you should return there. If your father has no
objection, I propose that you should go to Oxford at the ensuing
term. Meanwhile, I have engaged a gentleman, who is a fellow of
Balliol, to read with you. He is of opinion, judging only by your
high repute at Eton, that you may at once obtain a scholarship in
that college. If you do so, I shall look upon your career in life
as assured.

Your affectionate friend, and sincere well-wisher, A. E.

The reader will remark that in this letter there is a certain tone of
formality. Mr. Egerton does not call his protege "Dear Randal," as would
seem natural, but coldly and stiffly, "Dear Mr. Leslie." He hints, also,
that the boy has his own way to make in life. Is this meant to guard
against too sanguine notions of inheritance, which his generosity may
have excited? The letter to Lord L'Estrange was of a very different kind
from the others. It was long, and full of such little scraps of news and
gossip as may interest friends in a foreign land; it was written gayly,
and as with a wish to cheer his friend; you could see that it was a
reply to a melancholy letter; and in the whole tone and spirit there was
an affection, even to tenderness, of which those who most liked Audley
Egerton would have scarcely supposed him capable. Yet, notwithstanding,
there was a kind of constraint in the letter, which perhaps only the
fine tact of a woman would detect. It had not that abandon, that hearty
self-outpouring, which you might expect would characterize the letters
of two such friends, who had been boys at school together, and which
did breathe indeed in all the abrupt rambling sentences of his
correspondent. But where was the evidence of the constraint? Egerton is
off-hand enough where his pen runs glibly through paragraphs that relate
to others; it is simply that he says nothing about himself,--that he
avoids all reference to the inner world of sentiment and feeling! But
perhaps, after all, the man has no sentiment and feeling! How can you
expect that a steady personage in practical life, whose mornings are
spent in Downing Street, and whose nights are consumed in watching
Government bills through a committee, can write in the same style as an
idle dreamer amidst the pines of Ravenna, or on the banks of Como?

Audley had just finished this epistle, such as it was, when the
attendant in waiting announced the arrival of a deputation from
a provincial trading town, the memb