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 galloped across the room astride on the canes of embassadors 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 among 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 talent for acquiring popularity, and that to this talent he added those which put popularity to use. Without achieving any scholastic distinction, he yet contrived to establish at Eton the most desirable reputation which a boy can obtain--namely, that among his own contemporaries--the reputation of a boy who was sure to do something when he grew to be a man. As a gentleman commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, he continued to sustain this high expectation, though he won no prizes and took but an ordinary degree; and at Oxford the future "something" became more defined--it was "something in public life" that this young man was to do. While he was yet at the university, both his parents died--within a few months of each other. And when Audley Egerton came of age, he succeeded to a paternal property which was supposed to be large, and, indeed, had once been so; but Colonel Egerton had been too lavish a man to enrich his heir, and about £1500 a year was all that sales and mortgages left of an estate that had formerly approached a rental of ten thousand pounds. Still, Audley was considered to be opulent, and he did not dispel that favorable notion by any imprudent exhibition of parsimony. On entering the world of London, the Clubs flew open to receive him; and he woke one morning to find himself, not indeed famous--but the fashion. To this fashion he at once gave a certain gravity and value--he associated as much as possible with public men and political ladies--he succeeded in confirming the notion that he was "born to ruin or to rule the State." Now, his dearest and most intimate friend was Lord L'Estrange, from whom he had been inseparable at Eton: and who now, if Audley Egerton was the fashion, was absolutely the rage in London.