor plots are interwoven with the love affairs of Helen's brother, Lord Beaufort, and her friend Mary, and of Helen's cousin, Ernest Beaufort, and Eliza Douglas.
The Semi-attached Couple is a gold mine to the social historian. It gives an unrivalled picture of the family life of a great Whig family in the early part of the nineteenth
