While Leonard Fairfield had been obscurely wrestling against poverty, neglect, hunger, and dread temptations, bright had been the opening day, and smooth the upward path, of Randal Leslie. Certainly no young man, able and ambitious, could enter life under fairer auspices; the connection and avowed favorite of a popular and energetic statesman, the brilliant writer of a political work, that had lifted him at once into a station of his own--received and courted in those highest circles, to which neither rank nor fortune alone suffices for a familiar passport--the circles above fashion itself--the circles of power--with every facility of augmenting information, and learning the world betimes through the talk of its acknowledged masters--Randal had but to move straight onward, and success was sure. But his tortuous spirit delighted in scheme and intrigue for their own sake. In scheme and intrigue he saw shorter paths to fortune, if not to fame. His besetting sin was also his besetting weakness. He did not aspire--he _coveted_. Though in a far higher social position than Frank Hazeldean, despite the worldly prospects of his old school-fellow, he coveted the very things that kept Frank Hazeldean below him--coveted his idle gayeties, his careless pleasures, his very waste of youth. Thus, also, Randal less aspired to Audley Egerton's repute than he coveted Audley Egerton's wealth and pomp, his princely expenditure, and his Castle Rackrent in Grosvenor-square. It was the misfortune of his birth to be so near to both these fortunes--near to that of Leslie, as the future head of that fallen house--near even to that of Hazeldean, since as we have seen before, if the Squire had had no son, Randal's descent from the Hazeldeans suggested himself as the one on whom these broad lands should devolve. Most young men, brought into intimate contact with Audley Egerton, would have felt for that personage a certain loyal and admiring, if not very affectionate, respect. For there was something grand in Egerton--something that commands and fascinates the young. His determined courage, his energetic will, his almost regal liberality, contrasting a simplicity in personal tastes and habits that was almost austere--his rare and seemingly unconscious power of charming even the women most wearied of homage, and persuading even the men most obdurate to counsel--all served to invest the practical man with those spells which are usually confined to the ideal one. But indeed, Audley Egerton was an Ideal--the ideal of the Practical. Not the mere vulgar, plodding, red-tape machine of petty business, but the man of strong sense, inspired by inflexible energy, and guided to definite earthly objects. In a dissolute and corrupt form of government, under a decrepit monarchy, or a vitiated republic, Audley Egerton might have been a most dangerous citizen; for his ambition was so resolute, and his sight to its ends was so clear. But there is something in public life in England