o a happy close. The late Mr. Hazeldean had so far
anticipated the chance of the young widow's second espousals, that, in
case of that event, he transferred, by his testamentary dispositions,
the guardianship of his infant heir from the mother to two squires whom
he had named his executors. This circumstance combined with her new ties
somewhat to alienate Mrs. Hazeldean from the pledge of her former loves;
and when she had borne a son to Colonel Egerton, it was upon that child
that her maternal affections gradually concentrated.

William Hazeldean was sent by his guardians to a large provincial
academy, at which his forefathers had received their education time out
of mind. At first he spent his holidays with Mrs. Egerton; but as she
now resided either in London, or followed her lord to Brighton, to
partake of the gayeties at the Pavilion, so as he grew older, William,
who had a hearty affection for country life, and of whose bluff manners
and rural breeding Mrs. Egerton (having grown exceedingly refined) was
openly ashamed, asked and obtained permission to spend his vacations
either with his guardians or at the old Hall. He went late to a small
college at Cambridge, endowed in the fifteenth century by some ancestral
Hazeldean; and left it, on coming of age, without taking a degree. A
few years afterwards he married a young lady, country born and bred like
himself.

Meanwhile his half-brother, Audley Egerton, may be said to have begun
his initiation into the beau monde before he had well cast aside his
coral and bells; he had been fondled in the lap of duchesses, and
had galloped across the room astride on the canes of ambassadors and
princes. For Colonel Egerton was not only very highly connected, not
only one of the Dii majores of fashion, but he had the still rarer good
fortune to be an exceedingly popular man with all who knew him,--so
popular, that even the fine ladies whom he had adored and abandoned
forgave him for marrying out of "the set," and continued to be as
friendly as if he had not married at all. People who were commonly
called heartless were never weary of doing kind things to the Egertons.
When the time came for Audley to leave the preparatory school at which
his infancy budded forth amongst the stateliest of the little lilies
of the field, and go to Eton, half the fifth and sixth forms had been
canvassed to be exceedingly civil to young Egerton. The boy soon showed
that he inherited his father's tale